Gender selection is the selection of male or female sperm or embryos in order to have a baby of a desired sex for personal reasons or because of genetic concerns.
Significance
Most families use gender selection because they carry a harmful gene that affects only one sex, but gender selection is also done for family gender balancing.
Where It's Done
Gender selection is done in a laboratory that specializes in sperm separation or pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), testing that removes a cell from an embryo to test for specific genes.
Procedure
Sperm can be separated in the andrology lab by several methods of separating heavier male sperm from lighter female sperm and then used for artificial insemination. PGD removes a cells directly from an embryo, so in vitro fertilization is required.
Success
PGD is essentially 100 percent accurate, although lab errors may still occur, according to the Center for Human Reproduction. Sperm separation is 90 percent successful for female selection, and 75 percent for male selection if the MicroSort technique, developed by the IVF and Genetics Institute, is used. Older sperm separation techniques increase odds only slightly.
Cost
PGD can cost nearly $20,000; MicroSort costs around $3,000.
Considerations
There are ethical concerns about gender selection being used for personal reasons not related to genetic issues, and what such procedures might lead to in the future.
