• Question: Is it true that there are ways of being able to select the gender of your baby?

    Asked by amyhoughton to Andrew, Daniel, Hayley, Peta on 23 Nov 2011.
    • Photo: Daniel Scully

      Daniel Scully answered on 23 Nov 2011:

      Not at the moment.

      I think this usually refers to when you have a large selection of eggs which have already been fertilised, then you pick one which happened to be the gender you want.

      Maybe in the future… but I suspect there would be a lot of moral concerns.

    • Photo: Peta Foster

      Peta Foster answered on 23 Nov 2011:

      There isn’t really anything you can do currently to bias it… there is research into this though that shows mild trends… but only in the few % difference range so it’s still pot luck 😀

    • Photo: Andrew Cairns

      Andrew Cairns answered on 23 Nov 2011:

      Not with natural conception, no, then the choice is up to the laws of probability! When you are doing in-vitro fertilisation (‘test-tube’) you could theoretically only implant those embryos that are male or female as it is currently possible to screen them for gender (I think).

      At the moment though it is not allowed to make any kind of ‘designer baby’. As well as sex you could choose eye colour, hair colour… all sorts of things. More importantly you can screen for serious inherited genetic diseases at present and I think you can select healthy embryos over those that may be born with specific diseases that may run in families.

      I think – possibly worth checking online about this!

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