Hello I am Dr. Bruce Shapiro. I will be answering your questions, posting my thoughts, and commenting on the latest developments in IVF and Gender Selection sciences.
The dream of a child of a certain gender, be it female or male, has been with us forever. Kings divorced queens for not bearing male children; parents in fairy tales experience all-consuming joy when, at last, blessed with a girl after many boys. Until recently, however, selecting a baby’s gender was only a dream.
This all changed when gender selection (sex selection) became clinically possible, and available. Demand for gender selection has, ever since, been steadily increasing. Two medical advances have been driving forces behind this expanding demand: improvements in understanding of genetic diseases, and improvement in the ability to genetically assess embryos before transfer into the uterus (called Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis or PGD).
