WFWW-Gender Selection

Wisdom from Wisot Wednesdays

Can I do gender selection?

I have been an infertility patient with 2 successful frozen embryo transfers, one singleton and now a twin pregnancy, all 3 boys. I can't believe we are considering this already, but we've been throwing around the idea of trying again. I was wondering if I can do some procedure to do gender selection and look for any little girl embryos to transfer back.

There are two procedures you can take advantage of to try to increase your chances of a girl. One is sperm selection through a patented sperm selection technique called Microsort. This technique is 90% effective creating girl embryos; 70% success when boys are desired. It can be used with either intrauterine insemination or IVF depending on how many viable sperm of the desired sex are available after the separation process, as well as fertility issues in the intended parents.

If IVF is needed, as in your case, the process can be increased to virtually 100% accuracy by adding preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) to select girl embryos. In addition to sorting the sperm to increase the number of girl embryos with Microsort, the embryos could be biopsied three days after retrieval and insemination. One cell is removed from the then six to eight cell embryos and sent to the genetics lab where from five to twelve chromosomes, including the sex chromosomes, will be examined. Chromosomally normal female embryos will be identified for transfer five days after retrieval.

There are some ethical issues related to this. First, Microsort is currently seeking FDA approval and their protocol requires that the procedure be performed for “family balancing.” That means a couple must have at least one child before seeking the procedure to balance with a child of the opposite sex. Second, if not enough sperm are available for insemination and IVF would be required for that reason only, the question of whether to do IVF, in others, just for sex selection raises an ethical dilemma since IVF is more risky, invasive and costly. If you want sex selection for whatever your situation, you will likely find differing answers among different doctors to all the ethical issues raised by sex selection.