Archive for November, 2008
Apparently gender selection is popular in UK. Parents in UK line up to select gender of their future babies. The practice is illegal in UK and most of Europe, but legal in other countries like US and Russia. People pay between £7,000 and £17,000 to get this treatment. Crazy, if you ask me. Here’s the kink to BBC article
Singapore, and many other Asian contries, forbid gender selection using scientific methods, unless there are exceptional conditions, such as health risks based on gender. Link
I think it is a good thing. As I said before choosing baby gender would lead to disasters to humanity in the future. The gender balanace established by nature should not be messed with.
According to this press release, a company called Consumer Genetics has a kit that can determine baby gender after 7 weeks. It involves taking your own blood by poking a finger and sending it to the lab. For a cool $200 you can have the results back in 3 to 5 business days. And they offer money back guarantee if they are wrong.
My question is, why would you want to spend $200 if you can wait another 10 weeks and get an ultrasound for free (well, paid by your medical insurance)? Seriously, if poking your finger with sharp objects and squizing out blood sounds like fun to you, do it. Otherwise, wait for the ultrasound.
Our society is getting increasingly impatient. Fast food, fast diets, fast, fast, fast… Take a deep breath and wait for the ultrasound.
Guess what? You can now choose the gender of your baby before conception using a controversial practices employed by some US clinics using IVF. David and Victoria Beckham are doing it link.
There are many things wrong with this. And the most important is that it will lead to a dislocation of the natural balance between genders. 70% of families would like their first child to be a girl (see article above). What would all these girls do when they grow up and face with the shortage of boys to date, marry and have kids with?
This practice should be illegal not for ideological or religious reasons, but for practical. For the sake of maintaining the balance between men and women, we should not allow selection of baby gender.
Finally scientists decoded a full human genome of a woman with cancer. And they found out that there are 8 new genes that have not been seen before. Unfortunatly these genes do not match genes taking from tumors of other people which suggests that cancer is a complicated matter and can occur from many different mutations. Does not sound promising for creating effective cancer treatments. However, scientists said that with enough samples (genome sequences) they might be able to find the earliest signs of mutations and produce drugs that stop those mutations before they develop into abnormal cells.
This is not really related to gender prediction, but genes and genome sequencing was always interesting to me. Genes describes a living organizm and the ability to understand and even manipulate them opens up incredible opportunities for good and evil applications.
