Gender Selection Kits NOW AVAILABLE For Parents -To -Be

[matcom]

<snip>

CLEVELAND -- New at-home gender-selection kits claim a 96 percent success rate in determining the sex of a baby without a visit to the doctor.

One item is called GenSelect, and is available online for about $200.

Jill Sweazy is a representative for GenSelect, and she said the kit comes with tools to create a gender bias, including ovulation predictors, douches and specialized vitamins.
"The three factors that GenSelect addresses are intercourse timing, vaginal vault pH and chemistry," Sweazy said.

Dr. Joseph Sanfilippo, of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, said there's little scientific evidence that these methods improve the odds of gender choice.

http://www.wftv.com/health/3387839/detail.html

[jpgray]

1. Wow, even his NAME rhymes with sleazy! (nt)

[underpants]

2. Does it come with one of these?

[LynneSin]

3. When they come up with Political Ideology selector, then I'll be intereste

:shrug:

[mike_c]

4. the only way any of these methods could work...

...is by preventing fertilization or reducing the viability of embryos of the "non-desired" gender.

Gender is determined by spermatazoa-- female humans only produce X-chromosome gametes. Males produce both X and Y gametes, so the male contribution in essence determines the offspring gender. Developmental biology is NOT my field, but it's nonetheless hard to imagine any way to screen spermatazoa within the vagina, uterus, or oviducts unless the screening method exploits sperm fitness weaknesses associated with having either an X or a Y sex chromosome. IIRC, human births are SLIGHTLY male biased, so there might be mechanisms for doing this, but with two caveats:

1) They'd have to operate at conception-- a slight male birth bias might reflect events during gestation (9 mos) rather than fertilization and embryo establishment (events spanning a few days).

2) The NEARLY 1:1 human sex ratio at birth argues against such mechanisms exerting strong gender selection, if any.

Any developmental biologists on DU?