British scientists have called for urgent regulation after US researchers unveiled a new technique that would allow parents to easily pick the sex of their child during IVF.
Currently selecting the sex of an embryo is banned in the UK for non-medical reasons, but the new process involves choosing the correct sperm which increases the odds of having a boy or a girl to around 80 per cent.
British experts warned that the technique could provide a legal loophole that would allow couples to choose the sex of their child.
For of course the choice should not be allowed to parents. People should only have the edited choices which scientists – in effect, the British upper middle classes – decide people should be allowed to have.
Because, as is obvious, that subset of the toffs who can read without moving their lips do know what’s best for the proles and they’re going to insist they get it, good and hard. That’s both science and ethics right there.
Prediction: ethnic and/or religious minorities which treat their womenfolk poorly will be first in to demand that they have boys.
It’s all very well selecting the sex of embryos but what about the embryo’s gender?
I remember a pre-fertilisation sex selection technique being demonstrated on Tomorrow’s World in the early 1980s, and it was mentioned it would be of interest “to Arabs”.
Scientists also reserve the right to choose the sex of your child at age 9.
Prediction: ethnic and/or religious minorities which treat their womenfolk poorly will be first in to demand that they have boys.
People always say this, but IVF is Wypipo stuff, much like indoor plumbing or going to the Moon.
On the basis of zero research and a gut reckoning, I’d say about 95% of IVF patients are middle class white people who squandered their most fertile years on sterile “safe” sex and are now finding out Mother Nature doesn’t give a fuck about your life plans.
Brown people are more likely to just put babies in their wives and girlfriends the normal way at the age of 21 or something.
which increases the odds of having a boy or a girl to around 80 per cent.
What do you get the other 20%?
Ducky: BIGOT! It will be whatever it wants to be. We know from the media that sexually divergent people are at least 80% of the population.
Ducky McD – Owen Jones?
I assume the demented harpies who are so quick to dress up as Handmaids at the first sign of any accusation of misbehaviour by a white male politician will have their collective fingers stuck in their collective ears about this despite the fact that, if implemented, it will eventually turn their fantasy into reality.
‘It’s all very well selecting the sex of embryos but what about the embryo’s gender?’
+100 Henry!!
Didn’t the Brits panic over Louise Brown too?
Can’t be allowed to select the sex of your fetus – but you can abort it at 8 months and cut it’s tits off.
I think there’s an ethical argument for keeping the sex ratio at birth around the 50% or so that it is naturally. We’ve seen the effects of distorted sex ratios in wars that kill off a lot of the young men. Lots of spinsters with no opportunity to have kids unless they are Mormons. It would probably be even worse the other way round – incel is very much a minority sport.
Sorry, the “Toffs” are right (Side note: The last thing they are is toffs).
We know which way this will go: an excess of boys. That is a recipe for a dystopia.
A new technique….
Wut… Wasn’t spinning a couple of hours in an eppendorf using a gradient gel not enough?
Standard Lab party trick where you assume the sperm provided is indeed of bovine or porcine origin, and not ….homebrew…
Grikath,
Judging by that and your comments on the plasma thread I reckon your university experience was at least a decade after my time in the 1970s when genetics pretty much consisted of drosophila plus trawling through the extensive multi-generational blood records of Geordie crime families.
‘an excess of boys’
Did work out that way in China, Recusant.
@Boganboy… Dead right. During the draconian “one child only” period in China there was a statistically-unlikely prevalence of “accidental” deaths of small girl-children – death of child being the major mitigating factor in being allowed to have child 2.