Some couples want their child to be a boy, while others prefer a girl child. But is there a way to choose the sex of your baby in advance? Today, there are solutions to the issue of gender determination that have made this possible to some extent, but gender can never be determined with certainty.
Currently, the only reliable and scientific method for determining the sex of the fetus in the world is a technique called PGD, which actually stands for “pre-implantation sex determination”.
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Iran, along with the advanced societies of the world, has achieved this technique. PGD has been performed in Iran for more than 4 years now. The first sex-determined baby by PGD in Iran was a baby boy who was born in 2006 in perfect health.
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How to determine sex before implantation
In this method, drugs are used to stimulate a woman to ovulate so that she can produce several eggs. The eggs are then combined with the mate’s sperm in the laboratory.
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This produces several embryos that, by examining their chromosomes and determining their sex by a geneticist, transfer only the embryo whose sex is desired by the couple to the mother’s uterus.
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This type of in vitro fertilization is a type of IVF (in vitro fertilization) that this time is used not to treat infertility, but to determine the sex of the fetus.
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In this method, in the eight-cell stage of the fetus, it is necessary to separate a cell from the fetus and examine it. Although the isolation of one cell does not harm it, in the event of a problem with that cell, no other cell can be separated from it.
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Problems with pre-implantation sex determination
Despite all the advances that have been made in fetal sex selection, the potential sensitivities and problems of failure of the PGD technique cannot be ignored.
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Performing sex identification and chromosome examination of the fetus is a task that has its own subtleties and sensitivities and no error can be compensated.
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Another problem that sometimes arises in this process is that in some cases, despite the stimulation of ovulation, the woman may produce only one egg, in which case, after the formation of the fetus, there is no way to choose sex.
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Furthermore, the PGD technique cannot be used for infertile couples because it reduces the chances of fertility.
