Aggregated News
They are spending up to £30,000 a time on trips to New York, to guarantee a boy or a girl, according to a clinic.
Clients include senior British politicians, claims Dr Jeffrey Steinberg, the Cambridge-trained IVF specialist who heads the Fertility Institutes clinic in Manhattan.
Most of the couples already have two or more children, but only of one sex, and want either a boy or a girl to “balance” the family, said Dr Steinberg.
Advances in IVF technology mean it is now possible to determine the sex of an embryo in the laboratory, before it is placed in the womb, with 100 per cent accuracy.
However, sex selection for social or ‘family balancing’ reasons was made illegal in the UK in October 2009, after the government amended the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990.
Under the legislation, sex selection is only allowed for medical reasons, such as to avoid the risk of a child being born with a sex-linked genetic disorder like Duchenne muscular dystrophy, which only presents in boys. Similar laws exist in many other countries.
No such...
Clients include senior British politicians, claims Dr Jeffrey Steinberg, the Cambridge-trained IVF specialist who heads the Fertility Institutes clinic in Manhattan.
Most of the couples already have two or more children, but only of one sex, and want either a boy or a girl to “balance” the family, said Dr Steinberg.
Advances in IVF technology mean it is now possible to determine the sex of an embryo in the laboratory, before it is placed in the womb, with 100 per cent accuracy.
However, sex selection for social or ‘family balancing’ reasons was made illegal in the UK in October 2009, after the government amended the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990.
Under the legislation, sex selection is only allowed for medical reasons, such as to avoid the risk of a child being born with a sex-linked genetic disorder like Duchenne muscular dystrophy, which only presents in boys. Similar laws exist in many other countries.
No such...