Medicine: Boy or Girl?

Three Israeli scientists last week said they have found a surefire method of determining a baby's sex before birth.

The method is based on the fact, demonstrated by Canadian scientists (TIME, Feb. 23, 1953), that a substance called sex chromatin can be detected in female but not in male cells. Dr. David Serr and Geneticists Leo Sachs and Mathilde Danon of Jerusalem's Rothschild-Hadassah University Hospital reasoned that cells in the amniotic fluid, the liquid inside the sac that encloses the fetus, could be analyzed to reveal the child's sex. To get small samples of...

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