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The Philadelphia Fertility Institute is testing a technique that employs the glass-column race track and Sephadex, a gelatinous powder used to filter impurities from insulin and other hormones. In this case, the X-bearing sperm are the first to reach the bottom of the test tube, perhaps because they are slightly heavier than Y sperm. Results in eleven pregnancies are encouraging: seven girls and one set of male-female twins. Nonetheless, a larger number of pregnancies will be needed before the method is proven.
Gametrics has licensed its patented procedure to 24 fertility clinics around the world, from Gretna, La., to Amman, Jordan. (In the U.S., such technology is not subject to federal regulation.) The clinics pay Ericsson's company up to $15,000 in licensing fees, and many overseas clinics also buy sperm-separation materials from Gametrics. The Gametrics procedure generally costs between $225 and $350, and three or four inseminations are often needed before pregnancy occurs. Customers come to these clinics for a variety of reasons. Many already have children of one gender and wish to ensure that their next child will be of the opposite sex. Families with a history of certain hereditary diseases have a medical reason for sex selection: some genetic disorders, including hemophilia and a devastating form of muscular dystrophy, primarily affect males. There are also cultural motives.
Most Arab and Oriental societies place a high value on male children as laborers, heirs and perpetuators of the family name.
As one Chinese proverb has it, "Eighteen goddess-like daughters are not equal to one son with a hump."
Some independent researchers suggest that the investment is a poor one. Reproductive Endocrinologist Sandra Carson helped test the Gametrics method at Chicago's Michael Reese Hospital. Although early results seemed encouraging, she says, "the final figures were insignificant." In their testing, Reese researchers found that the Gametrics sperm-separation method did not raise the concentration of Y sperm high enough to influence gender.
Ericsson responds to this criticism by charging, "Quality control went to hell at Michael Reese."Dr. Paul Dmowski, who left the program at Reese, also questions standards there. Dmowski, now at Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center in Chicago, continues to use Ericsson's method and claims a success rate of about 75%.
A number of leading fertility researchers warn that until large-scale scientific tests can provide evidence that sex-selection techniques work, consumers had best beware. "With all of today's sophistication about reproduction, the biology of sex selection remains a mystery," observes Elizabeth Whelan, director of the American Council on Science and Health, a consumer-education group, and author of Boy or Girl?, a 1977 book on sex selection. "Ericsson may be on to something," she allows, "but he hasn't proved it yet." —By Claudia Wallis.