Gender selection, also known as sex selection, is a medical technique used by intended parents to choose the sex of their offspring: a boy or a girl. There are several reasons intended parents may wish to select the gender of their child /children: to balance the gender in the family, to prevent genetic disease or disorders linked to one particular sex and to meet some cultural and social norms.
At New Life Global Network gender selection service is provided to intended parents who have legitimate concern about specific genetic disorders or are dealing with family balancing. Local regulations and norms enable us to provide the gender selection service at three branches only: New Life Mexico, New Life Ukraine and New Life Asia.
There are several methods used for gender selection and Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD) is one them. PGD is a procedure used prior to implantation (transfer to uterus) of the embryo/embryos created through in vitro fertilization (IVF).
The gender of the embryo is usually determined by sex chromosomes, for example the sex chromosomes XX determine the female sex, while XY define the male sex. At New Life clinics the sex chromosomes of created embryos are determined by applying Polymerase Chain Reaction or PCR technology, for which embryos are usually cultured for 3 days, until 6-8 cell stage and then 2 embryo cells (blastomeres) are removed from the embryo for diagnostics. The PCR provided information about the sex chromosomes of the selected embryo, after which the embryos are cultured until blastocyst stage, followed by transferring the best morphology embryos of the desired sex to the uterine cavity
Please note that despite the fact that the applied technologies are very precise, there is no 100 % accuracy assured, therefore the procedure has known risks of false negative or false positive results. This may be due to the fact that many embryos show chromosomal inconsistencies from cell to cell, meaning that the cell taken from biopsy may not represent the other cell of the embryo.
Moreover, PGD procedure affects the overall success rate of IVF as well. Based on our experience, mostly 50% of the embryos can usually develop until blastocyst stage on day 5-7. Furthermore, not all of these embryos will be of the best quality which may result lower pregnancy rate compare to standard IVF procedure completed without PGD procedure.
PGD for gender selection is not recommended in case of limited number of embryos since it may diminish the quantity of them. Although, if there is strong indication for the gender selection procedure, program details are evaluated carefully by skilled and experienced doctors to agree the best steps forward with the intended parent/parents. If parents are planning to have PGD for gender selection and are in need of an egg donor, it is highly recommended to choose the donor having the donation history of producing high number of quality eggs. We strongly encourage reviewing the egg donor profile carefully before finalizing any of them for the program with PGD procedure.
We usually encourage our intended parents to make the final decision about PGD once egg retrieval results are known, the number of developing embryos is satisfactory and the doctor gives green light for it. Although, there are cases when the gender selection is inevitable and in this case intended parents are informed about pros and cons of the procedure in advance, so that they can make informed decision.
In addition to gender selection, PGD can be used for medical screening to prevent numerous disease determined by specific chromosomes. There are several options to choose from:
Since New Life branches providing PGD service (New Life Mexico, New Life Ukraine, New Life Asia) have specific regulations and prices vary according to destinations, we encourage our intended parents to discuss their particular request with follow up manager at an early stage.