Author(s)

Tanmoy Mukherjee, Eric Flisser, Alan B. Copperman, Lawrence Grunfeld, Benjamin Sandler, Jason Barritt

Reproductive Medicine Associates of New York, New York, USA.

Parenting children of opposite genders is a powerful motive for parents to seek “sex-selection” services. Medical beneficence and patient autonomy support making these services available. Our goals in this study included data to permit proper patient education, assess outcome, and evaluation of potential biases in this technology. IVF/PGD cases from August 2004 to December 2009 were studied (n = 122). FISH was used to analyze nuclear DNA of biopsied embryos. The variables analyzed were patient age, Day 3 Fluorescent In Situ Hybridization (FISH), the number of fertilized embryos, the number of embryos biopsied, Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD) results, the number of embryos transferred, and the fate of remaining embryos. Female embryos were sought in 84 cycles, and male embryos desired in 38 cycles. Couples seeking female offspring had a reduced likelihood of a female-only transfer vs. those seeking males (p < 0.001). No transfer was performed in 32 cases for lack of normal embryos of desired gender. Clinical pregnancy rate per embryo transfer was 30.4%. PGD success rates for gender variety were lower than expected comparative to traditional IVF. In this report we present our clinical experience with IVF/PGD for gender selection. We attempt to analyze which patients seek this specialized treatment and to provide direct clinical and laboratory outcome data from our completed cycles.

IVF; PGD; Gender Preference; Sex Selection; Family Balancing

Mukherjee, T. , Flisser, E. , Copperman, A. , Grunfeld, L. , Sandler, B. and Barritt, J. (2012) Preimplantation genetic diagnosis for gender selection: You don’t always get what you want. Open Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, 2, 291-297. doi: 10.4236/ojog.2012.23062.