PGD and its role in Gender Selection
Preamble
In the world we live in today, it is practically impossible for the average person to not have heard of In Vitro Fertilization (IVF). This has led to the possibility of pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) which refers to the procedures that are carried out on embryos before the implantation of them in a woman’s womb. While it has been traditionally used for the screening of genetic diseases such as Down’s syndrome in embryos, it is now increasingly being used for selecting the sex of one’s child. This paper will focus on the role of PGD in gender selection and the possible implications of it.
In my opinion, the use of PGD to select the gender of one’s offspring can be seen as a revolutionary change as it has the potential to greatly change society if not regulated properly. As it becomes increasingly popular, it will definitely change the way our society works and result in both positive as well as negative implications. While it is still relatively expensive now, it is probably only a matter of time before it becomes cheap enough to be widely available and thus, be able to wrought great change.
Currently, there is still a prevalent preference for male offspring, especially in Asian countries like China and India that has traditionally valued males more for their ability to inherit and carry the family’s name and wealth. Prior to the introduction of this technology, in many countries with such cultural norms, female infanticide is a widely practiced method of gender selection. According to Michael Sandel, a Harvard University professor and member of the President’s Council on Bioethics, right now, China has a ratio of 117 boys for every 100 girls. In parts of northern India, the ratio is 140 boys for every 100 girls. Female infanticide is no doubt a large contributing factor to this gender imbalance. However, with the introduction of PGD for sex selection, people would no longer have to kill new born female babies. Instead, they could simply choose to have a male baby and thus, contribute to the proliferation of males and a very imbalanced male-female ratio with a much larger percentage of the former. This could then lead to two very different scenarios. First, females could become more highly valued as their scarcity increases. On the other extreme, women might become nothing more than commodities, used only for their reproductive ability and being seen as something unwanted and thus, less than human. This dystopic future has been envisioned by Margaret Atwood in her book, The Handmaid’s Tale and is also the subject of Manish Jha’s film, Matrubhooi – A Nation Without Women. It could also exacerbate sex trafficking and other crimes against women.
Cultural Preference for males
“The birth of a boy is welcomed with shouts of joy and firecrackers, but when a girl is born, the neighbors say nothing.”
This is a popular phrase amongst peasants in China and really highlights the cultural preference for male children there. When a boy is born, the family is met with celebration and congratulations and yet when the baby is female, the silence they hear is deafening. The lack of celebration following the birth of a girl is very telling of cultural norms in many parts of Asia, including India, Pakistan and South Korea.
In India, until recently, there were certain billboards encouraging expectant women to abort their female fetuses so as to avoid future dowry expenses with phrases like “Invest 500 (rupees) now and save 50,000 later”.
The preference for male children reflected in the above quotes originates from a number of reasons, one of the most powerful being economic reasons. In many Asian societies, when a son gets married, he is expected or obligated to live with his aging parents and support them financially. In contrast, married women are generally supposed to join their husband’s family and helps to support his parents while paying little or no heed to her own family’s needs. As a Hindu saying puts it, “Raising a daughter is like watering your neighbours’ garden.” Thus, many Asian parents, not wishing to be left to fend for themselves when their children get married, who develop an inclination for having male children.
Other financial reasons include the practice of the dowry system. Dowry refers to the payment in cash or other valuable items like jewelry from the bride’s family to the groom’s family upon marriage. While this system has either been phased out or has become a mere formality in many developed countries, it is still widely practiced in numerous less developed places in Asia such as the remote parts of India. In such areas, the provision of a dowry can place a huge financial burden on the bride’s family. This has then led to a situation where most families prefer having sons because what person in their right mind would rather give money away than receive it?
Another contributing factor is of course, the social norm of adoption of the husband’s surname by married women. In almost every society across the globe, women who marry take their husband’s surnames. In certain societies, mostly in Europe and North America, this is seen as something trivial and increasingly less important. After all, it is just a name. However, in Asia, the preservation of the family name is regarded as something very significant. This then leads directly to a preference for boys. If an Asian man wishes to see his surname live on, he has to ensure that he has a son who can carry it on as opposed to a daughter who will simply give it up upon marriage. This then creates a vicious cycle because the emphasis placed by this father on the preservation of the family name would no doubt rub off on his son who would in turn, want a son as well.
This has been exacerbated by government policies like the One Child Policy in China. To have more than one offspring in China, one has to be able to afford the fines that come with the second and subsequent babies. However, rural Chinese, the ones who generally value male children the most, are often poor farmers who are unable to pay these hefty fines. Therefore, they would want to be certain that their one and only child is a boy.
Due to the above stated reasons, many Asian families have a vested interest in having only sons and no daughters. The gender of a child however, is not something mere mortals can control and thus, has led to the rise of gender selection. While crude methods such as abortions or female infanticide were widely practiced in the past, with the advent of modern technology, alternatives are now available for prospective parents to determine the sex of their child, one of which is Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD).
In Vitro Fertilisation (IVF) and Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD)
IVF refers to the process in which egg cells are fertilised by sperm outside the human body. It has enabled PGD, which is also known as embryo screening, which refers to the procedures that are carried out on embryos before implantation. It can be used to screen for many things in the embryo like diseases, genetic mutations and the gender of the child that will develop from the embryo. While it was initially used for medical reasons such as the identification of children with Down’s Syndrome, it is now increasingly employed for sex selection. This is done by screening the embryos for one with an XY chromosome, something only males have and then implanting this embryo into the woman’s womb. According to a survey conducted in 2006 on all IVF clinics in USA, 42% of clinics that offer PGD have provided it for gender selection and it is safe to assume that this pattern is reflected in countries all over the world.
[More technical info on PGD? Eg. The entire process and different methods of doing it?]
Historical Perspective
As mentioned above, before the birth of IVF and PGD, gender selection was already widely practiced, albeit in less accurate and cruder ways. This section of the paper will explore the various methods of gender selection popularly used before the advent of modern technology which has enabled PGD.
Female Infanticide and Neonaticide
Infanticide refers to the killing of a human infant while Neonaticide is the killing of a new born child within 24 hours of its birth. The practice of killing female babies not only stems from a demeaning attitude to women, but also reinforces it. Female infanticide is both a cause and a consequence of the traditional preference for male children and the practice of this still goes on today in the more remote parts of countries like India and China. It is usually carried out by the mother of the infant or the midwife and can be performed in a number of different ways. These include drowning the child in a pail of water, feeding her dry, unhulled rice that will puncture her windpipes, forcing her to consume poison, smothering her with a towel, strangulation or simply allowing the baby girl to starve to death.
This situation has been exacerbated by China’s One Child Policy. In 1984-87, 5 years after the implementation of the policy in 1979, the sex ratio had become 118 boys for every 100 girls, up from 105 boys for every 100 girls. This very clearly proves the direct correlation between China’s policy and the killing of baby girls. Moreover, in 1999, according to Jonathan Manthorpe when reporting on a study by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, “the imbalance between the sexes is now so distorted that there are 111 million men in China — more than three times the population of Canada — who will not be able to find a wife.”
This has long since been a widely practiced method of gender selection, one that unfortunately, continues to be used even to this day despite it being highly inefficient. Cost wise, female infanticide is the most inept method to employ. One would first have to invest in carrying the baby to term, paying for things such as hospital or doctor bills and a higher quantity of better food to feed the expectant mother, not to mention the emotional toll the killing of their daughters may exert on the mothers. It also distorts the natural sex ratio leading to a great gender imbalance and reinforces discriminatory and sexist stereotypes towards women by devaluing females.
Sex Selective Abortion
There are currently 3 methods of determining a fetus’ sex when it has already been implanted into the mother’s womb, namely CVS, amniocentesis and ultrasound. Of the 3, the first 2 are not widely used due to the difficulty of the tests and the risk of damage to the fetus and mother. They could result in miscarriage or congenital abnormalities. In addition, they are far more expensive than ultrasound. Thus, ultrasound is far more commonly used. Ultrasound is a simple method that involves scanning the abdomen of a pregnant woman with sound waves that are beyond the frequency of the average human hearing. The sound waves create a visual representation of cells inside her body, including the fetus. This then enables the experts to try to find the fetus’ genitals and thus, determine its gender.
The using of ultrasound scanning comes hand in hand with the abortion of the fetus if it is not of the desired sex. Abortion is the termination of pregnancy at any stage that does not result in birth by the removing or expelling the fetus or embryo from the uterus of the pregnant woman. It can be conducted both surgically and medically. Medical abortions involve the consumption of drugs to eject the fetus from the womb. This however, can only be used within 49 days of gestation. This poses a problem because most women are usually unaware of their pregnancy within the first 49 days and thus, is not such a viable or useful method.
Surgical methods can be employed to terminate one’s pregnancy in the later stages. Within the first 12 weeks, suction-aspiration or vacuum abortion is most commonly employed. It can be conducted though Manual Vacuum Aspiration (MVA) removes the undesired contents by suction using a manual syringe, or Electric Vacuum Aspiration (EVA) abortion which employs an electric pump. Between the 15th and 26th weeks, Dilation and Evacuation (D&E), a method involving the opening of the cervix of the uterus and emptying it using surgical instruments and suction can be practiced.
Alternatively, one can turn to premature delivery through the injection of a substance known as prostaglandin. From the 16th week onwards, abortions can be conducted via Intact Dilation and Extraction (IDX), which requires surgical decompression of the fetus’s head before extraction. A hysterotomy abortion rather resembles a caesarean section and can be used during the later stages of pregnancy.
Once the prospective mother has determined that the fetus is not of the desired gender, she is able to select any of the aforementioned methods of abortion to end her pregnancy and try again until the fetus is of the desired sex. Due to the prevalence of a cultural preference for males, the chances of the mother choosing to terminate her pregnancy when her child is a girl is much higher. It is estimated that in Jaipur alone, prenatal sex determination tests result in an estimated 3,500 abortions of female fetuses yearly. In addition, according to UNICEF, in Bombay in 1984, 7,999 out of 8,000 fetuses aborted after prenatal sex determination tests were female.
Current Situation
Sadly, even today, gender selection is still practiced on a large scale. Despite rapid economic development in both India and China, the people of these countries – mostly the ones living in the more remote areas with beliefs steeped deeply in tradition – remain untouched and hence, uneducated about the possible severe repercussions of their actions. Therefore, they continue such age old practices of killing female babies in order to avoid the economic and social problems associated with having daughters. Unfortunately, until development reaches these people and the societal problems like dowry are addressed, the situation is unlikely to change. In this context, the arrival of PGD technology may prove to be both an evolutionary and revolutionary change in addressing the problem gender selection.
Continued Practice of Previous Methods of Gender Selection
Although there are definitely disadvantages to infanticide as shown above, it is still used today due to the convenience of it. This is one method that does not involve any complicated science or machinery and is something that has been proven to work for generations. People also do not need access to technology or go to the trouble of going to a clinic for an ultrasound or an abortion and thus, would not need to pay for these. Since many of the people who perform such a method of gender selection are the rural poor who live in remote areas and are unable to access or afford such technology, this is a significant factor contributing to female infanticide remaining prevalent today.
Sex selective abortion has for a long time, been a prevalent method of gender selection before the invention of PGD. While it is more physically painful and tiring for the woman involved and also more expensive as compared to infanticide, this method gained in popularity largely because the families could save on the costs of carrying the baby to term, including midwife fees and the added costs of purchasing nutritious food for the pregnant woman. It is also becoming increasingly popular, especially with the development of China and India which has led to the technology needed for ultrasound scanning and abortions becoming more widespread. The increased supply of such technology has led to a decrease in the price of it as well, therefore allowing more and more of the people to afford to this technology for the sake of gender selection.
PGD as an Evolutionary Change
However, these methods are all not as accurate and efficient as genetic testing. Female infanticide can be emotionally draining for the parents and unnecessary costs would also be incurred in the form of midwife fees, medical bills, costs of buying better food and the reduction of income from the wife’s inability to work while pregnant. Ultrasound scanning can sometimes result in the abortion of a child of the desired gender due to mistake when identifying the sex. Also, occasionally, the fetus’ genitals can be obscured from view, thereby preventing the experts from identifying its gender. In such cases, the prospective mother would have to do the ultrasound scan again at another time, making it more expensive and also, more inconvenient. Furthermore, abortion is painful, tiring and dangerous for the women involved. Once in a while, abortions can also render a woman infertile, thereby destroying any hope the family may have of producing a male offspring.
These have all fuelled the need for a more accurate and efficient method of gender selection and created a viable market for such a method. Therefore, it can be said that PGD is an evolutionary change in the sense that it is something that has been yearned for for years and was invented to address the problems with the existing methods and is thus, a market driven innovation and a summit opportunity.
While both female infanticide and sex selective abortions come with their own set of problems, they continue to exist today because of the limits involved with PGD. Being in its nascent stage, PGD remains a very expensive procedure. Each attempt at IVF typically costs around $9,000. The implementation of PGD then increases this cost by another $4,000 to $7,500 per IVF attempt. The success rate of each round of IVF currently only stands at 10% – 35% of the time, which means that a woman often needs to undergo the process several times to succeed. These costs are also not covered by medical insurance, thereby making PGD a very cost prohibitive procedure that only the privileged few can afford. Therefore, while PGD does have the potential to become a revolutionary innovation in the field of gender selection, it still has a long way to go.
Future Considerations
As mentioned above, since PGD is a relatively new technology, it is still very expensive and not widely available yet. However, with the rapid advancement of technology, I believe that the day when it becomes accessible and affordable for the average parent to consider as a viable option for selecting the gender of their child will be upon us soon. When that day comes, PGD will no doubt bring about great change to the way gender selection has been carried out up until then and is, in this respect, a revolutionary innovation.
PGD as a Revolutionary Change
The revolution that PGD will bring about to gender selection can lead to 2 very different scenarios, a positive one and a negative one. The two are highly contrasting but are both equally possible, although for the sake of mankind, we had all better hope that it is the former that prevails.
Positive Scenario Arising from PGD
With PGD, it is possible for female infanticide and sex selective abortion to be completely phased out. If everyone who preferred a male baby were able to choose to only have a male baby, then female infanticide and abortion would be greatly reduced because there would be no more unwanted female children born. Through this, PGD will revolutionize the concept of gender selection. Instead of gender selection being linked to cruel and barbaric practices like the brutal killing of infants or abortions, gender selection will now seem far less cruel and way more practical. It is likely to be marketed as “family planning” and this will remove the ugly face of gender selection. Without the social stigma of cruelty and primitiveness, gender selection may then be seen as merely a practical choice, something smart to consider and do when planning one’s family and future.
The instances of female children being abandoned would also decrease. In China, there are many parents who abandon their daughters to orphanages instead of killing them at birth as they cannot bring themselves to do so. However, this does not help them very much as such a future for the abandoned baby girls is also very bleak. According to the controversial BBC documentary “The Dying Rooms”, most of the children in China’s orphanages – 95% of which are girls – are often neglected to the point of death. The baby girls are rarely given the attention, care or nutrition that they need and many of them starve to death or die of illnesses in the orphanages. Things are hardly better for the ones who live. It is common for them to be left without any of the necessary stimulation children need. One scenario painted in the documentary depicted young girls all sitting with their arms and legs chained to a bench, staring off into the distance and rocking back and forth. They were left in this state for the entire day and were moved only when it was time for them to be chained to their beds to sleep. With PGD becoming widely available, the parents who are reluctant to raise their own daughter would no longer have to subject them to such misery in orphanages. Instead, they would be able to choose having a son, thereby reducing the cases of female child abandonment. With fewer children left to them, the orphanages may also be able to use the available funds to provide a better life for the children that are left to them. In this way, PGD could revolutionize China’s orphanage system for the better.
It is also possible for PGD to raise the social status of women. Eventually, people will come to realize that it is simply not viable for the population to have so many men and so few women. They will start to realize that in order for their population to survive, more female children would have to be born and brought up properly to allow them to continue reproduction. When that time comes, women’s status in society is likely to rise in line with the basic economic concept of supply and demand. With a lower supply of women, the men would have to compete with one another to get a wife. This will mean that they have to be highly capable and most importantly, kind and respectful to the women in order to entice them to marry them. Women will also become more desired with the lower supply, thus elevating their value in society’s eyes. This could possibly eradicate some of the unfair societal practices like dowry that put women at a disadvantage. Furthermore, by then, people would want a female child, leading to a great shift in societal perceptions of women being inferior to men. In this way, PGD could be at the forefront of a societal and gender revolution.
Alternatively, PGD could be a revolutionary innovation simply offering people a choice. When people are not given the choice of the gender of their child, they tend to be rash and only consider the obvious advantages of having a boy. For example, they may prefer a boy because that means receiving and not giving a dowry, and because a boy is more productive when working on the farms. However, when given a choice, people tend to think more carefully about what they want and weigh the pros and cons thoroughly before making a decision. For instance, when one is told that he cannot choose his between Coca Cola or Pepsi and everyone tells him that Coca Cola tastes better, he is likely to throw away the Pepsi if that is the drink he receives for a chance to get the Coca Cola which apparently tastes better. However, if he is allowed to choose which drink he wants to have, even if everyone tells him that Coca Cola tastes better, he will consider his choice more thoroughly. For example, he may consider that he prefers sweeter drinks with less gas and choose Pepsi instead. This logic can also be applied to gender selection using PGD. When people are given the choice for a male or female child, there will definitely be the far sighted ones who will realize that with the current situation, in the long run, it will be more advantageous to have a daughter and choose to have a baby girl. People are likely to be influenced by the presence of PGD into thinking their choice through very carefully and considering possible societal changes when choosing to have a boy or a girl. In this way, PGD could change the way people think when it comes to selecting the gender of their future child.
Negative Scenario Arising from PGD
Alternatively, PGD’s role in gender selection could take a drastic turn for the worse, leading to a great gender imbalance that can result in a dystopic society, much like the ones depicted in Margaret Atwood’s famour novel, The Handmaid’s Tale and the Indian film, Matrubhoomi: A Nation without Women. While it may seem a little farfetched, such consequences are not exactly impossible and are truly frightening.
Currently, the gender ratio in certain parts of China, India, Pakistan and many other Asian countries is already imbalanced, skewed far too much to the males’ favour to be the work of nature. In remote parts of China, it stands at 117 boys for every 100 girls while in northern India, the ratio is 140 boys for every 100 girls. As the killing of baby girls is still an ongoing trend, it is relatively safe to assume that within the next decade, this ratio is only going to become more and more imbalanced, ultimately leading to a scenario where there are much fewer females in the world than males. Consquently, the world will come to realize that the human population’s birth rate will become way below replacement level in the near future and given enough time, Man may even become an endangered species. In a bid to protect mankind from extinction, men may start taking drastic measures to ensure our survival, beginning with the collectivization of women as described in The Handmaid’s Tale. In that bleak future, women, like the ones in the novel, may become nothing more than reproductive vessels, collectively owned and used by all the men in society for the sole purpose of ensuring the perpetuation of the human race. Like in the story, women could be reduced to second class citizens with all their rights stripped from them, passed around from one man to the next in a bid to impregnate them. This could begin from the moment the young women become capable of giving birth and last until they become infertile and therefore, worthless, when they would simply be murdered or cast aside so as not to put unnecessary strain on resources that could be channeled to the people with a higher social status, namely the men. By then, this collectivization of women would no longer seem preposterous and barbaric and to majority, would even appear to be as economically sound as the concept of collectivization of farms. Every woman would no longer be able to think for herself or belong to herself. Instead, her existence would be for serving the greater good of mankind and instead of an individual identity, she would belong to all the men in society, used for the sake of preventing extinction. In that sense, PGD would alter the very concept of a woman: from an independent individual to an organism used only for bettering society at her own expense.
Other possibilities can also be derived from the aforementioned film. Similar to the movie, in a world dominated by men, a baby girl being born would be an extremely rare occurrence. However, her value would lie not in her identity, thoughts, feelings or intelligence but in both her reproductive capacity and her body. In the film, a wealthy man literally buys a young girl from her family and marries her to all 5 of his sons, forcing her to consummate the marriage not only with all of them, but with him as well. Life could imitate art whereby in the future, women would be seen as items. In a world where there is a severe shortage of women, men in society would eventually realize that it is economically viable, even profitable for all females to be traded on the market like objects, prompting all lucky men with daughters to do so. Each lady could then be auctioned off to the highest bidder to do as he wishes with her. It would even be possible for an entire village of men to pool resources to buy a single woman and sexually abuse her repeatedly in order to satisfy their basal urges as well as to produce the next generation except in that world, it would hardly be considered “abuse”. In Atwood’s book, all the women are named after the men that they serve. For example, the protagonist is known as “Offred” (of Fred). When she is transferred to her next master, her name changes accordingly. This is indeed very telling of the situation. In this world of the future, women would be stripped of their individual identities and forced to adopt names like these that reflect their status as nothing more than commodities owned by the men they serve. The excessive use of PGD to selectively bring about the birth of baby boys could possibly lead to the future depicted both in the film and in Atwood’s novel and in this way, revolutionize society and the role of women in it, reducing them to something less than human, merely an object whose sole purpose is reproduction and satisfying the men’s carnal instincts. Such uncontrolled and short sighted misuse of PGD would also change society by causing it to regress to a point before the suffrage movement – with the difference being that instead of women being seen and not heard, they will now be used and not heard – effectively eradicating all progress that society has made since a century ago.
This unnatural gender imbalance resulting from PGD would also lead to an increase in violent crimes against women and other unethical practices like bride buying and sex trafficking. With such a dangerously low population of women, many men would be left without wives, having to resort to paying for a bride. This disgusting phenomenon is already occurring now in parts of India and China, with brides being bought from other parts of the country or neighbouring nations like Vietnam. In India, the procedure is so common that there is even a term for it: “paros”. In order to fund this growing market, women are increasingly being kidnapped from their villages or homes by traders and illegally transported to these countries to be sold. In the future, this pattern is expected to become worse. After the men have become tired or bored with their bought brides, they are almost always killed or sold off to sex traffickers to defray the costs, thus fuelling the sex industry. This industry will also prosper in such an imbalanced world as there would be more men with great sexual appetites but fewer female sex slaves to satisfy them all. This would then naturally result in a need to increase supply to meet the ever growing demand, thereby resulting in even more kidnappings and the selling of daughters, sisters or cousins into the lucrative industry. Moreover, the men who are either unwilling or unable to pay to be sexually appeased could very possibly turn to rape or even gang rape, thus exacerbating the growth rate of violent crimes against women.
As we can see, the excessive use of PGD in gender selection could have very severe consequences, leading to a much less than ideal world. In order to prevent our society from such degradation, we have to control the use of PGD for this seemingly harmless desire to have male offspring.
Conclusion
Future of PGD
Besides gender selection, there are many other uses of PGD, including the screening of potential children for certain fatal or lifelong illnesses such as Down’s syndrome. Even though it is currently only used for these purposes, there are many more possibilities of it uses in the future. For example, at the moment, one of its uses is for the matching of Human Leukocyte Antigen (HLA) for the birth of saviour siblings. To achieve this end, embryos are screened for the right cord-blood stem cells that could be donated to an existing sibling diagnosed with leukemia and only the ones with the suitable cells are implanted and carried to term. In future, these cells could possibly be manufactured artificially and PGD could then be used to screen these manufactured stem cells for suitability, thereby allowing the proper ones to replace patients’ existing ones to cure them of their leukemia.
PGD could also possibly be used to increase fertility. It could be used to screen all embryos for the one with the highest probability of a successful birth. It is currently not in use as it relies on the assessment of a single cell, thus producing inaccurate results. However, with improvements made to PGD, it may eventually be possible for scientists to identify the embryo most likely to grow into a baby and implant this one into the prospective mother’s uterus, thus making her fertile when she wasn’t before. Alternatively, PGD could be applied for the screening of chromosomal abnormalities such as aneuploidy that is a common cause of infertility. The implanted embryos can be screened to ensure that they do not contain such irregularities, thereby helping to increase the chances of success in IVF treatments.
There are of course, as many other possibilities as humans can possibly think of. The future for PGD looks to be exciting and in a world where parents increasingly want their children to excel at everything, it is highly likely that more and more people will turn to PGD to ensure that their offspring’s genetic makeup not be disadvantageous to them in future, thereby propelling further development in this area. While it can be considered a cloud opportunity right now, as the market for PGD grows, it is my belief that it will slowly transform from a technology driven cloud innovation to a market driven summit innovation.
All in all, while PGD does have great potential to change society for the better, its prowess can also be harnessed to bring about a dystopic future which will only spell doom not just for women, but for Mankind as a whole. In our world today, people increasingly desire and value choice and this no doubt, extends to our offspring as well. If one can choose to have an athletic, smart and beautiful child, why would one not want to (barring religious beliefs)? Thus, the popularity of PGD can be expected to increase exponentially when it becomes widely available and affordable. However, I am of the view that PGD should only be used when necessary. Technology was brought about in a bid to improve our quality of life and thus, its integrity should not be sullied by using it for anything else. While we may think that having the choice regarding our children’s genetics and gender may improve both their lives and ours, as demonstrated above, this may not be the case. Therefore, PGD and other related technology should only be used when it truly will improve one’s life. For example, people should only use it to screen their prospective children for fatal illnesses or diseases that could cause a great amount of physical and emotional distress (eg. Down’s Syndrome). While there are definitely others that will disagree with me and say that humans should never play God, this is the view that I hold. As long as one’s decisions resulting from the use of PGD will harm no one, can only produce positive results and can change lives for the better, then they should simply go ahead and not be barred from using such technology if they so wished.
References
http://www.eastwestcenter.org/news-center/east-west-wire/battling-a-preference-for-boys
http://www.economist.com/node/15636231
http://www.who.int/genomics/gender/en/index4.html
http://www.dnapolicy.org/resources/PGDSurveyReportFertilityandSterilitySeptember2006withcoverpages.pdf
http://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/abortion/medical/selective_1.shtml
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2009/04/13/sex-selective-abortions-in-china-have-produced-32-million-extra-boys/
http://www.gendercide.org/case_infanticide.html
http://www.rhtp.org/fertility/pgd/default.asp
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