Sorting the Sperm from the Chaff

A rare foray into the world of scientific news.




Having scanned through today's news items, I find myself taken with the urge to talk about a matter rooted in a science which I know next to nothing about. No change there you may think, but in truth vast area's of the scientific world have "Here be Dragons" scrawled on them as far as I am concerned. This is not how I would like things of course, but mention this as a sort of disclaimer to those of a more scientific bent (i.e. to plead ignorance when you pick my arguments apart by the second line).

Today a story has broken concerning what some regard as the dark side of Genetic Engineering (GE for short as I can't be arsed to write that out again and again...). It is a topic that is always at the forefront of any of the arguments against tinkering with DNA, and it may be that today's story will serve to bring over a lot of previously neutral people to the anti GE camp. Whilst there are many subtleties and nuances to the anti GE argument, I don't believe that I would be doing them any injustice by summing them up in two words; designer babies.

This immediately conjures up all sorts of images to me. They range from the hip media 30somethings looking through a catalogue to decide what physiological and emotion template they would like for their child ("And will that be blue eyes to go with the blonde hair madam? A very wise choice...." Of course, that may not be entirely a dreadful thing; early projections show that we could once and for eradicate the heartwrenching disaster of giving birth to a ginger haired baby once and for all...), to the sinister Nazi-overtoned drive to ensure that all children are born to a perceived ideal.

But let us steer clear of images and dally with the facts for a short while. Basically, a clinic in America is using something called a sperm-sorting machine to enable couples to choose whether they have a boy or a girl. This sperm-sorting machine (stop sniggering) detects whether the sperm has an X chromosome for a girl, or a Y for a boy. Presumably the sperm is then used to fertilise the egg via artificial insemination as the idea of using this machine during, *ahem*, natural conception brings to mind some of the more unsavoury pornography available in Amsterdam. The success rate is not 100% (it's actually 92% and 72% respectively for identifying the correct sperm type) but for the first time it is offering parents the chance to choose a physical characteristic of their unborn (and unconceived) child.

Up until today I hadn't thought that this was legally possible. After all, there is a raft of legislation to prevent this sort of thing and it was only a few months ago that A Dundee couple were refused permission to have IVF treatment that would guarantee having a girl. However, the sorting technique gets around this as the current rules of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) apply to embryos and sperm donation, they do not apply to sperm sorting. So could this be the first step on the slippery slope to designer babies?

I find that I am in two minds as to whether it is or not. The mere fact that it is happening at all inclines me to worry that it is. I am all in favour of GE when it is used for things like eradicating hereditary diseases or to detect severely handicapped children before they are born. But to have this incredibly powerful tool and to use it to select the sex or height of one's child is rather like using a Cray supercomputer as a calculator. And yet when something is invented, we cannot uninvent it. Whether we like it or not, some people do think that the right to define their child's characteristics is a good thing; no more than an extension of the pro-choice arguments that state it is a woman's right to decide. I am emphatically pro-choice, so why do I feel such unease?

Probably because whenever this argument is raised, it tends to be done so in a manner that leads us to believe that there will be neither control nor regulation of GE in any way, shape or form. This is what is referred to in the common parlance as "misleading bollocks". There are criteria in place to use the sorting process so it's not as if people will be allowed to use it willy-nilly (sorry; cheap joke...). They require any person(s) who wish to use the process to already have at least one child of the opposite sex that they are trying to conceive, so we are not on the face of it heading for a hi-tech China where female children are next to worthless and will even be left to die so that a male child can be born and raised in that household. So despite the non-involvement (and indeed, opposition) of the HFEA, the clinic involved would appear to be behaving responsibly and to an extent, that puts paid to the bulk of worries about the use and abuse of sperm sorting.

Nonetheless, despite this and despite my inherent distrust of the anti GE camp (far too many of them seem to be glazed eyed religious types who believe that anything to do with sex and reproduction is vaguely sinful; strange how they never get many converts to their cause but there never seems to be a shortage of the bastards. I think the reason that they're so opposed to GE is because they've actually been growing clones of themselves in vast warehouses and they don't like the idea of anybody else being able to do the same...) I find that I am still uneasy at the prospect of the road ahead. The way has surely been cleared for a more open and thorough debate of just what the implications of GE are for us and more specifically for our children. I would hate to see the issues behind that debate obscured by rabble-rousers on either side. GE may well be important, so let's treat it with the respect it deserves