Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD)

[August1991]

For people who conceive through "test tubes", it is possible to test the foetus for a variety of characteristics. This is known as Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis or PGD.

In medicine and (clinical) genetics preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) is a considered as a very early form of prenatal diagnosis. Its main advantage is that it avoids selective pregnancy termination as the method ensures a pregnancy free of the disease under consideration. PGD thus is an adjunct to assisted reproductive technology, and requires in vitro fertilization (IVF) to obtain oocytes or embryos for evaluation.

Wikipedia

Needless to say, this procedure poses ethical questions.

For example, one of the most common questions parents want to know is the sex of their child. In many cases, parents want to have a boy and they will prevent insertion of the foetus into the womb if they learn the child is a girl. This mirrors the situation in China where boys are more common than girls.

PGD is a procedure that is relatively easy to perform in the case of test tube babies but it will likely soon be extended to natural conception also. Amniocentesis is invasive and still poses problems. In the future, a similar non-invasive test would permit easy genetic testing of the foetus shortly after natural conception.

With genetic knowledge of the child-to-be, the question then becomes whether to abort or not. In the case of PGD, there's the question of whether to continue with insertion into the womb.

Politically correct feminists have seized on the apparent choice of boys and want to stop PGD for this reason. Different clinics in Canada have different policies on divulging the sex of a foetus to parents, particularly if there is a suspicion that the parents might abort if the sex is not the desired one.

The sex of the child is only one factor though. The New York Times reports on parents who seek to have children with the same "defects" as the parents have. For example, dwarfs may want to have children who are also dwarfs:

Wanting to have children who follow in one’s footsteps is an understandable desire. But a coming article in the journal Fertility and Sterility offers a fascinating glimpse into how far some parents may go to ensure that their children stay in their world — by intentionally choosing malfunctioning genes that produce disabilities like deafness or dwarfism.

...

Yet Susannah A. Baruch and colleagues at the Genetics and Public Policy Center at Johns Hopkins University recently surveyed 190 American P.G.D. clinics, and found that 3 percent reported having intentionally used P.G.D. “to select an embryo for the presence of a disability.”

In other words, some parents had the painful and expensive fertility procedure for the express purpose of having children with a defective gene. It turns out that some mothers and fathers don’t view certain genetic conditions as disabilities but as a way to enter into a rich, shared culture.

Another (conjectural) example. What happens if a gay gene is found and then a gay couple decides to have a child by in vitro but selecting a foetus with the gay gene. It seems reasonable that the gay parents might want to have a child similar to themselves.

----

I find this question interesting because it's like cosmetic surgery or university education. Whatever law is passed, people will find a way around it. When it comes to offspring, parents rarely play fair. We can pass laws trying to prevent PGD but I think they'll be ineffective and I wonder whether they even make sense.

Choosing our children is at the very basis of life itself. Our choice of mate (or at least what we perceive as attractiveness in a mate) is directly related to the offspring we could create. So, we already influence the kind of children we have.

If a white woman chooses to have children with a white man, is that an act of racism? Is it any different then if the parents of a foetus prefer to abort because of certain known characteristics? In the case of debilitating diseases predicted genetically, people usually accept such choices.

I'm also intrigued by the preference for boys. Why does it exist? Are there any consequences?

One interesting aspect is that there is no better way to raise the value of women than to have fewer of them. If parents manage to choose to have sons, they'll be surprised to learn that in about 20 or 30 years, it will be a woman's world since for women, it will be a seller's market. I'm also not fearful that the world could eventually be taken over by men. That, strictly speaking, is an impossibility.

Something else. I wonder whether the "good" genes have tricked us into doing all this so that they have a better chance of existing into the future. Is there really any difference between natural selection and human selection?

[kimmy]

Politically correct feminists have seized on the apparent choice of boys and want to stop PGD for this reason. Different clinics in Canada have different policies on divulging the sex of a foetus to parents, particularly if there is a suspicion that the parents might abort if the sex is not the desired one.

I recall reading an article on the subject of abortion in India, which mentioned that in approximately 10000 cases where the parents had advance knowledge of the sex of the fetus before choosing to abort, about 9996 of the aborted fetuses were female. Why? The dowry. People literally can't afford to have female children because it costs them a fortune.

A little quick googling turned up this:

Female foeticide in India:

Diagnostic teams with ultrasound scanners which detect the sex of a child advertise with catchlines such as spend 600 rupees now and save 50,000 rupees later.

Am I being too "politically correct" if I consider that to be vile and despicable?

This article from the "Times of India", whatever that is, reports:

Female foeticide alone satisfies four of the five conditions set out in the Genocide Convention. The crime already matches, even surpasses, the worst episodes of genocide as 50 lakh female foetuses a year are aborted after sex determination tests.

Lancetm, a British journal, estimated that over 10 million girls were lost in India over the last 20 years. The national average sex ratio has gone down from 972 in 1901 to just 933 in 2001. Punjab’s sex ratio of 793 in the age group of zero to six years is the lowest among all 28 Indian states and six union territories. In Haryana, there are about 861 females for over 1,000 men as opposed to the national average of 927 women.

(I had to search to find out what a "lakh" is. A "lakh" is 100,000. "50 lakh female foetuses a year are aborted after sex determination tests" means 5 million.)

And of course they don't stop at childbirth, either, as a little research on the subject of female infanticide in India would reveal.

That's barbaric. These people are idiots. But ultimately, the joke is going to be on them. As this sort of technology becomes more and more widely available, an entire generation of young men in India will be left scratching their heads and asking "so, like, where's the babes at?"

-k

[theloniusfleabag]

Dear kimmy,

Am I being too "politically correct" if I consider that to be vile and despicable?

I think the opposite; that your consideration is honest, and 'political correctness' would dictate that this abberation be accepted.

We are not far from Huxley's "Brave New World", it seems. What if a large company decided to pay parents to select 'suitable Delta Upsilons' to work for them in the future?

"We need a batallion of mildly-retarded teenagers that would find happiness in life by shaking french fries at 2:00 am when the bars let out"....

about 9996 of the aborted fetuses were female. Why? The dowry. People literally can't afford to have female children because it costs them a fortune

I suspect that this may be the biggest factor, but another one is that males (in certain cultures, especially China, where they olny want you to have 1 child) are more likely to grow up to be a 'breadwinner', and can subsidized the parents when they get older. They also can 'carry a bigger load' should the parents be subsistence farmers, etc.

[jbg]

This kind of needless dilemna is another argument against changing the way babies are created from the way intended by Mother Nature. Another is that the method does seem to create birth defects. Just ask my nephew, born without joints (miraculously he can walk, but has "arthrogryposis" for those curious).

[Remiel]

I think you guys are reaching when you try to say that accepting this sort of behaviour would be the " politically correct " thing to do.

I certainly think this kind of practice is vile and despicable.

Personally, I'd rather have daughters. I'm not exactly a wonderful role model for my gender, but I think I could teach my kids the important things in life that are more gender neutral. I'd rather let a future wife worry about teaching them to be girls so I can focus on teaching them to be people. But if fate gives me sons, then I'll play the hand I've been dealt.

[fellowtraveller]

The focus on sex determination using PGD is missing the actual point of this technology.

Simple ultrasounds, a dead common and inexpensive procedure, will determine the sex of a fetus in plenty of time for an abortion if a parent chooses that route. Where is the outcry to ban ultrasounds?

I know a family that has a history of Huntingtons disease, a devastating genetic condition that does not automatically appear in every fetus. I know a second family that where all three adult children have been voluntarily sterilized because they don't want to risk passing it on. They don't even know if they are carriers and thus personally going to develop the disease, they have chosen not to live knowing an early death is certain.

PGD makes it possible for people with Huntingtons to both have healthy non carrying children, and to stop the spread of the disease in a single generation. It is conceivable that this horrible disease could be entirely eliminated in fairly short order using PGD. It applies to other genetic diseases too.

[Drea]

This kind of needless dilemna is another argument against changing the way babies are created from the way intended by Mother Nature. Another is that the method does seem to create birth defects. Just ask my nephew, born without joints (miraculously he can walk, but has "arthrogryposis" for those curious).

When I was preggo the ultrasound tech would not tell me the sex of the child but I didn't care as it made no difference to me whether I ended up with a girl or boy. I just wanted a healthy baby.

Sadly, our patriarchal world does not see it the way I do.

I wish I would be still alive when there are no more girls left.

I guess then homosexuality will be more acceptable?

[August1991]

Am I being too "politically correct" if I consider that to be vile and despicable?

...

And of course they don't stop at childbirth, either, as a little research on the subject of female infanticide in India would reveal.

That's barbaric. These people are idiots. But ultimately, the joke is going to be on them. As this sort of technology becomes more and more widely available, an entire generation of young men in India will be left scratching their heads and asking "so, like, where's the babes at?"

Kimmy, is it vile and despicable if you choose a husband (future father of your children) who is intelligent and beautiful? Is it wrong if you choose not to have children with a man who is short and has crooked teeth?

By and large, people want to have healthy, intelligent, beautiful children. How are these choices any different from wanting to have a son? Women (more than men) are discriminatory in their choice of spouse precisely because of the consequences of their choice on the children they may bear. [i know this is not the case of all men and women. There are many couples with no desire for children and my great-aunt snared a guy when she was well past 60 - much to his joy.]

It happens that when a man looks at a woman, he can guess some of the features (hair/eye/skin colour, height) of potential offspring but he can't guess what sex the children will be. But if it were possible to make an educated guess, how would this be more "vile and despicable" from the choices women and men make now when deciding on a suitable partner?

For example, if it became known that a black mother and a white father tended to have boys but a black father and a white mother tended to have girls, what would happen? Would you view it as despicable that white men sought black women to increase the chances of having a son? These choices occur now but they don't concern the sex of the child. Technology has simply made the choice of sex possible.

So, why do parents want to have boys and what is the consequence of this preference? (I'll add a third question: why do western liberals recoil at this form of discrimination when they practice a far more sophisticated form of discrimination in choosing a spouse and how to educate their children?)

Kimmy, you argue that Indians don't want girls because of a dowry system. Dowries don't exist in China yet Chinese also want sons. And in the Middle East, it is the opposite of Indian dowries: the boy must pay alot to have a wife and yet Arabs also prefer to have sons.

With that, let me bring in a comment after my own heart:

When I was preggo the ultrasound tech would not tell me the sex of the child but I didn't care as it made no difference to me whether I ended up with a girl or boy. I just wanted a healthy baby.

I think most Canadians (French or English) would agree with that.

There is a difference between women and men but life on this planet would not still exist in such myriad forms if one sex was somehow "better" than the other. My only conclusion is that cultures which prefer boys to girls are mistaken perhaps because of recent experience. (They adopted VHS early, saw what happened to Betamax and are still convinced that VHS is the way to go.)

What is the consequence of parents preferring sons? None as far as I can see except that daughters will be greatly in demand in the immediate future.

"God" wisely made the sex of a child a random variable with an expected value of close to 50/50. We mere humans can try to skew this but within a generation, it will return to the 50/50 balance, the balance willed by "God".

PGD makes it possible for people with Huntingtons to both have healthy non carrying children, and to stop the spread of the disease in a single generation. It is conceivable that this horrible disease could be entirely eliminated in fairly short order using PGD. It applies to other genetic diseases too.

Fellowtraveller, I'm happy you posted this example because I thought of going into detail about this and instead, I only alluded to it.

Huntington's Disease is terrible, both a sword of Damocles and a debilitating way to die, that is identifiable through genetic testing. Modern science has made it possible to lift the weight of this disease from future generations. Genetic testing is the 20th century equivalent of 18th century inoculation.

People no longer die or suffer because of smallpox. In centuries past, beautiful people such as Tom Cruise and Nathalie Kidman sometimes died of smallpox but more often survived with utterly changed lives. Catherine the Great was one of the first famous people to be inoculated perhaps because her first husband, after their marriage, fell victim to smallpox (look at the pictures).

IMV, PGD and its extension to natural conception is inevitable.

We are not far from Huxley's "Brave New World", it seems. What if a large company decided to pay parents to select 'suitable Delta Upsilons' to work for them in the future?

"We need a batallion of mildly-retarded teenagers that would find happiness in life by shaking french fries at 2:00 am when the bars let out"....

That exists already now and it's called a salary. Large companies (and why is it always "large" companies when such examples are given) now pay to have people to flip hamburgers or shake french fries.

IOW, if flipping burgers becomes a well-paid occupation (so well-paid that "large" comapnies will pay parents to have "delta" children), then wouldn't be easier just to pay the "delta" workers.

Aldous Huxley's story is interesting but it was written at a time (1930s) when intelligent people poorly understood markets and had a tendency to think of top-down societies. "Brave New World" is a bad novel and an even worse critique of the human condition. A good teacher makes pupils also read Orwell's 1984. A better teacher explains how ordinary people are far smarter than Orwell or Huxley.

[Charles Anthony]

It happens that when a man looks at a woman, he can guess some of the features (hair/eye/skin colour, height) of potential offspring but he can't guess what sex the children will be. But if it were possible to make an educated guess, how would this be more "vile and despicable" from the choices women and men make now when deciding on a suitable partner?

Morally, it would not be any different if the action involved was confined to only a guess.

For example, if it became known that a black mother and a white father tended to have boys but a black father and a white mother tended to have girls, what would happen? Would you view it as despicable that white men sought black women to have a son?

No, those decisions would not be despicable because they occur before making a child.

These choices occur now but they don't concern the sex of the child. Technology has simply made the choice of sex possible.

No, they are not the same choices. One choice occurs before a child is created. The technology choice occurs after a child is created.

Why is this part of the discussion pussy-footing around the issue of abortion??

This is a more difficult question:

So, why do parents want to have boys and what is the consequence of this preference?

My answer: I do not know.

Here is the rub: I prefer a boy-child too. Why? It all comes down to a manifestation of pride.

(1) I want my name to continue.

Daughters can keep their family-name too so this is not a good enough reason.

(2) I want myself to continue i.e., I want a sense of immortality.

Since I am male, a male-child is closer to being my double than a female-child would be -- everything else being equal.

This reason does not explain why women might also prefer male-children.

(3) I want to be macho. This is a sense of Alpha-male insecurity.

Since children have an equal chance of being born male or female, I am less macho if I can not produce a male-child.

For women who prefer male-children, I am not sure. Maybe they want to produce a leader...???

Admittedly, I am not willing to justify the above (no more than my choice of favorite music) but maybe explain or describe.

[guyser]

Just wait until the insurance companies get ahold of this.

You complain now....

[betsy]

If parents can make choices and decisions that has a great impact on the child....and of course choices will be based on what the parents want....can they be made liable for anything by their son/daughter in the future?

[August1991]

If parents can make choices and decisions that has a great impact on the child....and of course choices will be based on what the parents want....can they be made liable for anything by their son/daughter in the future?

Betsy, why do you say "if"? Your free-will extended to a choice of father for your children. (Betsy, you chose your husband and he chose you, no?) Parents choose children. When people choose to marry, they choose children of the marriage. Parents of children have made this choice for, well, an eternity.

Such is life.

----

Liable? ROTFL. How can we enforce that contract? Life and the sex of a child are random. We're are all liable.

[cybercoma]

I don't see the problem. Are the bleeding hearts aware of how many cell clusters (oops, I mean fetuses) are flushed down the toilet during the IVF process?

Now they get to pick certain genes they do/don't want their children to have, so they may live a healthier life. What fantastic progress.

Some may want to say, "every life is precious," but absolutism is passe. We all know Hitler, Stalin and Mao were precious little cell clusters (there I go again, I meant fetuses) at one point in time. Their precious lives were allowed to live the same way Beethoven, Einstein and Don Cherry were.

I don't know what I'm getting at, sorry to interrupt the adults talking.

[Remiel]

Is there anyone in this conversation who hasn't seen the movie Gattaca?

[theloniusfleabag]

Is there anyone in this conversation who hasn't seen the movie Gattaca?

I have not heard of it. I have confined my TV watching to shows about naughty midgets.

Just wait until the insurance companies get ahold of this.

You complain now....

That spectre has raised it's ugly head before. Insurance companies being able to price/deny life or health insurance based on your genetic makeup. "Grandma had the diabetes, eh? That'll be an extra $10,000/yr for insurance, friend."

[Remiel]

Gattaca was from a number of years ago starring Ethan Hawke, Uma Thurman and... uh... What's His Name? about a futuristic society where technology does allow parents to have almost total control over their children. Ethan Hawke plays a guy who was born naturally, like us, whos dream is to go into space, and Gattaca is the name of the agency that deals with space launches and such. Of course, he can't go to Gattaca because he is a deGENEerate with a heart defect, which is able to hide in an elaborate sham as he takes on the identity of What's His Name?'s, err, Jude Laws character so that he can get a job there. I can't really say more without spoiling the movie. It's a worthwhile movie I think, for the very reason it showcased a possible future of these technologies and dilemnas.

[August1991]

Is there anyone in this conversation who hasn't seen the movie Gattaca?

I have not heard of it. I have confined my TV watching to shows about naughty midgets.

Dear Thelonious, you deserve a special thread in the MLW forum.

[theloniusfleabag]

Dear August1991,

I have not heard of it. I have confined my TV watching to shows about naughty midgets.

Dear Thelonious, you deserve a special thread in the MLW forum.

I thank you, but I don't know if I should be shattered or flattered. Do you mean a 'special' place away from the sane folk?

[betsy]

If parents can make choices and decisions that has a great impact on the child....and of course choices will be based on what the parents want....can they be made liable for anything by their son/daughter in the future?

Betsy, why do you say "if"? Your free-will extended to a choice of father for your children. (Betsy, you chose your husband and he chose you, no?) Parents choose children. When people choose to marry, they choose children of the marriage. Parents of children have made this choice for, well, an eternity.

Such is life.

----

Liable? ROTFL. How can we enforce that contract? Life and the sex of a child are random. We're are all liable.

But people usually have no control over their emotions or urges, thus some would still marry or have sex with a dwarf knowing that this provides a possibility (because there's no guarantee the child will take up the gene of the father's dwarfism), that might produce a dwarf. It still follows naturalism. It's still a hit or miss.

But deliberately choosing a gene to ENSURE that your child is born a dwarf....it is somehow different.

[kimmy]

Kimmy, is it vile and despicable if you choose a husband (future father of your children) who is intelligent and beautiful? Is it wrong if you choose not to have children with a man who is short and has crooked teeth?

By and large, people want to have healthy, intelligent, beautiful children. How are these choices any different from wanting to have a son?

It happens that when a man looks at a woman, he can guess some of the features (hair/eye/skin colour, height) of potential offspring but he can't guess what sex the children will be. But if it were possible to make an educated guess, how would this be more "vile and despicable" from the choices women and men make now when deciding on a suitable partner?

One difference is that characteristics such as physical prowess, attractiveness, intelligence, and resemblance to daddy are quite subjective. (every parent is convinced that little Jimmy is a budding star athlete, a budding Dr Banting, a young Brad Pitt, and a "real chip off the old block".) Gender, on the other hand, is not subjective.

Another difference is that while society will carry on much as it always has whether people choose their partners with the idea of having taller or smarter offspring. Messing with the balance of males to females, on the other hand, has broader implications for a society. Not just in a macro sense of affecting future population growth rates and so-on, but also in a micro sense, as in imagine sending your little chip off the ol' block to school, and there's only 2 girls in his class of 25.

Basically, people are sheep, they're very susceptible to trends, and I dread the idea of choosing your baby's gender becoming as easy as choosing your next hairstyle. If you've seen a class of school-kids where there's 6 boys named Ryan and 5 girls named Ashleigh, you get the idea. Suppose parents were as susceptible to trends in choosing their kids' gender as in choosing their kids' names, and suppose the same trends hold up for several consecutive years. What happens then? Little August Jr might not be able to find a single girl within 5 years of his own age. School dances are going to start looking kind of ... gay.

Women (more than men) are discriminatory in their choice of spouse precisely because of the consequences of their choice on the children they may bear.

I think the most popular stereotypes suggest that men are more motivated by physical factors while women are motivated by social status when selecting a mate. The stereotype is that a woman had better be physically attractive, while any toad can find a wife... provided he's a rich toad. It's sometimes suggested that physical attraction in humans is not that different from physical attraction in the animal kingdom. We seek out ...birds with the brightest plumage... the ram with the biggest horns... the elk with a big rack... that sort of thing.

Nature provides all sorts of subtle hints as to what sort of traits your prospective mate's offspring might have, whether we're talking about people or parrots... but none at all when it comes to gender.

So, why do parents want to have boys and what is the consequence of this preference? (I'll add a third question: why do western liberals recoil at this form of discrimination when they practice a far more sophisticated form of discrimination in choosing a spouse and how to educate their children?)

Kimmy, you argue that Indians don't want girls because of a dowry system. Dowries don't exist in China yet Chinese also want sons. And in the Middle East, it is the opposite of Indian dowries: the boy must pay alot to have a wife and yet Arabs also prefer to have sons.

Chuck and T-bag have already addressed this to some extent (that having a son will carry on the family name, and that having a son ensures there'll be a breadwinner who'll look after us when we're old) but I will also add that I think there's a perception that raising a daughter is more difficult and more worrying. I'm sure the #1 parental worry is that their child is going to be hurt, and I suspect the #2 parental worry is that their child is going to get pregnant. Boys are probably seen as less likely to fall victim to violence or sexual molestation, and boys are highly resistant to pregnancy.

"God" wisely made the sex of a child a random variable with an expected value of close to 50/50. We mere humans can try to skew this but within a generation, it will return to the 50/50 balance, the balance willed by "God".

The Times of India article mentioned 5 million aborted female fetuses per year due to gender testing. To put some perspective on that, India has a population of about 1.08 billion and a live birth rate of 22 per 1000. That equates to 49 million live births per year. (also, 5 million female fetuses aborted after gender tests, and a 1:1 ratio of male fetuses to female fetuses, suggests that at least 10 million, 20% (!) of pregnant Indian couples elected to have this done.) Assuming a 1:1 male:female ratio at conception, and factoring in the missing 5 million female fetuses, that's 27 million male babies and 22 million female babies. The roughly 1:1 ratio changes to about 1:0.8 ...and the article confirms that in some regions of India, the ratio of males to females is indeed less than 800 females per 1000 males.

The "balance willed by God" doesn't have to go back to 1:1. It can return there within a generation, but it can just as easily remain where it's at, as long as these guys keep rolling around selling ultrasounds and abortions. It can drop even lower if the technology becomes more ubiquitous and more affordable. Now that the technology is available, and apparently as many as 20% of pregnant Indians are using it, "God" doesn't have as much say in things anymore.

Suppose that instead of a 600 rupee ultrasound, somebody invents a disposable fetal gender test (similar to the "pee on a stick" pregnancy test) and sells it along with a tablet of RU-486 in a little kit that costs 20 rupees for a pack of 10. *Now* how much control does "God" have over the ratio of boys to girls?

There is a difference between women and men but life on this planet would not still exist in such myriad forms if one sex was somehow "better" than the other. My only conclusion is that cultures which prefer boys to girls are mistaken perhaps because of recent experience. (They adopted VHS early, saw what happened to Betamax and are still convinced that VHS is the way to go.)

If we're going to compare human mating and propagation to the life-cycle of aging consumer electronics, I'd put it slightly different. They've adopted VHS, but are doing their darndest to make VHS cassettes difficult or impossible to acquire. A whole generation of Indian video enthusiasts is going to be critically short of cassettes.

Of course, people who worry about overpopulation and widespread famine and human suffering in poverty-stricken regions of the world wouldn't see any problem at all. Somebody worried about overpopulation would be trying to figure out that "pee on a stick" fetal gender test, packaging it with RU-486 tabs, sending it to southeast Asia, and trying to figure out how to get sub-Saharan Africa interested as well.

What is the consequence of parents preferring sons? None as far as I can see except that daughters will be greatly in demand in the immediate future.

I'm sure you recognize that just because women might become valuable commodities in these societies, it doesn't follow that women's status will improve.

In Mumbai, maybe you have to pay somebody 50,000 rupees to take your daughter off your hands, and maybe in Riyadh you can sell your daughter for mad lootz like she was a primo racing camel or something. Either way, womens' status in these places isn't very high.

I suspect that if you look at frontier societies where male settlers went and females didn't come until later... you would probably find things like prostitution and mail-order brides being extremely lucrative enterprises. Women becoming scarce might just serve the function of making them more profitable commodities for economic exploitation.

Perhaps I take this whole premise a little personally. I was an unwanted child, something mom has never been shy of reminding me of. Maybe that's what pushes my buttons about this. The idea of a whole culture where *every* girl is an unwanted child disgusts me. The idea of a for-profit industry *promoting* the idea that daughters are undesirable disgusts me. "Spend 600 rupees now and save 50,000 rupees later" makes me sick.

And part of me thinks that maybe the best thing that could happen would be if somebody did develop that kit with a pee-on-a-stick fetal gender test and a tab of RU-486, and send them over by the billions, to let these people do what comes naturally and find out in a decade or two what a gigantic mistake they've made.

-k

[theloniusfleabag]

Dear kimmy,

Perhaps I take this whole premise a little personally. I was an unwanted child, something mom has never been shy of reminding me of. Maybe that's what pushes my buttons about this

My condolences on your situation, but on the bright side, at least you're you now.

but I will also add that I think there's a perception that raising a daughter is more difficult and more worrying.

Indeed, there is an old saying, "If you have a boy, you only have to worry about 1 prick. If you have a girl, you have to worry about all the rest".

One of the worries of the male gender being grossly over-represented is usually taken care of cyclically, through something called warfare. Fate usually culls the herd until a balance appears once again.

[kimmy]

My condolences on your situation, but on the bright side, at least you're you now.

No need to worry! I've grown up with an absurdly healthy sense of self-worth! (or, as mom once put it, I have "an air of arrogance that's not particularly deserved." )

but I will also add that I think there's a perception that raising a daughter is more difficult and more worrying.

Indeed, there is an old saying, "If you have a boy, you only have to worry about 1 prick. If you have a girl, you have to worry about all the rest".

Perhaps many parents don't wish for the extra stress of raising a girl. However, I think most parents would be extremely disappointed if nobody else did either.

One of the worries of the male gender being grossly over-represented is usually taken care of cyclically, through something called warfare. Fate usually culls the herd until a balance appears once again.

That occured to me too. Some cultures dealt with a shortage of males after wartime by allowing polygamy; this one seems to create a gender imbalance that's just waiting for a war to thin out the excess males a little.

-k

[August1991]

That's one heck of a rant, Kimmy. I think I'm going to respond in kind or my own fashion, and let's see where this leads.

Basically, people are sheep, they're very susceptible to trends, and I dread the idea of choosing your baby's gender becoming as easy as choosing your next hairstyle. If you've seen a class of school-kids where there's 6 boys named Ryan and 5 girls named Ashleigh, you get the idea.

If people were sheep as you suggest (heck, if sheep were sheep), we wouldn't be here today. Some of your ancestors lived at the time of the Roman Empire and they must have done something right because you are the living proof. It might be sometimes wise to do what everyone else is doing but not always. Thinking of evolution, I have never agreed with the "I'm surrounded by idiots" school of philosophy.

I think the most popular stereotypes suggest that men are more motivated by physical factors while women are motivated by social status when selecting a mate. The stereotype is that a woman had better be physically attractive, while any toad can find a wife... provided he's a rich toad.

Nature disagrees with that stereotype and if you think about it, so would you. It is usually the male in the species who must undertake the extra costs to stand out from the crowd and signal. I think this is because the female has already made the commitment of providing more to the future union.

It is normal for a travel agent to ask for a deposit - the travel agent has gone to the trouble of leasing a place. The customer must now assume some cost of signalling honesty.

Chuck and T-bag have already addressed this to some extent (that having a son will carry on the family name, and that having a son ensures there'll be a breadwinner who'll look after us when we're old) but I will also add that I think there's a perception that raising a daughter is more difficult and more worrying. I'm sure the #1 parental worry is that their child is going to be hurt, and I suspect the #2 parental worry is that their child is going to get pregnant. Boys are probably seen as less likely to fall victim to violence or sexual molestation, and boys are highly resistant to pregnancy.

If it were really advantageous to have males, then species with more males would dominate. I figure this current fad for boys is just that: a fad. It's bound to blow up in the faces of the people who adopt it.

That was the idea behind my VHS example. It may have been advantageous to have a boy 1000 years ago but that's not a universal truth and it's not true now. Nature does not prefer one sex. If it did, we wouldn't be here. The fact that the western world understands this implies to me that the western world's future is on firm ground.

Incidentally, your parental worry #2 made me laugh. Parents want their daughters to get pregnant. Of course, they want their children to choose suitable partners too.

I think what I'm saying is that some people may now perceive boys as more advantageous than girls but in the grand scheme of things, there is no natural advantage to either side. We are fools if we get involved in trying to skew this game.

Suppose that instead of a 600 rupee ultrasound, somebody invents a disposable fetal gender test (similar to the "pee on a stick" pregnancy test) and sells it along with a tablet of RU-486 in a little kit that costs 20 rupees for a pack of 10. *Now* how much control does "God" have over the ratio of boys to girls?

Your crazy kit idea gets to the heart of the issue. (Fergawdsakes, it's bound to happen - if it hasn't already.)

People in Africa use cell phones but also believe that a handshake can make a penis fall off. I am no stranger to this phenomenon of medieval people with access to modern technology. It's astounding in a way. It is one thing for someone to ignore why a car moves when the driver presses the gas pedal but it's another thing if parents can use a cell phone to discuss why their Hindu daughter's interest in a Hindu boy of a different clan must be stopped.

There is some click (not technology) that brings the scientific method or the Enlightenment to individuals. I used to define it as an airplane trip to the West but I've met too many people who have taken a plane and still remain mired in the 13th century. Maybe it is an understanding of a Shakespeare play.

Perhaps I take this whole premise a little personally. I was an unwanted child, something mom has never been shy of reminding me of.

I was third, an accident. Unwanted? I won't complain. (I too was reminded of certain things. I have come to the conclusion that this has less to do with an accident of birth and more to do with personality.)

In Mumbai, maybe you have to pay somebody 50,000 rupees to take your daughter off your hands, and maybe in Riyadh you can sell your daughter for mad lootz like she was a primo racing camel or something. Either way, womens' status in these places isn't very high.

...

I suspect that if you look at frontier societies where male settlers went and females didn't come until later... you would probably find things like prostitution and mail-order brides being extremely lucrative enterprises. Women becoming scarce might just serve the function of making them more profitable commodities for economic exploitation.

I'll finish with this last. For Thelonious' sake. (No, Thelonious, I didn't mean you should sit on the Group W bench. I meant that life would be boring if we didn't all sit on the same bench - which we do in fact.)

Market prices were invented as a new way for males to compete to show their plumes.

At the risk of being wrong, and venturing into a charged non-PC question, let me try to be honest. Females show up with a pre-formed egg. Males have nothing but sperm to offer in the deal. Both males and females know this.

It's understandable that females, by nature publicly committed, are going to expect some show of seriousness on the part of an opposite.

This competition of women's beauty is just a way for women to raise the stakes and say to men, "if you can't match this, I'm not interested." High-maintenance women, the ones with the chihuaha in their arm (saw that on Ste-Catherine on the weekend - cute furry pouch too) are the ones who get the guys.

---

Getting back to the thread idea. The relations between women and men are complex because they are at the heart of life. Any attempt to forbid certain relations or the choice of offspring is bound to fail.

[theloniusfleabag]

Dear August1991,

I'll finish with this last. For Thelonious' sake. (No, Thelonious, I didn't mean you should sit on the Group W bench.

Sittin' there on the Group W bench...with the mother-rapers...and father-stabbers...and father-rapers...and Arlo Guthrie!?

(I hope you are quoting 'Alice's Retaurant' from Arlo Guthrie, or people might think I am...odd)

I was third, an accident. Unwanted? I won't complain. (I too was reminded of certain things. I have come to the conclusion that this has less to do with an accident of birth and more to do with personality.)

I was adopted as seventh of seven. One other child in the family was adopted too, one of my sisters, and the 'fourth child'. Our personalities are actually more similar to each other than to the rest of the family, and were were both, in our turn, kind of the 'black sheep'. Kooky.

Any attempt to forbid certain relations or the choice of offspring is bound to fail.

I totally agree, and to some degree I'll bet kimmy will too. For kimmy, though, the notion doth rankle her soul, (and mine too, though probably to a lesser degree) that actions are being taken by people to attempt to skew the outcome, however fatally flawed their attempts may be. It means that in lots of places, women (or girls)are still 'unwanted'. Being 'neccesary' is scant consolation, even if, as you claim, they have the upper hand in the procreation game.

[kimmy]

Basically, people are sheep, they're very susceptible to trends, and I dread the idea of choosing your baby's gender becoming as easy as choosing your next hairstyle. If you've seen a class of school-kids where there's 6 boys named Ryan and 5 girls named Ashleigh, you get the idea.

If people were sheep as you suggest (heck, if sheep were sheep), we wouldn't be here today. Some of your ancestors lived at the time of the Roman Empire and they must have done something right because you are the living proof. It might be sometimes wise to do what everyone else is doing but not always. Thinking of evolution, I have never agreed with the "I'm surrounded by idiots" school of philosophy.

The ancient Romans (and the sheep, for that matter) apparently did their part, which more or less consisted of reproducing, and providing food, water, warmth, and security for their offspring. I don't see how that relates much to the current topic, though.

Neither the Romans nor the sheep had practical means of influencing the traits of their children. They kind of had to wait to find out whether Li'l Augustus was going to grow up to be tall or short, fat or thin, smart or dumb as a rock. And the only practical means our ancestors could have had of deciding the gender of their child would be to wait to see what pops out of the oven, kill it if it wasn't to your liking, and start over. (killing a newborn that you've invested so much effort in bringing into the world seems unlikely even for the most primitive of peoples, and from a practical standpoint: if you're in a society where the odds of any given child reaching childbearing age and reproducing are rather slim, then killing a child at birth because you wanted the other gender is just bad math. Even today there are some cultures where people give birth to as many children as they can, just to try and improve the odds of having a child survive to adulthood.)

You suggest the fact that we've made it this far is proof that as a species we're not *that* dumb. And you might be right. But we're not really all that smart either.

We could look at any number of great technologies that aren't as great when they achieve widespread availability. We could look at incredibly useful things like automobiles and firearms and explosives and drugs, all of which have been of undeniable importance to mankind in general, yet all of which also kill people in stratospheric numbers every year, because there's a portion of our species that's too stupid to be responsible for the consequences of these technologies.

Suppose that genetic technology was widely available some hundred years ago, or so. And suppose that some individual, with the purest, most noble intentions, had set out for Africa with the goal of curing Sickle-Cell Anemia for all time, and within a generation it was wiped out of the human gene-pool completely.

Great idea, right?

But how many tens of millions of people would have died of malaria because of it?

By messing around with genetics without realizing that the genes that cause sickle-cell anemia also confer exceptional resistance to malaria, our well-intentioned explorer has unwittingly created a holocaust of epic proportions... and the kicker is that we'd probably never have even known why malaria started taking so many more lives in those populations each year.

If it were really advantageous to have males, then species with more males would dominate. I figure this current fad for boys is just that: a fad. It's bound to blow up in the faces of the people who adopt it.

That was the idea behind my VHS example. It may have been advantageous to have a boy 1000 years ago but that's not a universal truth and it's not true now. Nature does not prefer one sex. If it did, we wouldn't be here. The fact that the western world understands this implies to me that the western world's future is on firm ground.

In a big picture sense, one can conclude that probably there's an evolutionary reason that we have a 50/50 gender balance. If some other gender balance gave historically better odds of survival or propagation, then that's what we'd see instead of the roughly 50/50 balance at birth. We evolved this way for some practical reason.

But you're the guy who is always pointing out that people don't think "big picture" when they're making decisions in their daily life. They make decisions based on what's practical, economical, and suitable to their personal taste. And if picking the gender of one's child was as easy as picking the brand of toothpaste you buy, I have no doubt that a great many people would apply about the same level of thought to that choice.

"Baby boys are, like, totally hawt this year!"

Incidentally, your parental worry #2 made me laugh. Parents want their daughters to get pregnant. Of course, they want their children to choose suitable partners too.

They want their daughters to get pregnant *after* they've found and married suitable mates, and after graduating high-school at the very least. If you doubt that parents dread the idea of their unmarried teenaged daughters becoming pregnant, I suspect you're probably not actually acquainted with any parents of unmarried teenaged daughters.

I think what I'm saying is that some people may now perceive boys as more advantageous than girls but in the grand scheme of things, there is no natural advantage to either side. We are fools if we get involved in trying to skew this game.

And yet you seem to be in favor of the mass-market commercialization of technology that aims to do just that?

-k