Wealthy couples flock to USA to avoid UK sex selection ban, IVF medic claims

Dr Jeffrey
Steinberg, a British IVF specialist who is now director of a pair of private clinics in the USA has claimed that dozens of couples see him
every year to select the sex of their babies.

In the UK, using
sex as criterion for embryo selection during IVF is forbidden under the Human
Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990, which was amended to ban non-medical sex-selection in 2008. Exceptions can
only be made for certain medical reasons, such as to avoid giving birth to children with serious heritable sex-linked medical conditions like Duchenne's muscular dystrophy.

However, sex-selection, which Dr Steinberg describes as 'family balancing', is permitted in many
states in the USA. Dr Steinberg claims that the two clinics he directs see around
40 British couples every year for this, with each IVF cycle costing £30,000.

The Fertility Institutes, where Dr Steinberg works, use
a technique called preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD). 'If you want to be certain
your next child will be the gender you are hoping for', the company's website
reads, 'no other method comes close to the reliability of PGD'.

After an initial telephone
consultation, British couples using The Fertility Institutes' services may attend an
appointment at an affiliated UK clinic. The woman will begin taking hormones to stimulate her ovaries and after
arriving in the USA, an average of ten eggs will be harvested.

'We biopsy the fertilised eggs, and will lose at least half
from genetic abnormalities', Dr Steinberg told the London Evening Standard. 'Then
half of those remaining are going to be the wrong gender, so we will be left
with just one or two of the gender we want, to implant'.

Dr Steinberg said
he hopes that the services he provides will prevent abortions in other
countries where sex selection is banned. He told the London Evening Standard: 'The problem with all
these countries where sex selection is not legal - Britain included - is that
medicine and its financial arrangements are integrated into the government'.

'Once the
government becomes involved in paying for everything, then the government
starts making decisions about people's care'.

Dr Steinberg added that 'leading
British politicians' had come to him 'for services that are outlawed in the UK'.

Responding to
an inquiry from the Daily Telegraph, an spokesperson for the Human
Fertilisation and Embryology Authority said the regulator had 'little or
no remit' to intervene with the British clinics affiliated to the Fertility
Institutes that provided preparatory care.

'However',
the spokesperson told the newspaper, 'we do expect centres, whether referring
patients abroad or recommending shared, cross-border care, to provide these
patients with information about the consequences of having treatment outside
the UK'.