Pinprick reveals sex in controversial test
Toronto clients want boys

Debate rages over sex selection
MEGAN OGLIVIE
LIFE WRITER

With a prick of a mother's finger, parents can now decide whether to paint the nursery pink or blue almost as soon they know they're expecting a baby.
A handful of labs in the world, one of which is in Toronto, are offering blood tests that can reveal the sex of a fetus within weeks of conception.
And while some parents may use these tests to pick names and clothes for their baby, some ethicists warn the test could let them make a decision with a much more significant impact - whether or not to have a boy or a girl to begin with.
The controversial blood test works by detecting DNA from the fetus that's floating in the mother's blood. That DNA is then extracted and analyzed for the presence of a Y chromosome. If a Y chromosome is found it means it's a boy. If not, it's a girl.
The debate over prenatal sex testing heated up recently when the American company pregnancystore.com started offering a home-testing kit that lets parents know the sex of the fetus as early as five weeks into pregnancy.
The test, called the Baby Gender Mentor Home DNA Gender Testing Kit, is available online for $275 U.S. and lab results are emailed back to expectant parents after 48 hours. Thousands of units of the test, launched June 13, have already been sold.
However Paragon Genetics, a Toronto lab at Humber River Regional Hospital, has been quietly offering a similar test for two years. People can find information about the company online at http://www.paragondna.com.
It offers paternity, genetic and other lab tests.
The main reason people turn to Paragon Genetics for its sex test is to find out if the fetus is male, said lab director Dr. Yuri Melekhovets.
"It's not just Toronto. We're getting samples from across Canada, the U.S. and Europe. It's usually from people who have a preference for boys, not for girls."
While she wouldn't ban the test, bioethicist Michelle Mullen, who works at the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario in Ottawa, said the technology is undesirable because it will be used to select the sex of children, which creates gender inequality.
"It devalues female fetuses. It devalues girls who might result from a fetus and it devalues women," she said." If you look around the globe, the preponderance of choice based on the sex of the fetus is that people want boys."
Now women can often find out the sex of their baby with an ultrasound at around 16 weeks into pregnancy. Amniocentesis, a procedure to check for chromosomal defects, will also tell a fetus's sex, but it's invasive and comes with a slight risk of miscarriage.
Testing the mother's blood is simple and safe and laboratories say it can be up to 99.9 per cent accurate. But ethicists say there could be a flood of expectant parents who want to choose the sex of their baby-to-be with such an easy and accurate test available outside of a doctor's office.
There is no harm in providing information to curious parents, it's what they choose to do with the information that poses ethical concerns, said Christine Harrison, director of bioethics at the Hospital for Sick Children.
"People could choose to terminate a pregnancy based on information they get from the test ... for reasons of gender," she said.
Paragon Genetics has been offering a gender determination test for $390 U.S. for two years. Expectant mothers 10 weeks into pregnancy provide a sample of blood and the lab will reveal the sex of the fetus with 96 per cent accuracy and 100 per cent confidentiality, Melekhovets said. The blood sample is destroyed after testing and test results are destroyed after six or seven months.
Although the test raises ethical questions, Melekhovets contends Paragon Genetics is just a laboratory offering genetic testing services.
"People say there are ethical problems with factories that produce guns," he said. "But guns never kill people. People kill people. We provide people with results and what people do with the results is up to them."
Melekhovets said there is a high demand for sex determination early in pregnancy, but wouldn't reveal how many people request the test at Paragon Genetics. He doesn't want other labs with similar capabilities to know the strength of the market.
There are several reasons why parents want to know the sex of the fetus early in pregnancy, Harrison said. Expectant parents might choose to terminate a pregnancy because they want an equal number of boys and girls in their family, she said.
While some people may see that choice as being selfish or as a superficial reason to take the significant step of ending a pregnancy, she said, our society does not impose restrictions on the reasons why people choose to abort.
People may also choose to terminate a pregnancy based on the probability of a sex-linked disease, said Harrison, giving the example of hemophilia, which can only be inherited by a boy.
But there is a concern with people using genetic tests at home acting on the results without support from genetic counsellors who are trained to give medical and social support to parents faced with difficult decisions, said Dawn Oosterhoff, a PhD candidate in law and bioethics at the University of Toronto.
"People who use them at home are making decisions in isolation without the support of a counsellor who can walk them through the values or implications of the choices they are making," she said.