Types of infertility treatment - Family Balancing

The Private Healthcare UK guide to infertility treatment contains articles on infertility and IVF treatment which are aimed at improving your knowledge of treatments for infertility, their benefits and potential risks.

The guide is sponsored by The London Women's Clinic, leading fertility specialists who have been involved in fertility management since 1984.

The London Women's Clinic (LWC) delivers a full range of diagnostic and treatment programmes for fertility disorders  and operate one of the most successful IVF programmes in the world.

The LWC in Harley Street is rated in the top three amongst all UK licensed centres for women aged up to 35 and the HFEA has published the centre specific IVF success rates for the period 1st January – 30th June 2007 showing verified results of 55.7% success.

For more information about The London Women’s Clinic:

The London Women's Clinic London, Harley Street.

Tel: +44 (0) 20 7487 5050 E-mail: info@londonwomensclinic.com

In this section

For centuries people have attempted, through various means, to influence the sex of a child when trying for a pregnancy. At the preconception stage this can be achieved either by sperm sorting, a technique that separates the x or y chromosome-bearing sperm prior to insemination, or by Pre-implantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD), when a cell from an eight-cell embryo is removed and analysed for its sex chromosome.

‘Family Balancing’, a term coined the United States, is defined as a measured approach to a non-medically indicated use of preconception gender selection. Family balancing in the USA provides married couples having at least one child the opportunity to increase the chance of having another child of the less represented sex in the family.

The HFEA has disallowed this technique in the U.K. on the grounds that it may lead to psychosocial harm to family life. Many have questioned the validity of this assumption, finding it non-evidence based and paternalistic. In a recent report (March 2005) from the House of Commons, the Science and Technology Committee have stated that they find “no adequate justification for prohibiting the use of sex selection for family balancing”. They have recommended that the U.K. government should review the current situation.

In this guide

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