Word: sperm
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...York City's Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center created a sensation with his announcement that gender was influenced by the timing of conception within the menstrual cycle and by the acidity or alkalinity of the female reproductive tract. A douche of vinegar, he contended, would confer an advantage on sperm bearing an X chromosome (for females), while a douche of baking soda would shift the odds toward the Y-bearing sperm (for males). Shettles' theory has now been generally discredited...
Ericsson's theory is based on the fact that sperm carrying the Y chromosome move somewhat faster than sperm carrying the X. To select males, a sample of semen is placed at the top of a glass column containing a solution of albumin, a sticky protein normally present in such bodily fluids as blood and semen. After an hour, more Y-containing sperm than sluggish Xs should have sped to the bottom. The Y sperm are further concentrated by being run through increasingly thicker solutions of albumin. "It's like making them run the Boston Marathon with overshoes...
...Philadelphia Fertility Institute is testing a technique that employs the glass-column race track and Sephadex, a gelatinous powder used to filter impurities from insulin and other hormones. In this case, the X-bearing sperm are the first to reach the bottom of the test tube, perhaps because they are slightly heavier than Y sperm. Results in eleven pregnancies are encouraging: seven girls and one set of male-female twins. Nonetheless, a larger number of pregnancies will be needed before the method is proven...
...licensed its patented procedure to 24 fertility clinics around the world, from Gretna, La., to Amman, Jordan. (In the U.S., such technology is not subject to federal regulation.) The clinics pay Ericsson's company up to $15,000 in licensing fees, and many overseas clinics also buy sperm-separation materials from Gametrics. The Gametrics procedure generally costs between $225 and $350, and three or four inseminations are often needed before pregnancy occurs. Customers come to these clinics for a variety of reasons. Many already have children of one gender and wish to ensure that their next child will...
Partly because of the Parpalaix case, the French government has proposed legislation governing the operation of sperm banks that would avoid similar cases in the future. But the new laws would not help Parpalaix in one respect: should she succeed in becoming pregnant, she will run into the Napoleonic Code of 1804. It states that any child born more than 300 days after the putative father's death is not considered a legitimate heir...