Edgar Dahl

BACKGROUND: Preconception sex selection for non-medical reasons raises serious moral, legal and social issues. The main concern is based on the assumption that a freely available service for sex selection will distort the natural sex ratio and lead to a severe gender imbalance. However, for a severe gender imbalance to happen, at least two conditions have to be met. First, there must be a significant preference for children of a particular sex, and second, there must be a considerable demand for preconception sex selection. To ascertain whether or not these two conditions are met, we have conducted a survey in Germany. METHODS: As a representative sample of the German population, 1094 men and women aged 18-45 years were asked about their gender preferences and whether or not they could imagine selecting the sex of their children through flow cytometric separation of X- and Y-bearing sperm followed by intrauterine insemination. RESULTS: 58% of respondents stated that they do not care about the sex of their offspring. 30% wish to have a family with an equal number of boys and girls. 4% would like to have more boys than girls, 3% more girls than boys, 1% only boys and 1% only girls. For first-borns, however, there is still a preference for boys over girls. While 75.6% claimed to have no gender preference, 14.2% would like their first child to be a boy and 10.1% would like their first child to be a girl. Whereas 6% could imagine taking advantage of preconception sex selection, 92% found this to be out of the question. Even in the hypothetical case that a medication for sex selection were ever to become available, 90% stated that they would not want to use it. CONCLUSION: Given that a majority does not seem to care about the sex of their offspring and only a minority seem to be willing to select the sex of their children, a freely available service for preconception sex selection for non-medical reasons is rather unlikely to cause a severe gender imbalance in Germany.

BACKGROUND: In its recent report 'Human Reproductive Technologies and the Law', the House of Commons' Select Committee on Science and Technology called for greater efforts to establish the potential demographic impact of sex selection across all sectors of UK society. Given the well-known preference for boys over girls among some communities, there is concern that a readily available service for social sex selection may upset the balance of the sexes. Of particular interest are the gender preferences and the demand for sex selection among Pakistanis. METHODS: We conducted a social survey on gender preferences and potential demand for preconception sex selection among 301 pregnant women in Karachi, Pakistan, using a self-report questionnaire consisting of 14 questions. RESULTS: About 41.5% wish to have a family with an equal number of boys and girls; 3.3% would like to have only boys, 1.0% only girls, 27.6% more boys than girls and 4.3% more girls than boys, and 22.3% stated that they do not care about the sex composition of their family. Whereas 6.3% could imagine employing cytometric sperm separation for social sex selection, 76.1% could not and 17.6% were undecided. About 27.2% felt that social sex selection ought to be legal, 48.8% thought it ought to be illegal and 23.9% were undecided. CONCLUSIONS: Although Pakistani women do show a statistically significant preference for boys over girls, the number of women willing to subject themselves to cytometric sperm separation appears to be too small to cause a severe imbalance of the sexes. However, further research among British citizens of Pakistani origin is needed to establish whether sex selection poses a serious threat to the sex ratio of UK communities.

Erst kürzlich hat uns Papst Benedikt XVI. noch einmal an die Hölle gemahnt. Sie existiere wirklich. Und jeder, der seine Augen vor Gottes Liebe verschließe, werde sich schon bald darin wiederfinden. Mit seiner ebenso charmanten wie amüsanten Sammlung von Aphorismen zeigt uns Edgar Dahl, dass dies kein Grund zur Sorge ist. Schließlich würden wir uns in der Hölle in weit besserer Gesellschaft befinden als im Himmel. Denn wir würden dort auf Sokrates, Platon und Aristoteles, Holbach, Hume und Schopenhauer, Voltaire, Goethe und Byron, Mozart, Haydn und Beethoven sowie auf Darwin, Freud und Einstein treffen. Dieses kleine Büchlein soll auf die uns bevorstehende Begegnung mit einigen der eminentesten Geister der Menschheitsgeschichte vorbereiten und uns mit deren skeptischen und bisweilen geradezu blasphemischen Gedanken vertraut machen. In diesem Buch zeigt Edgar Dahl, dass die Hölle eine weit bessere Adresse als der Himmel ist. Hans Albert (Autor von "Das Elend der Theologie")

In its recent statement 'Sex Selection and Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis', the Ethics Committee of the American Society of Reproductive Medicine concluded that preimplantation genetic diagnosis for sex selection for non-medical reasons should be discouraged because it poses a risk of unwarranted gender bias, social harm, and results in the diversion of medical resources from genuine medical need. We critically examine the arguments presented against sex selection using preimplantation genetic diagnosis. We argue that sex selection should be available, at least within privately funded health care.

Preconception sex selection for non-medical reasons raises serious moral, legal and social issues. The main concerns include the threat of a sex ratio distortion due to a common preference for boys over girls, the charge of sexism, the danger of reinforcing gender stereotypical behaviour in sex selected children, and the fear of a slippery slope towards creating designer babies. This paper endeavours to show that none of the objections to preconception sex selection is conclusive and that there is no justification for denying parents the right to choose the sex of their prospective children.

Preconception sex selection is one of the most controversial issues in bioethics today. There is a widespread fear that a technology that allows parents to choose the sex of their children will have disastrous social effects. In its article “Gendercide: The Worldwide War on Baby Girls,” The Economist claimed that the advent of preconception sex selection will lead to a socially disruptive imbalance of the sexes in Asian and Arab countries. While it is true that prenatal diagnosis and selective abortions have led to a distorted sex ratio in countries such as India and China, it is unjustified to blame science for Asia’s social problems. It is religion not science that is responsible for the problems arising from new reproductive technologies, such as preimplantation genetic diagnosis or preconception sex selection.

Many people look to religion to help resolve the serious moral and legal issues associated with assisted reproductive technologies. Doing so presupposes that religion is the cornerstone of ethics, but this assumption is not well founded. While various faiths are entitled to articulate their views on matters of human reproduction, the contradictions involved in doing so make it unwise to rely on religion in the formulation of law and policy. These contradictions – such as the indeterminacy about what revealed truths means – make moral secular philosophy a better guide for the protection of human welfare.