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INVESTIGATION: SEX SELECTION
The Gender Gestapo
By Anna M.M. Vetticad with Ramesh Vinayak
A controversial sex-selection procedure widely available
in India skirts the law and prevents the very conception of female babies
 Doctor
saab, we've been married six years and have a five-year-old daughter.
We want a second child now, but only if it's a boy. Can you help us?"
It's a hesitant question.
The bearded man across the table from us, Dr
Sanjay Gupta of Chandigarh's Santokh Nursing Home, has no time for pointless
pleasantries. "How many abortions have you had?" he asks. "None.
We've been using birth control. We won't risk another girl, so when we
heard about your ad for XY separation, we decided to come to you."
If apprehension shows on our faces, hopefully
he interprets it as the desperation of a married couple without a son;
a couple who, so we inform him, have travelled all the way from Ludhiana
to Chandigarh in search of the nirvana he offers: a controversial technique
which promises the conception of a male child.
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SIFTING OUT THE GIRLS
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 A
sperm has X or Y chromosome, the egg X chromosome. Their combination
decides gender: XY for boys, XX for girls.
ERICSSON'S METHOD:
 1.
A semen sample is diluted. It is then centrifuged.
2. X and Y-bearing sperms are separated when placed in a chemical
solution. The faster-moving Y-sperms penetrate the solution's denser
bottom layers, which are collected and centrifuged. The process
is repeated.
3. The Y concentrate is collected for artificial insemination.
This method is said to have a success rate of about 70 per cent.
Pre-implantational genetic diagnosis:
 1.
This complex procedure is cited in the Supreme Court petition. Here,
eggs are fertilised in a petridish.
 2.
Male/female embryos are identified under a special microscope.
 3.
The female embryos are discarded. Male embryos are implanted in
the uterus.
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The truth is that we are journalists posing as
husband and wife, here to track Punjab's baby boy boom, drawn by murmurs
that clinics in the state continue to stray into a legal grey area with
pre-conception sex selection. In this fertile agricultural region, the
term "infertility treatment", as in the case of Santokh, is
often a sobriquet for XY separation, techniques in which X and Y chromosome
bearing sperms are separated and the Y-chromosome-bearing sperms used
to fertilise the female egg to ensure the conception of a male embryo.
Sex determination after conception through ultrasonography,
amniocentesis and other techniques is already illegal under the Pre-Natal
Diagnostic Techniques (PNDT) Act, but sex selection before conception
falls in a legal no-man's land. Two months have passed since the Supreme
Court, ruling on a writ petition, slammed the Centre and states for non-implementation
of the Act, and suggested that it be amended to keep pace with technology
(see boxes). Next month the court will assess subsequent action taken.
The Government is even now working on amending the Act and banning XY
separation. Dr Gupta, of course, is not bothered.
"The Government has brought in a new law
called the PNDT Act, which has made all this illegal," he volunteers.
"But you don't worry. Nothing will happen..." Gupta goes on
to explain the technique involved in XY separation, even drawing a crude
sketch, and claiming a 90 per cent success rate. He also suggests an alternative
requiring the use of a chemical by the female partner to slow down or
kill off X-chromosome-bearing sperms during sexual intercourse. Further
reassurance from the good doctor: "If you conceive a girl, you could
always have an abortion. I don't have an ultrasound machine, but there
are plenty of places close by that I could send you to, who will tell
you the sex of the child. Because of the law, they won't write it down,
but they'll tell you verbally if it's good news or bad news."
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MINDLESS MEDICOS: Drs Sumeet and Sumita Sofat carry out XY separation
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It's as simple as that. Not only are techniques
such as XY separation on offer, ultrasound clinics across the country
continue to defy the existing law by revealing the sex of the unborn child
to parents. If any further explanation was needed for the skewed child
sex ratios (in the 0-6 age group) shown by this year's provisional Census
figures, it is this: that pre-conception sex selection is compounding
the disastrous effects of continuing female infanticide and foeticide.
Punjab, the worst of the states, had only 875 baby girls for every 1,000
boys in 1991; now it has just 793.
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BOY MERCHANTS: Santokh in Chandigarh (above right); and Virk's
Centre in Ludhiana
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At Deep Hospital in Ludhiana, the board outside
Dr S.P.S. Virk's office proudly displays an advertorial in The Indian
Express listing the facilities available at Virk Infertility Research
Centre here at Deep and at his Bombay Infertility Research Centre in Virk
Hospital, Jalandhar, "pre-selection procedures by XY sperm separation"
among them. The advertorial carefully justifies the use of the technique
with the remark: "... definite medical indications ... exist where
sex-linked genetic diseases make it desirable to have a healthy child
of a particular sex only". That was an objective of the technology
when it was originally developed, but here in India, it is the desire
for a son not the fear of genetic disorders that drives most potential
parents to these clinics. As Gupta lets on, "Of all the people who
have come to me for XY separation, only two wanted a girl. The other 99
per cent came for a boy."
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