UK Report Suggests Designer Offspring

chromakey writes "Several news agencies are reporting that the UK is considering allowing parents undergoing fertility treatment to select the sex of their unborn babies." Also covered in Q&A format by the BBC. From the article: "At the moment in the UK, sex selection is only permitted if there are strict medical reasons. This could be because there is a serious sex-linked disorder in the family, such as Duchenne's Muscular Dystrophy."

Comments

Re:Import from Russia

[Jameth]

Actually, the Chinese are still fairly racist about marriage. Foreign wives are somewhat frowned upon there, so that wouldn't really help.

(My source on this is a friend who is studying Chinese language and culture in her minor and who has spent a few summers there. She looked into how dangerous is was for a woman before going there, because she was a bit worries, and this is one thing she found.)

Re:Import from Russia

[gjhut]

The facts (according to the CIA World Factbook):
China data: http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/ ch.html#People

at birth: 1.12 male(s)/female
under 15 years: 1.13 male(s)/female
15-64 years: 1.06 male(s)/female
65 years and over: 0.91 male(s)/female
total population: 1.06 male(s)/female (2004 es

Russia data: http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/ rs.html#People

at birth: 1.06 male(s)/female
under 15 years: 1.05 male(s)/female
15-64 years: 0.94 male(s)/female
65 years and over: 0.46 male(s)/female
total population: 0.87 male(s)/female (2004 est.)

The linked article in this post mentions:

He also said that according to the latest poll, there are 15 percent more women in Russia than men. For every thousand men we have 1147 women, and because of lower levels of males being born as well as high mortality rates among men we should not expect the gender ratio to level out, the researcher said.

The comment about lower levels of males being born in the snippet above is clearly wrong. A normal ratio between the birthrate of man and woman is about 1.05 in favour of men, and russia is no different.
Additionally, the data in the CIA world factbook states that the the ratio of men/woman in russia is 0.94, and this corresponds to (only) 1070 women for each 1000 men.

B.T.W. Normal (western) figures are equal ratio's to a slight excess of men in the ages 15-65. The 1.12 ratio in birthrate for China is very high.

Re:Risky Business

[dr_dank]

Due to their one-child policy, many families had sex-based abortions.

Isn't every abortion sex based? Sex is why they needed the abortion in the first place!