Originally Posted by
Sora
Miss cheese and especially milk :tissue: but it's not for life. If it helps getting me my baby boy, it will have been worth it.
You're right, Europe is more progressive in medical stuff, except when it comes to genetics. More specifically, researching chromosomes is okay and all but the general public is quite misinformed about it, either from the scientists thinking nobody would be able to understand or because everyone feel uneasy about tampering with human DNA. This ends up backfiring since people are easily confused about that subject. We can see that when they get all "First they want to choose the gender and then they will ask for perfect blonde-haired blue-eyed babies"... It's stupid because selecting sperm IS NOT tampering with chromosomes. We are talking about something that is already there : ie XX sperm and XY sperm. We didn't buy it, didn't create it from dust, it's there and it's about favoring one over the other... which nature does already, although not quite as often as we would want hence the sway...
If people knew their genetics, they would realize that no matter how advanced we are now, we still can't tamper with DNA without causing spectacular side-effects, most of them life-threatening. It is not as easy as Gene 1 for blue, Gene 2 for green, Gene 3 for brown, then onto the next chromosome 1-Hair, 2-Weight, 3-Height. Eye-color for example is ruled by a multitude of genes on different chromosomes (mainly chromosome 15), switching on and off as they feel like. We do not even know most of them and where they may hide. We still don't understand why sometimes they switch on, why some other time they switch off. One thing we know for sure though : touching, hurting or even breaking them can change the color... but can cause much worse ---> one of the main genes of blue/green also rules sodium/potassium/calcium... touch it and have fun seeing the embryo cells break appart.
Plus, you have to inherit some genes to get (and pass on) some physical characteristics. You can't create them through IVF. You could achieve some result by tampering with and switching on/off some other genes but at the risk of fatally crippling your unborn child. No sane parents would take such a huge risk.
So... no, no one, swayer or else, will be able to walk into a clinic and ask for a blue-eyed immortal child or whatever. Unless he or she wants a sick one. And even if it became a possiblity in the future, if you do not have the right genes, no matter how much you pay, your only way of having your wish will be to carry the child of someone else.
That's surprising, I never thought people in Austria could do genetic testing anytime ! I've seen people talking about it like it's a normal occurence on the forums but here it is not something anyone can do... Without the excuse of high-risk pregnancy or dangerous medical condition, you can't ask for genetic testing. Technically, I could have asked for it since DH has a bad case of hereditary eye-cancer running in the family... but when we broached the subject for DD1, the docs went all uneasy and said "oh it's okay we don't need to do that, your husband doesn't have cancer so it's safe, don't bother with genetic scans and stuff". Even if they had agreed to run the test, we would only have been able to ask about the cancer. If we had tried to ask for the gender, we would have been coldly rebuked, like "What does it matter to you anyway ? Aren't you happy getting a healthy baby ?". It has also happened to people trying IVF... if they ask for the gender of their embryos, they are often told "you'll see for yourself at the 20 weeks ultrasound, it doesn't matter right ?".
Same with the 12 weeks ultrasound. Many gyns get frankly uneasy when you ask for the gender and refuse to even try to predict it. Others do tell you. But all in all, they are pressured to keep silent cause 12 weeks is still legal for abortion and they fear an outbreak of radical gender selection like in China or India.
The only occurence of all of them willingly telling you before 20 weeks, sadly, is when you miscarry...