Asia Times: Anger flares over pre-birth gender choice service


	January 23, 2001	atimes.com

India/Pakistan

Anger flares over pre-birth gender choice service
By Muddassir Rizvi

RAWALPINDI, Pakistan - Public health and human rights activists are up in arms over a gender choice service being offered by a leading gynecologist. Using the service, couples can choose the sex of their child, claim the promoters.

The service is not cheap. The doctors charge 40,000 rupees (about US$700) from each client, but with the deep-rooted social preference for sons, the service is increasingly popular.

Opponents are accusing the medical firm, Baby Choice, of engaging in an unethical business. "These services are unethical as they thrive on social disparities existing in society. In this case, the company is exploiting the established gender preference for male offspring," says Hadia Nusrat, who works with an Islamabad-based public health publication. "Every sixth death of a girl [in Pakistan] is due to neglect and ill treatment," she adds, quoting from a study.

Like elsewhere in South Asia, girls in mainly rural Pakistan face discrimination from the moment they are born, being starved of their share of nutrition, health care and education. However, Baby Choice, a subsidiary of a France-based medical firm, rejects the charge. The firm argues that it is not responsible for the gender bias in the country and is simply helping parents who wish to have a boy or girl.

"Rights activists should direct their energies toward correcting the gender preference and social attitudes, rather than condemning the existence of our business," said Khawaja Farooq, who was the Baby Choice chief executive until December 2000. Other company representatives have taken the same position in seminars organized by the company in the big cities of Pakistan.

"The company began its operations in Rawalpindi - the twin city of the national capital Islamabad - last year. It now has branches in the southern port city of Karachi and the eastern metropolis of Lahore.

Baby Choice says it uses a special computer program developed in France which makes it possible to determine the exact days when a woman can conceive a child of the desired sex. No medical tests are required.

However, rights groups say such medically-assisted sex selection methods have been banned by several nations, such as Canada, Britain, Australia and Hong Kong. The use of pre-birth gender determination is allowed only for medical reasons - for example, sex linked diseases, they point out.

Baby Choice is not alone. Another company offering pre-birth gender selection services started operations in Islamabad in November 2000. However, this relies on a different method based on the separation of the male and female chromosones, using a technique developed in the United States.

Officials at the Pakistan office of the UN Children's Fund (Unicef) too express disapproval of such methods. "Pre-birth gender selection is a clear case of discrimination against girls. We also believe that the resultant gender imbalance would create severe social problems including increase of violence against women," a Unicef official said in a letter to the Islamabad-based consumer group, the Network for Consumer Protection.

The Network has urged the government to ban doctors from marketing the Baby Choice pre-gender selection technique, but the Ministry of Health says it can do nothing because of legal reasons. ''Baby Choice is registered as a private limited company under the country's Company's Act 1984 ... we can only question health-related services," says a health ministry official.

According to the Network, the company pays about 4,000 rupees to a doctor who is able to sell the service to a couple. Doctors promoting the service say it helps couples to plan their families.

"This unethical and scientifically unproven activity has been covertly practiced by quacks in Pakistan for centuries. But it has now been converted into an overt commercial activity. Through involvement of doctors, the company is trying to legitimize a dubious business," says a Network spokesperson.

Some doctors in Pakistan, however, have questioned the company's claim. "Their (Baby Choice's) claims do not hold water ... they have not been able to furnish research data that led to this service," says Khalida Akhtar, a renowned gynecologist and Professor of Obstetrics at an Islamabad medical college.

The pre-birth gender selection method used by Baby Choice is called Selnas, developed by Prokiad Laboratories in France. The company says the method has been tried on cattle and also on humans and met with 98 percent success.

(Inter Press Service)