Healthy Skepticism Library item: 9286

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: Journal Article

Tuffs A.
German doctors protest about firm offering fetal sex tests in early pregnancy
BMJ 2007 Apr 7; 334:(7596):712
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/334/7596/712

Abstract:

Clinical geneticists and gynaecologists in Germany have expressed concerns that a private firm is offering women in the early stages of pregnancy a blood test to determine the sex of their unborn baby. The test is offered from the eighth week of pregnancy, and doctors fear that women who are not happy about the sex of their child may ask for an abortion, which is legal in Germany up to the 12th week of pregnancy and quite easily obtained.

The firm, Plasmagen, offers the test over the internet. It tells women to ask their doctor to take a 2 ml blood sample and send it to the company’s laboratory in Cologne. Test results are available within eight days after the arrival of the sample and are sent back to the woman’s doctor. The test costs 149 (£101; $198); money is refunded if the result proves to be wrong.

Although the . . .