Family Balancing

This week in the Wall Street Journal (August 17, 2015 Issue), there was an article about the growing popularity of family balancing. At FCNE, we have been performing this for over 5 years. With family balancing, a woman or couple need to have at least one child and desire a child of the opposite gender. We are able to assure that if the couple conceives the proper gender will be born with a 99.9% accuracy. We are able to achieve this by having the woman undergo an IVF procedure and growing embryos for five days to a blastocyst stage. We then remove a few cells from the placental tissue and have it analyzed for its chromosomes. Once the gender of the embryos is known a single embryo of the proper gender will be implanted into the woman.

In general, this process is suitable for women less than 43 years of age.

When we first started this program I thought that most patients coming in for gender selection would want a male embryo. This is still often the case amongst patients from traditional cultures in the middle east and Asia. However, amongst upper-middle-class Caucasian couples nearly 95% of the couples return to the office for a female embryo. I suspect that in these families the women primarily control reproduction and desire a daughter; often these women have 1-2 sons.

At the Fertility Center of New England, our high success rates are approaching 60%. In addition, we are able to offer this service at very competitive pricing. Our costs to the patient are nearly $5,000 lower than quoted in the Wall Street Journal article.

If you have questions or would like to schedule a free initial consult, contact us!