Nowadays, with people's personalized psychological needs, all walks of life are popular "private customization", eating, dressing, and even changing a hairstyle, we must avoid uniformity, the pursuit of differentiation, not to mention the birth of children, this major event in life, more can not be sloppy. In the IVF counseling reception work, the needs of different helpers vary:
"I already have two daughters, and now that my third child is open, can you help me get a baby boy directly?"
"It's too much trouble to have children one by one, and I want to give birth to dragons and phoenixes directly."
"My lover and I are both highly educated, and I heard that the third generation of IVF can screen genes and choose a transplant with the highest IQ?"
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"Personalization" requirements such as these. So, with the help of test tube technology, can it meet people's "perfect customization" needs for the next generation?
First, can IVF choose to give birth to boys and girls?
Influenced by traditional Chinese concepts, many people hope to select the sex of the fetus through IVF. However, mainland law clearly stipulates that whether it is an ordinary healthy pregnant woman doing a B-ultrasound examination or an infertile couple doing IVF, it is forbidden to do sex identification for fetuses that are not medically necessary. Even the third generation of technology for infertile people with a family history of genetic diseases can only select healthy embryos that do not carry specific genetic diseases before embryo implantation, and still cannot choose the sex of the future fetus.
However, there is one option other than "can't choose without choosing". Some of the helpers suffer from sexually linked genetic diseases for both men and women. The so-called sex-linked genetic diseases, recessive genetic diseases are more common, the pathogenic gene is on the X chromosome, which is often carried by women in the diseased family, and the disease is characterized by the fact that giving birth to girls can avoid the defects of genetic diseases; if boys are born, they will be inherited. Therefore, the third generation of assisted reproductive technology will help families with genetic defects to conceive healthy babies through the third generation of assisted reproductive technology.
Second, can IVF choose to have twins or dragon and phoenix fetuses?
Although many people have conceived twins through IVF, in fact, IVF technology cannot customize twins. According to national regulations, when transferring embryos through test tube technology, it is not the more embryos transferred, the better, female patients under 35 years old generally implant 1 to 2 embryos at a time, the second implantation under 35 years old or the first implantation over 35 years old, in order to increase the success rate, you can consider implanting 2 embryos at once, however, if the woman has undergone uterine surgery, as always, caesarean section history, fibroid removal history, cervical cone, etc., in order to reduce the risk of uterine rupture, will also consider implanting 1 embryo at a time.
If both implanted embryos can survive, then women do have a high probability of having twins. But after the embryos are placed, no doctor can guarantee that the placed embryos will survive and that they will survive in the end, which is determined by natural selection, not the doctor. Therefore, IVF can "customize" twins, which is not true, let alone do IVF in order to have twins.
Can IVF eliminate defective babies with genetic diseases?
The answer is yes. If it is a couple with a clear single gene genetic disease, you can detect and screen healthy embryos without disease-causing genes before embryo transfer through the third generation of IVF technology, and carry out transfer, effectively reducing the probability of birth of defective children, but although healthy embryos are selected, after embryo transfer, at any stage of life development, the fetus may have abnormal changes in chromosomes due to maternal reasons, environmental and other factors. Therefore, after successfully conceiving with the third generation of IVF, pregnant women still need to undergo routine prenatal examinations in order to maximize the health of the next generation of babies.
In the process of human development, technology is like Pandora's box, it is extremely valuable, but it also contains risks, and only within a reasonable range can the risk be minimized. The same is true of assisted reproductive fertility technology, although there is a "manual selection" link, but also can not be arbitrary, in order to make it in the right channel, play the greatest value.