A few American and Cypriot clinics offer a special service, namely “gender selection”. These clinics “mostly treat women who have no fertility problems” and offer in-vitro fertilisation and pre-implantation diagnosis. Even if “the phenomenon is still marginal”, “designer babies have become a reality”.
Welcoming patients from abroad, these “fertility centres” offer “IVF with selection for €5,500 excluding travelling and accommodation”, to which a further €2,000 should be added for treatments purchased on-line prior to travel. In the United States, “this is a market with an estimated annual turnover of 100 million dollars”. The doctors interviewed explained that “demand is very high”, as confirmed by consultations on the doctissimo forum, “I want to have a daughter in 2015, 2016, even 2017”.
Doctor Steinberg, “a major gender selection specialist in the United States”, also explained that he “started to sort babies according to eye colour – blue, obviously”. He pointed out that, “Eye colour is a big market – demand increases really quickly. People want things for their babies that they could not have themselves”.
Le Temps, Julie Conti (17/05/2016)