Gender selection on the basis of PGD is the most burning topic and many fear that this technology will act as a tool for manipulating the progeny (Fukuyama, 2002; Kass, 2002; Stock, 2002). “People opting for gender selection are mainly of two categories, those who want to have a son as their first baby as they and their culture thinks that a boy usually represents a family and secondly those who already have babies of same the gender that can be either male or female and now wants to have the opposite gender in order to complete the family” (Robertson, 2003). But HEFA has postulated a rule according to which sex-selection cannot be done on the basis of non-medical reasons (Deech and Smajdor, 2007, p.63) but it can be used where X-linked diseases are concerned as it is a medical scenario. However, some countries allow the use of PGD for sex selection depending on the strong acceptable evidences e.g. Israel ( Siegel-Itzkovich, 2005). Another country with a justified reason to allow PGD for sex-selection is India, which “allows couples having a baby of one gender to select a baby of opposite gender” (Malpani et al., 2002).Even in today’s era there are places in India where babies having female gender are brutally buried alive as soon as they are born, as they give priority to male gender.
Another area of debate can be the availability of the use of PGD for people having deafness in their family history. PGD will help them to detect the mutated embryos (GJB2 mutations) which are mainly responsible for the deafness throughout the generations (Nance and Pandya, 2002) and the screening will enhance the chances for the couple to have a baby free of hearing problems as every parent would like to give their child all the happiness in the world which they might have not got in their lives which is a very justified reason for the use of PGD. But ethically using PGD in such cases will generate a feeling of discrimination amongst the people having hearing impairments (Robertson, 2003) and the major ethical concern is the misuse of this technique such as in the case of a Canadian lesbian couple who opted for PGD in order to screen out the embryos without impairment as they wanted a deaf offspring (Deech and Smajdor, 2007, p.59).
An ethical argument has also been raised on the psychological experience of that child which was specially created to save his sibling, when that child grows up he might feel that the only reason for which he was brought into world was to save his brother/sister and ultimately that child will harbour ill-feelings about his existence (Pennings et al., 2002). But on the other hand scientific community thinks that this feeling to save somebody’s life will give that child a confidence and would make him understand the worth of his deed, unlike others this child had a very special reason to come into this world to act as a saviour for his sibling as well as a saviour of the happiness of his family (Thomasma, 1992). In order to safeguard the rights of the unborn HEFA continuously stress upon the importance of counselling before and after the birth of the babies, so that parents can be made aware of risks involved in their decisions. It is the duty of practitioners to offer medical advice to their patients at all times even if it differs from the recommended option (Rabino, 2003).
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