I recently read of a study that investigated the ethics of child's biological sex choice in humans, and now I want to find out how this can/could be done. Does anyone know of scientific papers or journals that describe the methods in some detail? The answers I was finding in my own search were not as specific as I would like.
The main technique is sperm separation or sorting, where you separate sperm by gender, and only use the gender that you want. Existing techniques aren't perfect. AFAIK, they are typically less than 90% accurate, but it is still better than 50%. Typically, this involves some type of cell sorting device often with some kind of fluorescent tag marker.
The second technique is embryo screening. Often, with IVF, you screen and can confirm the gender that you want before implanting the embryo in the mother.
Links:
ethics
. So are you interested in ethics or in science? Are you interested in the methods that offer couples the opportunity to choose the sex of their baby or are you interest in how some species manage to chose the sex of their baby (which is particularly the case when there is environmental sex determination (ESD)). This wikipedia article might be a good start. $\endgroup$ – Remi.b Dec 4 '14 at 17:01