Controversial or not, it seems more Malaysians are leaping at the opportunity to exercise their freedom (or rather, luxury) of choice in deciding their future child’s gender. And the nice thing about the whole process is that most methods seem remarkably safe and simple minimal surgery, minimal drugs, and most of all, minimal invasive biotechnological methods.

For the simpler (and less effective) approaches, all you need to do is to attend consultation with recognised fertility centres, and implement a few relatively simple instructions - from eating “…more alkaline-based food such as seafood…” to having “…intercourse during ovulation using a certain method.” But once we go to the extremely controversial (and expensive), yet effective (~99% accurate), pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) method or even the less controversial Micro-Sort and Intra-Uterus Insemination (IUI) techniques, then things start looking a bit cloudier as embryos and the like come into the picture.

In any case, certain religious groups are already complaining - Christians in particular. But I suppose this isn’t a surprise given that, on a worldwide scope, this “playing God” debate is nothing new. However, as long as the more controversial methods (e.g. PGD, IUI) do not become predominant in Malaysia, I doubt there’s really much to argue about.