Here come the lawyers--Baby Gender Mentor

I worked for pharmaceutical companies for many years and was always focused on patient safety. One indication I now use that a product is in trouble is when I start seeing law-firm ads on the t.v. In this case, the product is Baby Gendor Mentor--described earlier in this Genetizen blog.

The test is sold through ads in pregnancy and baby magazines and over the Internet and is supposed to tell an expectant mother the gender of her developing child as early as 5 weeks. The mother supplies a few drops of blood and the test says, congratulations you are expecting a ......!

Last fall, there were news items that the results were being questioned by a number of people. Recently, questions related to the test have again arisen. News programs that earlier contacted BABY Gender Mentor and Accu-Gen, the source of the test, were told to wait until babies had been born and see whether the test or a conflicting ultrasound was right in each case. The company claims 99.9% accuracy, but refuses to release any data. Now, some of those babies have been born. Again, though, there's no unbiased collection of wrong vs. right predictions.

What we have learned, is that a lawsuit has been filed by some mothers in New Jersey--the number of plaintiffs varies depending on the source you read. Here's the webpage for the lawsuit: http://www.babygenderinvestigation.com/ . As with any group seeking validation, the group is looking for people to add to the list of disgruntled purchasers.

Both ABC (http://www.abcactionnews.com/stories/2006/02/060220babyfolo.shtml)  and NPR (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5235003) have recently aired reports. A website called in-gender.org (http://www.in-gender.com/cs/blogs/gender_selection_news/archive/2006/2/17/6646.aspx) has been following this and other gender identification issues for some time.

I'm sure there's more to come.

Marie Godfrey, PhD