The enduring value of Dr Shettles's work, demonstrated also by those who published both confirmatory and contradictory studies after him, is that, at least in Western countries, consistently more sex-selection-seeking people want girls than want boys.

In Dr Barbara Simcock's 1985 study in Sydney (see the main text), fully 52 of the 73 couples wanted a girl, compared with just 21 who sought a boy.

The same evidence of a preference for seeking females has been reported more recently from Ericsson-associated clinics.

No doubt this preference for girls over boys does not hold true in all parts of the world. In India and China, for example, there is ample evidence that boys are favored to such an extreme degree that abortion of female fetuses and even female infanticide are practiced to favor sons over daughters.

Not just feminists are appalled by such brutality.

Effective sperm selection would at the very least be preferable to abortion and infanticide -- while the social changes come about that, with time, might put an end to what is plainly an extraordinary pressure in these countries to have sons instead of daughters.