Cystic fibrosis carrier screening, chromosome analyses, and hemoglobin evaluations are performed on the majority of sperm donor applicants. Tay-Sachs disease carrier screening is performed on most donors with Jewish heritage but there is significant variation in screening for other disorders .

Since the screening of sperm donors is not usually complete, we recommend that all of our patients do a fairly comprehensive screening of themselves or their partner (if they are using their partner's sperm) for recessive genetic diseases. We use Counsyl screening which screens over 100 recessive diseases using a saliva specimen. Of course there are still some genetic diseases not covered such as the ones that are dominant and others that are not in Counsyl's panel. One still needs to rely on family history and ethnicity to determine if any other testing is needed.

We are fortunate that technology exists to determine if anyone is a carrier of an abnormal gene since we can now employ preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) for single gene defects to detect whether an embryo is affected before transfer, thus reducing the chance of a child with the genetic disease without needing to consider termination of a pregnancy.

Reproductive Partners was cited in an article in the November 2009 issue of ELLE magazine, “Girl Crazy: Women Who Suffer from Gender Disappointment.” The article profiles women whose lives are disrupted because they have not been able to have the girl child that they are craving. According to the author, they resort to a variety of techniques to try to achieve their elusive dream from folk remedies to IVF with preimplantation genetic screening (PGS), also know as preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PDG) for chromosomes. The focus of the article was the degree of emotional impairment from which these women suffer rather than the procedure itself. The article profiles a physician whose practice is devoted to IVF/PGS for gender selection, although the technique is widely available, including at Reproductive Partners.

The article states, “Physicians at other clinics, including California’s topranked Reproductive Partners Medical Group, use PGD as a screening tool to identify embryos with defects, and—if pressed— will reveal the sex of embryos in conjunction with other findings. ‘We would transfer embryos of one sex or another if that is the patient’s preference,’ says Arthur Wisot, its executive director and a clinical professor of reproductive medicine at UCLA. ‘We would do it if they seem like reasonable people and no one is hurt by it. But we certainly don’t advertise it and promote it the way Steinberg does. The people he services are more on the fringe, and he’s just playing to their neuroses.’”

 Actually Reproductive Partners offers IVF/PGS for family balancing and we do not need to be “pressed” to reveal the sex of embryos. It is just not the only focus of our practice. We mostly employ this technology to detect embryos with chromosomal abnormalities, when appropriate, and diseases caused by known gene abnormalities carried by one or both parents. In fact, the most recent recommendation from the American Society for Reproductive Medicine has reduced the number of reasons for doing PGS for chromosomes because of evidence that it does not improve live birth rates in patients with advanced maternal age, previous implantation failure, recurrent pregnancy loss and even those who have recurrent pregnancy loss from chromosomal abnormalities.