After considering the issue for more than a year, Britain's regulator of fertility services recommended that new techniques making it possible to select the sex of a baby in advance should only be used to avoid serious gender-linked disorders, such as hemophilia.

　　The Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority, which regulates fertility clinics and research centers, said in a report published yesterday it had rejected the idea of allowing couples to choose the sex of their child for social reasons, such as balancing the number of boys and girls in their families.The agency's review was prompted by a request from the government for an opinion on how new technologies allowing gender selection should be used. The regulator said its review included a public consultation, which indicated that 80 percent of people in Britain oppose gender selection for non-medical reasons.

　　After natural conception, the chance of any child being a particular sex is about 50 percent, but there are always slightly more boys than girls. However, medical concerns aside, some parents may have social or economic reasons for preferring a child of one sex rather than the other, or may want to "balance" their families.

　　Various methods of gender selection have been used - with different degrees of reliability - ranging from timing of intercourse to favor the conception of a child of a particular sex to the abortion of fetuses that are shown on ultrasound to be of the undesired sex.

　　More modern techniques in fertility clinics have been primarily used to prevent couples passing on an inherited disease that affect children of one sex.

　　"The creation of a new life is the most morally serious thing you can do," said Dr David King, director of the watchdogsgroupsHuman Genetics Alert. "We must not let it become just another consumer choice."