Since so many people that we know are in the baby-making phase of their lives right now, this caught our attention:

Using just a few drops of the mother's blood, Acu-Gen Biolab of Lowell, Mass., said the [Baby Gender Mentor] kit could detect the gender of the fetus with 99.9 percent accuracy — and as early as five weeks into pregnancy.

That's actually pretty amazing, if true. According to the rest of the article, that's a big "if," but we'll get to that in a moment.

But now parents are raising concerns about the test — on Monday 40 people who purchased the kit filed a class-action law suit in Massachusetts claiming incorrect test results.

We'll admit, our first reaction to this bit — because this is how it was presented on the television news clip we caught — had us shaking our heads, annoyed that parents who bought the wrong color layette set would be suing over it. However, when we sat down to read the actual article, the story became more clear:

The test costs $275 and comes with a 200 percent money-back guarantee.

...

In the suit, the claimants said they relied on the company's promise to refund the fee if their tests weren't accurate, but when they tried to get their money back, the company refused to provide a refund and instead changed the terms of the refund policy, acccording to the lawsuit.

See, now we'd more likely come down on the plaintiffs' side. Hey, if you're going to offer a 200% money back guarantee, you'd better be pretty fucking sure of your product — and if it fucks up, and you change your policy after the fact, then we're all for some legal action against you.

According to the article, Acu-Gen's policy originally required only a valid copy of your baby's birth certificate to prove a discrepancy between the test results and, well, reality. In fact, as of this writing, www.pregnancystore.com — the exclusive online provider of the Baby Gender Mentor kit — still offers essentially the same guarantee:

A valid registration number and a birth certificate are required for the refund.

However, they get a little more detailed on another page:

If your test results are legitimately incorrect, Baby Gender Mentor warranties a 200% money-back refund for both the laboratory fee and purchasing expense of the kit. An original birth certificate and a valid registration number are both required to claim the refund. In order to be eligible for the 200% money-back guarantee you MUST read and adhere to all the recommended procedures. In addition, the parent's name on the original birth certificate MUST match exactly the name on the blood specimen collection card, and your current address MUST match your original mailing address at the time of the test. To substantiate your claim, you MUST agree to submit the blood sample of the baby for kinship confirmation if requested by the lab. Baby Gender Mentor is not responsible for any consequences resulting from failure to follow kit instructions and will deny the 200% refund to cases deemed fraudulent. Furthermore, Baby Gender Mentor is not liable for the successful outcome of your pregnancy. In the advent of a miscarriage, no refunds will be granted. Baby Gender Mentor will not accept any gender discrepancy claims citing ultrasound image, karyotyping/FISH analysis, or any other indirect, low-resolution gender-determining techniques. (This policy is subject to change without notice.)

Well, gee, guys — guess you weren't so confident that your bogus kit works, huh?

According to the ABC News article:

Acu-Gen's kit claims to detect both male-fetus- and female-fetus-specific chromosomal DNA in the expectant mother's blood sample "with an unprecedented sensitivity and specificity."

However, they do not provide any research or specific studies.

...

Some scientists said the technology is possible in theory, but expressed doubt about Acu-Gen's claims.

"They claim that they are able to detect either a male or female fetus, yet they clearly indicate that no males should come near the pregnant patient when taking the blood sample — this is contradictory to their claims," said Dr. Patrick P. Koty, an assistant pediatric professor and director of the Molecular Genetics Laboratory at Wake Forest University School of Medicine. "I would be very skeptical about the validity of this test and would not recommend it until it was validated."

On the other hand, Dr. Charles Lockwood, chairman of Obestrics [sic] and Gynecology at Yale School of Medicine, said that it is possible for fetal DNA to be found in maternal blood as soon as the placenta has developed, and that "five weeks is not impossible."

Conflicting opinions on either side of the fence. Let's read Acu-Gen's own copy:

The Baby Gender Mentor lab is able to determine fetus-originated-specific chromosome sequence detected in the maternal blood stream. If there is fetus-originated Y-specific chromosome sequence detected in your blood, you are currently carrying at least one baby boy. If fetus-originated X-specific chromosome sequence is detected in your blood, you are currently carrying at least one baby girl. If there is a substantial amount fetus-originated Y-specific chromosome sequence detectable in your sample, indicating that you are carrying at least one baby boy AND there is a substantial amount of fetus-originated X-specific chromosome sequence detected in your blood, indicating that you are carrying at least one baby girl -- this means that you are currently carrying at least one baby girl and boy at this time.

Okay, now, we're a little rusty on our genetics, but if the "X-specific chromosome sequence" is detected, how the heck does that indicate that you must be carrying a girl? Last time we checked, both males and females carry X-chromosomes. (Any doctors or geneticists out there, please feel free to correct our facts or reasoning.) So it would seem that this test is just as conclusive as a sonogram — in a sonogram, it is easier (though not infallibly so) to conclusively determine the gender of a male baby (where there's a willy, there's the way), but you often can't conclusively determine that a baby is female, since the "absence" of a phallus may merely indicate that it is hidden, not absent. Similarly, the presence of a chromosome shared by both genders could hardly be conclusive evidence of one or the other. As Dr. Lockwood points out:

"If you identify a Y chromosome, you can make a pretty good guess that it's a male, but for a female it's more difficult," Lockwood said. Also, fetal cells from previous pregnancies can continue to circulate and confuse the results.

But Acu-Gen claims their test is perfectly conclusive, don't they?

There is a possibility that your test result will come back inconclusive. If that occurs we cannot issue a refund for the Baby Gender Mentor Sample Mailer Kit.

Oh. Hard to nail these guys down at all, isn't it?

Some folks aren't quite that concerned with the accuracy of the test, or the elusive 200% money back guarantee, but rather ponder the ethical implications of a conclusive baby gender test.

Early-detection capabilities also raise complicated ethical issues, such as the potential increase in gender-selective abortions, experts noted.

For example, Lockwood said, "a disproportionate number of female fetuses have been terminated worldwide, and a 2-to-1 male-to-female ratio could lead to social unrest and wars."

This smacks of "slippery slope" to us. Quite possibly an accurate prediction, but still somewhat off-target. There would be no need to concern oneself with gender-selective abortions if all humans were instilled with values that place the sexes on equal footing in the first place. There are some parts of the world where this isn't even close to happening, and yes, gender-selective abortions might certainly become a problem there. But as with so many technological advances, the problems foreseen have less to do with the innovation itself — inherently — than they do with the current social, ethical and political environment, which is what really needs to be addressed to correct the problem. Why should a perfectly useful tool be taken away from responsible people just because not everyone is responsible enough to use it wisely? Hell, if that was a universal rule, the human race would never even have been able to advance to the lofty technological achievement of stone tools and sharpened sticks.

But another doctor brings up a far more interesting point:

Another important issue to consider is that all pregnancies naturally carry a 20 percent miscarriage rate, said Dr. Henry Klapholz, chairman of Obestrics [sic again — doesn't ABC News know how to spell "obstetrics"?] and Gynecology at MetroWest Medical Center in Framingham, Mass., and a professor at Harvard Medical School.

"At five weeks, quite frankly, you don't know if a pregnancy is 'good,'" Klapholz said. "It's bad enough to think you're going to have a baby because of a positive pregnancy test. Now couples will imagine a baby, then the gender of baby, then the name of the baby — this could be potentially more devastating than a miscarriage."

This is an issue that probably hits closer to home for most folks — the psychological effect of losing not just a fetus, but a concept of progeny; one that you have named, bought special gifts for, made special plans for. We're not going to say that losing a nameless fetus is any "easier" than losing one to whom you've attributed all of the traits we take for granted in our living children, and we certainly wouldn't say that one situation is morally or ethically "superior" to the other; we're just looking at this from a purely emotional level, revolving around the basic sense of attachment we feel to people whom we've come to know, in some sense or another. In this case, we aren't talking about a person, exactly, and we don't "know" them in the usual way; but there is still a tendency to create an emotional investment in the hypothetical person-to-be that is your baby. The loss of what amounts to a clump of cells can take on far more meaning to a potential parent based on this investment. In short, the more you learn about a potential baby — from the positive pregnancy test, to the first ultrasound, to hearing the heartbeat, to knowing the gender — the more hopes and dreams you invest in the pregnancy, and the more attached you become to the idea of that baby. And as technology advances, this knowledge is imparted to potential parents at an ever earlier stage of pregnancy.

Of course, to us, this doesn't mean that the service shouldn't be offered to prospective parents. Just as in the case of abortions, we should all be free to make such decisions based on our own feelings and beliefs. But it is an interesting question: with the high rate of natural termination for early pregnancies, how much would you want to know about a child that only has (at best) around a four in five chance of actually being a child? Where does the line cross between painful and not painful — and how blurry is that line?

A guarantee is a guarantee, but so what? To quote Chris Farley from Tommy Boy:
"The point is, how do you know the Guarantee Fairy isn't a crazy glue sniffer? "Building model airplanes" says the little fairy, but we're not buying it. Next thing you know, there's money missing off the dresser and your daughter's knocked up, I seen it a hundred times."

There are potentially other issues to ponder. What about China's one child law? I've got good friends that adopted a baby girl from China two years ago and are going back later this year to try for a second. They heard all kinds of horror stories about parents so desperate for a boy that when they give birth to a baby girl, they abandon the child, give her up for adoption or even resort to murder. Sick stuff. But if you're pro choice, a gender test that early in the pregnancy will give the parents options if the results aren't what they're looking for. In that instance, the guarantee is golden and double the money back won't quite cut it for a couple living under China's one child legislation. To some parents only able to have one child, how important is that one chance to continue a father's legacy or carry on the family name? Can you put a monetary value on it?

Very true, Fan-man: guarantees — in this twisty little maze of commerce that is our modern economy — aren't all they're cracked up to be. So, do we all accept the fact that a "guarantee" is no actual guarantee, or do we hold merchants responsible for their words as well as their products? Acu-Gen's guarantee, such as it is, is a wishy-washy mish-mash of hemming and hawing, which amounts to little more than an admission that their product doesn't necessarily work as advertised. Hey, sure, whatever floats their boat — but if they're going to make such claims, especially those involving monetary recompense and reliability, they should be held liable for them.

We completely agree that the conditions stated in the guarantee are a purely secondary issue. The hypothetical that you propose certainly makes a bad situation (the failure of the test) even worse. While we personally would never choose to abort a healthy pregnancy based solely on the gender of the fetus, we do believe that people have a right to make that decision. To be clear, we also think that people have the right to organize Nazi rallies and spew hateful, blatantly false rhetoric in the public square. In either case, we condemn the behavior, but support the right to indulge in it. To us, it's not the fact that hypothetical Chinese parents would choose to abort a female fetus, but rather why they would choose to do so. Again, we have to address the underlying problems that lead to such a dilemma — in your example, the legislation of reproductive rights and the undervaluing of female progeny.