Taking advantage of the ever-expanding role of modern genetics
Announcing Eye Color Selection!
Welcome to eye color selection! The newest option available only at The Fertility Institutes to 21st Century “parents to be”. Parents are increasingly taking advantage of the ever-expanding role of modern genetics in providing choices concerning the health, well-being, gender and characteristics of planned pregnancies and future children.
The Fertility Institutes have remained the first and only genetics based fertility program in the United States or anywhere worldwide skilled and able to offer high level "phenotypic" screening of parents and their families seeking to have a voice in determining the eye color of planned children. From our initial work in the field nearly 10 years ago, we have successfully refined our ability to study in great detail, the eye color potentials of “mom and dad” and offer, to parents possibly or likely carrying the genetic codes for a desired eye color, the ability to greatly increase the likelihood of a new pregnancy carrying the genetic code for a chosen eye color.
There are two important phases to enrolling in our eye color selection program:
- Determining if you, as parents may carry the genetic codes, or “building blocks” of the eye color you wish to choose for your child and:
- Undergoing the actual fertility procedure that will allow our scientists and physicians to examine the embryos you produce with in vitro fertilization to determine which, if any of the embryos carry the genes necessary to greatly increase the chance of the chosen eye color.
We are now, for the first time in 10 years, once again accepting parents wishing to participate in this exciting enhancement of reproductive possibilities.
Each of the steps outlined above is very important and we will provide for you here a brief summary of the process involved:
Testing Mom and Dad’s Genetics
The Fertility Institutes have developed a unique, proprietary screening protocol studying a complex set of important family historic and personal genetic landmarks in parents known to be associated with eye color. It is important to understand that parents do not have to personally have the eye color they are seeking. They must only carry the genetic codes for that eye color that can be passed on to their child. Clearly, not every person who personally has green eyes has both or even one parent with green eyes. Yet those parents, who do NOT have green eyes, clearly carried the “hidden” genes to produce green eyes in their child. And that is what we are initially looking for in you as parents. We are searching for clues to the codes, hidden or otherwise that you may or may not carry that will allow you to produce a child with the color you seek. It must be remembered that NO ONE and NOTHING can “make” a baby with an eye color. As has been happening from the beginning of humankind, only mom and dad can “make” the eye color by combining their own unique genetics into the new child (see chart below). The Fertility Institutes are prepared to offer this screening protocol to all those scheduling an initial intake consultation with our eye color program. Our findings thus far have shown 72% of new eye color selection inquiry patients to be qualified per our screening protocols. Those unqualified through initial screening are still eligible to participate as there is NO protocol able to predict eye color outcomes with 100% certainty. In fact, many found less likely to produce the eye color they desire have indeed obtained the results they sought. We encourage you to call for an intake consultation.
What we are now able to do is first examine your personal and family eye color genetics history as parents to be. We will determine if you possibly carry the genes associated with the ability to produce a baby with a chosen eye color. If the necessary building blocks or codes may be present, based on the provided genetics information, we allow parents the opportunity to enter the program to produce embryos destined to be tested for general genetic health (euploidy), gender if desired and specific eye color genes.
These genetic results about each individual embryo will be presented to you, and together with your physicians, geneticist and IVF scientists, you will be offered the opportunity to specify which embryo or embryos you elect to have returned to you in the hopes of producing a healthy pregnancy. You will also be given the opportunity to store any healthy unutilized embryos for future transfer.
We are only offering eye color selection at this time in conjunction with our general genetic well-being and gender selection procedures. Eye color preference is available only as an “add-on” procedure to our general procedures. We are not able at this time to receive embryos produced at outside fertility centers for eye color screening. You will be provided additional information about all of the extensive genetic screening that we routinely perform in our IVF-PGS-PGD-Gender Selection program(s). Learn more about our Gender Selection Program.
For parents with brown, dark brown, black blue and green eyes, there is a substantial likelihood that you may carry the genes for eye colors you may never have suspected. The genetic tests for these codes is extensive. If you are interested in our gender selection program and are ready to enroll in gender selection, we may also have options for you to bring down the cost of initial screening to see if you are candidates to select eye color. Please click here to view a graph outlining the chances of having a baby with a chosen eye color based on your own eye colors. We encourage you to call us for more information. For current pricing for both the eye color personal and family history genetic screening first step and the actual eye color selection procedure, please email or call us at (818) 728-4600 or (212) 725-1177
Latest Eye Color News
Increased Availability of Eye Color Selection With Genetic Health Screening And Gender Determination Beginning January, 2023.
We are pleased to announce that in response to the ever increasing demand for our exclusive eye color selection option (we are the ONLY program anywhere offering this option) AND our ability to now offer eye color selection to International Patients, we have expanded our laboratory capacity and are once again offering reservations for parents interested in screening their embryos for genetic health, gender and eye color. We are predicting our newly updated and highly accurate screening technology to be app. 92-97% predictive for eye color. Call today for information: (818) 728-4600 or (212) 725-1177
Written by
Dr. Jeffrey Steinberg
Founder of The Fertility Institutes
