When a genetic testing kit promising to predict a baby's gender with 99.9 percent accuracy five weeks after conception was launched last year, many pregnant women in the US were delighted.
About 4,500 bought the kit and began making plans for the new arrival. Names were chosen; nurseries painted; siblings coached to say brother, or sister; and then, several weeks later, about 100 discovered that the tests had got it wrong.
In a class action lawsuit filed in the US district court in Boston on behalf of 16 women the makers of the Baby Gender Mentor are accused of breaking their promise. Barry Gainey, the women's lawyer, said he knew of about 100 women whom the kit had failed.
The suit seeks to bar Acu-Gen Biolab from falsely marketing its test and to compel the firm to honor its money-back guarantee. The Baby Gender Mentor's Web site promises "unsurpassed accuracy" in predicting the sex of a fetus from three drops of a pregnant woman's blood, allowing parents to form a "natural nexus with your baby early on."
The test, which costs US$275, claims to detect fetal chromosomes in the maternal blood stream. Women do it at home and send it to Massachusetts for processing. They are promised double their money back on production of a birth certificate if the result is wrong.
But within weeks of taking the test dozens of pregnant women reported having ultrasound scans showing they were having babies of the opposite gender. When they complained to Acu-Gen they were told ultrasounds were unreliable predictors of gender. But after their babies were born the company proved just as reluctant to honor its promise. One of Gainey's clients was told that her child had gender irregularities.
"If he sold 4,000 tests he has got a right to have four women get it wrong, but he is way over that number," Gainey said.
The Acu-Gen president, CN Wang, has issued the following statement: "Dr Wang has decided to defer all his interviews regarding Baby Gender Mentor product and service for one more year, when the results of actual births ... should answer any concern of the accuracy of the test."
Nvidia Corp chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) on Monday introduced the company’s latest supercomputer platform, featuring six new chips made by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), saying that it is now “in full production.” “If Vera Rubin is going to be in time for this year, it must be in production by now, and so, today I can tell you that Vera Rubin is in full production,” Huang said during his keynote speech at CES in Las Vegas. The rollout of six concurrent chips for Vera Rubin — the company’s next-generation artificial intelligence (AI) computing platform — marks a strategic
Shares in Taiwan closed at a new high yesterday, the first trading day of the new year, as contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) continued to break records amid an artificial intelligence (AI) boom, dealers said. The TAIEX closed up 386.21 points, or 1.33 percent, at 29,349.81, with turnover totaling NT$648.844 billion (US$20.65 billion). “Judging from a stronger Taiwan dollar against the US dollar, I think foreign institutional investors returned from the holidays and brought funds into the local market,” Concord Securities Co (康和證券) analyst Kerry Huang (黃志祺) said. “Foreign investors just rebuilt their positions with TSMC as their top target,
REVENUE PERFORMANCE: Cloud and network products, and electronic components saw strong increases, while smart consumer electronics and computing products fell Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday posted 26.51 percent quarterly growth in revenue for last quarter to NT$2.6 trillion (US$82.44 billion), the strongest on record for the period and above expectations, but the company forecast a slight revenue dip this quarter due to seasonal factors. On an annual basis, revenue last quarter grew 22.07 percent, the company said. Analysts on average estimated about NT$2.4 trillion increase. Hon Hai, which assembles servers for Nvidia Corp and iPhones for Apple Inc, is expanding its capacity in the US, adding artificial intelligence (AI) server production in Wisconsin and Texas, where it operates established campuses. This
US President Donald Trump on Friday blocked US photonics firm HieFo Corp’s US$3 million acquisition of assets in New Jersey-based aerospace and defense specialist Emcore Corp, citing national security and China-related concerns. In an order released by the White House, Trump said HieFo was “controlled by a citizen of the People’s Republic of China” and that its 2024 acquisition of Emcore’s businesses led the US president to believe that it might “take action that threatens to impair the national security of the United States.” The order did not name the person or detail Trump’s concerns. “The Transaction is hereby prohibited,”
RSS