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Susan Gunn is a slender, pretty woman married to Robert, an investment manager. Robert is a martial arts fiend and has a coiled-up, physical intensity that suggests he could, with one flick of his pinkie, pluck out your carotid artery. Of course he wouldn't - he's a most genial man - but that impression must help in his line of work.

The Gunns live in a nice suburban street in the south of England with their three small boys, but there is not a toy or half-chewed rusk to be seen. We sit around a glass coffee table. The room is clean and modern, the furnishings are that chicken soup colour favoured by architects - and expensive private clinics. Which is just where they are heading. The Gunns want a baby girl. They are off next week to California to undergo in vitro fertilisation using a screening process called preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD).

The couple seem slightly bemused. Not so much because they are travelling halfway round the world for a fantastically expensive and invasive treatment. But because they can't...