Salman Haider reciting Main bhi Kafir, Tu bhi Kafir
History of the muzzling of the freedom of expression in Pakistan - by Hamid Bhashani
Saturday, 14 January 2017
All those in developing countries please look away now - Aid in reverse: how poor countries develop rich countries
Jason Hickel In The Guardian
We have long been told a compelling story about the relationship between rich countries and poor countries. The story holds that the rich nations of the OECD give generously of their wealth to the poorer nation cheats of the global south, to help them eradicate poverty and push them up the development ladder. Yes, during colonialism western powers may have enriched themselves by extracting resources and slave labour from their colonies – but that’s all in the past. These days, they give more than $125bn (£102bn) in aid each year – solid evidence of their benevolent goodwill.
This story is so widely propagated by the aid industry and the governments of the rich world that we have come to take it for granted. But it may not be as simple as it appears.
The US-based Global Financial Integrity (GFI) and the Centre for Applied Research at the Norwegian School of Economics recently published some fascinating data. They tallied up all of the financial resources that get transferred between rich countries and poor countries each year: not just aid, foreign investment and trade flows (as previous studies have done) but also non-financial transfers such as debt cancellation, unrequited transfers like workers’ remittances, and unrecorded capital flight (more of this later). As far as I am aware, it is the most comprehensive assessment of resource transfers ever undertaken.
The flow of money from rich countries to poor countries pales in comparison to the flow that runs in the other direction
What they discovered is that the flow of money from rich countries to poor countries pales in comparison to the flow that runs in the other direction.
In 2012, the last year of recorded data, developing countries received a total of $1.3tn, including all aid, investment, and income from abroad. But that same year some $3.3tn flowed out of them. In other words, developing countries sent $2tn more to the rest of the world than they received. If we look at all years since 1980, these net outflows add up to an eye-popping total of $16.3tn – that’s how much money has been drained out of the global south over the past few decades. To get a sense for the scale of this, $16.3tn is roughly the GDP of the United States
What this means is that the usual development narrative has it backwards. Aid is effectively flowing in reverse. Rich countries aren’t developing poor countries; poor countries are developing rich ones.
What do these large outflows consist of? Well, some of it is payments on debt. Developing countries have forked out over $4.2tn in interest payments alone since 1980 – a direct cash transfer to big banks in New York and London, on a scale that dwarfs the aid that they received during the same period. Another big contributor is the income that foreigners make on their investments in developing countries and then repatriate back home. Think of all the profits that BP extracts from Nigeria’s oil reserves, for example, or that Anglo-American pulls out of South Africa’s gold mines.
But by far the biggest chunk of outflows has to do with unrecorded – and usually illicit – capital flight. GFI calculates that developing countries have lost a total of $13.4tn through unrecorded capital flight since 1980.
Most of these unrecorded outflows take place through the international trade system. Basically, corporations – foreign and domestic alike – report false prices on their trade invoices in order to spirit money out of developing countries directly into tax havens and secrecy jurisdictions, a practice known as “trade misinvoicing”. Usually the goal is to evade taxes, but sometimes this practice is used to launder money or circumvent capital controls. In 2012, developing countries lost $700bn through trade misinvoicing, which outstripped aid receipts that year by a factor of five.
Multinational companies also steal money from developing countries through “same-invoice faking”, shifting profits illegally between their own subsidiaries by mutually faking trade invoice prices on both sides. For example, a subsidiary in Nigeria might dodge local taxes by shifting money to a related subsidiary in the British Virgin Islands, where the tax rate is effectively zero and where stolen funds can’t be traced.
GFI doesn’t include same-invoice faking in its headline figures because it is very difficult to detect, but they estimate that it amounts to another $700bn per year. And these figures only cover theft through trade in goods. If we add theft through trade in services to the mix, it brings total net resource outflows to about $3tn per year.
That’s 24 times more than the aid budget. In other words, for every $1 of aid that developing countries receive, they lose $24 in net outflows. These outflows strip developing countries of an important source of revenue and finance for development. The GFI report finds that increasingly large net outflows have caused economic growth rates in developing countries to decline, and are directly responsible for falling living standards.
Who is to blame for this disaster? Since illegal capital flight is such a big chunk of the problem, that’s a good place to start. Companies that lie on their trade invoices are clearly at fault; but why is it so easy for them to get away with it? In the past, customs officials could hold up transactions that looked dodgy, making it nearly impossible for anyone to cheat. But the World Trade Organisation claimed that this made trade inefficient, and since 1994 customs officials have been required to accept invoiced prices at face value except in very suspicious circumstances, making it difficult for them to seize illicit outflows.
FacebookTwitterPinterest Protest about tax havens in London in 2016, organised by charities Oxfam, ActionAid and Christian Aid. Photograph: Carl Court/Getty Images
Still, illegal capital flight wouldn’t be possible without the tax havens. And when it comes to tax havens, the culprits are not hard to identify: there are more than 60 in the world, and the vast majority of them are controlled by a handful of western countries. There are European tax havens such as Luxembourg and Belgium, and US tax havens like Delaware and Manhattan. But by far the biggest network of tax havens is centered around the City of London, which controls secrecy jurisdictions throughout the British Crown Dependencies and Overseas Territories.
In other words, some of the very countries that so love to tout their foreign aid contributions are the ones enabling mass theft from developing countries.
The aid narrative begins to seem a bit naïve when we take these reverse flows into account. It becomes clear that aid does little but mask the maldistribution of resources around the world. It makes the takers seem like givers, granting them a kind of moral high ground while preventing those of us who care about global poverty from understanding how the system really works.
Poor countries don’t need charity. They need justice. And justice is not difficult to deliver. We could write off the excess debts of poor countries, freeing them up to spend their money on development instead of interest payments on old loans; we could close down the secrecy jurisdictions, and slap penalties on bankers and accountants who facilitate illicit outflows; and we could impose a global minimum tax on corporate income to eliminate the incentive for corporations to secretly shift their money around the world.
We know how to fix the problem. But doing so would run up against the interests of powerful banks and corporations that extract significant material benefit from the existing system. The question is, do we have the courage?
We have long been told a compelling story about the relationship between rich countries and poor countries. The story holds that the rich nations of the OECD give generously of their wealth to the poorer nation cheats of the global south, to help them eradicate poverty and push them up the development ladder. Yes, during colonialism western powers may have enriched themselves by extracting resources and slave labour from their colonies – but that’s all in the past. These days, they give more than $125bn (£102bn) in aid each year – solid evidence of their benevolent goodwill.
This story is so widely propagated by the aid industry and the governments of the rich world that we have come to take it for granted. But it may not be as simple as it appears.
The US-based Global Financial Integrity (GFI) and the Centre for Applied Research at the Norwegian School of Economics recently published some fascinating data. They tallied up all of the financial resources that get transferred between rich countries and poor countries each year: not just aid, foreign investment and trade flows (as previous studies have done) but also non-financial transfers such as debt cancellation, unrequited transfers like workers’ remittances, and unrecorded capital flight (more of this later). As far as I am aware, it is the most comprehensive assessment of resource transfers ever undertaken.
The flow of money from rich countries to poor countries pales in comparison to the flow that runs in the other direction
What they discovered is that the flow of money from rich countries to poor countries pales in comparison to the flow that runs in the other direction.
In 2012, the last year of recorded data, developing countries received a total of $1.3tn, including all aid, investment, and income from abroad. But that same year some $3.3tn flowed out of them. In other words, developing countries sent $2tn more to the rest of the world than they received. If we look at all years since 1980, these net outflows add up to an eye-popping total of $16.3tn – that’s how much money has been drained out of the global south over the past few decades. To get a sense for the scale of this, $16.3tn is roughly the GDP of the United States
What this means is that the usual development narrative has it backwards. Aid is effectively flowing in reverse. Rich countries aren’t developing poor countries; poor countries are developing rich ones.
What do these large outflows consist of? Well, some of it is payments on debt. Developing countries have forked out over $4.2tn in interest payments alone since 1980 – a direct cash transfer to big banks in New York and London, on a scale that dwarfs the aid that they received during the same period. Another big contributor is the income that foreigners make on their investments in developing countries and then repatriate back home. Think of all the profits that BP extracts from Nigeria’s oil reserves, for example, or that Anglo-American pulls out of South Africa’s gold mines.
But by far the biggest chunk of outflows has to do with unrecorded – and usually illicit – capital flight. GFI calculates that developing countries have lost a total of $13.4tn through unrecorded capital flight since 1980.
Most of these unrecorded outflows take place through the international trade system. Basically, corporations – foreign and domestic alike – report false prices on their trade invoices in order to spirit money out of developing countries directly into tax havens and secrecy jurisdictions, a practice known as “trade misinvoicing”. Usually the goal is to evade taxes, but sometimes this practice is used to launder money or circumvent capital controls. In 2012, developing countries lost $700bn through trade misinvoicing, which outstripped aid receipts that year by a factor of five.
Multinational companies also steal money from developing countries through “same-invoice faking”, shifting profits illegally between their own subsidiaries by mutually faking trade invoice prices on both sides. For example, a subsidiary in Nigeria might dodge local taxes by shifting money to a related subsidiary in the British Virgin Islands, where the tax rate is effectively zero and where stolen funds can’t be traced.
GFI doesn’t include same-invoice faking in its headline figures because it is very difficult to detect, but they estimate that it amounts to another $700bn per year. And these figures only cover theft through trade in goods. If we add theft through trade in services to the mix, it brings total net resource outflows to about $3tn per year.
That’s 24 times more than the aid budget. In other words, for every $1 of aid that developing countries receive, they lose $24 in net outflows. These outflows strip developing countries of an important source of revenue and finance for development. The GFI report finds that increasingly large net outflows have caused economic growth rates in developing countries to decline, and are directly responsible for falling living standards.
Who is to blame for this disaster? Since illegal capital flight is such a big chunk of the problem, that’s a good place to start. Companies that lie on their trade invoices are clearly at fault; but why is it so easy for them to get away with it? In the past, customs officials could hold up transactions that looked dodgy, making it nearly impossible for anyone to cheat. But the World Trade Organisation claimed that this made trade inefficient, and since 1994 customs officials have been required to accept invoiced prices at face value except in very suspicious circumstances, making it difficult for them to seize illicit outflows.
FacebookTwitterPinterest Protest about tax havens in London in 2016, organised by charities Oxfam, ActionAid and Christian Aid. Photograph: Carl Court/Getty Images
Still, illegal capital flight wouldn’t be possible without the tax havens. And when it comes to tax havens, the culprits are not hard to identify: there are more than 60 in the world, and the vast majority of them are controlled by a handful of western countries. There are European tax havens such as Luxembourg and Belgium, and US tax havens like Delaware and Manhattan. But by far the biggest network of tax havens is centered around the City of London, which controls secrecy jurisdictions throughout the British Crown Dependencies and Overseas Territories.
In other words, some of the very countries that so love to tout their foreign aid contributions are the ones enabling mass theft from developing countries.
The aid narrative begins to seem a bit naïve when we take these reverse flows into account. It becomes clear that aid does little but mask the maldistribution of resources around the world. It makes the takers seem like givers, granting them a kind of moral high ground while preventing those of us who care about global poverty from understanding how the system really works.
Poor countries don’t need charity. They need justice. And justice is not difficult to deliver. We could write off the excess debts of poor countries, freeing them up to spend their money on development instead of interest payments on old loans; we could close down the secrecy jurisdictions, and slap penalties on bankers and accountants who facilitate illicit outflows; and we could impose a global minimum tax on corporate income to eliminate the incentive for corporations to secretly shift their money around the world.
We know how to fix the problem. But doing so would run up against the interests of powerful banks and corporations that extract significant material benefit from the existing system. The question is, do we have the courage?
Friday, 13 January 2017
Sex-for-rent is the hidden danger faced by more and more female tenants
Penny Anderson in The Guardian
The private rented sector is broken and house-hunting is a dreadful task fraught with abject desperation. Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, to the list of nasties (the grasping letting agents and truculent and capricious buy-to-let owners) whom tenants confront can now be added creepy, predatory rentiers offering homes in return for sex.
In the weird swamp world of online portals, everything is so much more dangerous. Female tenants are especially vulnerable when flat-hunting, and some landlords are quite open about what they expect, while others hide in plain sight. The basic act of flat-hunting often involves wandering into an unfamiliar neighbourhood, then entering a flat for guided viewings with strangers: a man you have never met before, who could assume or imagine that signing a rental agreement entitles him to sex. Remember, too, that this man might ultimately be in possession of the key to your home, and, if he’s a live-in landlord, could occupy the adjacent bedroom.
Some ads are overtly soliciting sex, while others are coy. During a bizarre viewing tour of a tiny flat with a friend, the drunken landlord, having first claimed that he was moving out to live with his girlfriend, changed tack. He explained: “She’s not really my girlfriend and would it be OK if I visited?” I left.
An especially odious case involved a friend who moved out after her landlord offered to reduce the rent if she were “nice to him”. He then accused her of prudery and had the effrontery to pursue her for the income he lost after she escaped his lair. (And frankly, it was a lair, wasn’t it?)
Let’s be clear: this isn’t an issue about consensual sex or self-empowered, independent “sex-workers”. It is exposed women seeking a safe place to live, who are then ruthlessly compelled to have sex with their landlords in order to keep a roof over their heads. Many are trying to escape homelessness – and encounter vile men offering to house vulnerable women in return for sex. And by vulnerable, I don’t just mean women who are poor, but also exploited asylum seekers, those fleeing domestic violence, care leavers and victims of “the right to rent”, where potential tenants must show documents proving they have the right to remain in the UK.
I endured some troubling encounters when using a website popular with flat-hunters, having placed a carefully worded flat-wanted ad. One response sounded positive, but when I called, the landlord was evasive about terms, thought my self-description (“professional female”) odd, and then asked if I wanted “male company”. I hung up. To my amazement, a male friend found this hilarious, doubted my story, then checked to unearth a whole new world of abuse of women (and some men) simply looking for a home.
Yet still coercive homes-for-sex is too often seen as bit of a laugh. It isn’t. It’s not merely undermining but hazardous. A friend home-hunting with her toddler was contacted by one man who offered her use of his home, eventually explaining that he didn’t require rent; rather he “enjoyed light, consensual anal intercourse”. She was both terrified and appalled.
The private rental sector in areas of high demand (especially London) is growing sleazier by the day, and many men are brazen about what they expect. A supporter of tenant support group Acorn shared one man’s response to a female flat-hunter: “Can you pay with sex twice per week?” In a moment of dark levity, a male commenter offered to provide the sex, reasoning this probably wasn’t what sleazebag-guy was expecting.
The private rented sector is broken and house-hunting is a dreadful task fraught with abject desperation. Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, to the list of nasties (the grasping letting agents and truculent and capricious buy-to-let owners) whom tenants confront can now be added creepy, predatory rentiers offering homes in return for sex.
In the weird swamp world of online portals, everything is so much more dangerous. Female tenants are especially vulnerable when flat-hunting, and some landlords are quite open about what they expect, while others hide in plain sight. The basic act of flat-hunting often involves wandering into an unfamiliar neighbourhood, then entering a flat for guided viewings with strangers: a man you have never met before, who could assume or imagine that signing a rental agreement entitles him to sex. Remember, too, that this man might ultimately be in possession of the key to your home, and, if he’s a live-in landlord, could occupy the adjacent bedroom.
Some ads are overtly soliciting sex, while others are coy. During a bizarre viewing tour of a tiny flat with a friend, the drunken landlord, having first claimed that he was moving out to live with his girlfriend, changed tack. He explained: “She’s not really my girlfriend and would it be OK if I visited?” I left.
An especially odious case involved a friend who moved out after her landlord offered to reduce the rent if she were “nice to him”. He then accused her of prudery and had the effrontery to pursue her for the income he lost after she escaped his lair. (And frankly, it was a lair, wasn’t it?)
Let’s be clear: this isn’t an issue about consensual sex or self-empowered, independent “sex-workers”. It is exposed women seeking a safe place to live, who are then ruthlessly compelled to have sex with their landlords in order to keep a roof over their heads. Many are trying to escape homelessness – and encounter vile men offering to house vulnerable women in return for sex. And by vulnerable, I don’t just mean women who are poor, but also exploited asylum seekers, those fleeing domestic violence, care leavers and victims of “the right to rent”, where potential tenants must show documents proving they have the right to remain in the UK.
I endured some troubling encounters when using a website popular with flat-hunters, having placed a carefully worded flat-wanted ad. One response sounded positive, but when I called, the landlord was evasive about terms, thought my self-description (“professional female”) odd, and then asked if I wanted “male company”. I hung up. To my amazement, a male friend found this hilarious, doubted my story, then checked to unearth a whole new world of abuse of women (and some men) simply looking for a home.
Yet still coercive homes-for-sex is too often seen as bit of a laugh. It isn’t. It’s not merely undermining but hazardous. A friend home-hunting with her toddler was contacted by one man who offered her use of his home, eventually explaining that he didn’t require rent; rather he “enjoyed light, consensual anal intercourse”. She was both terrified and appalled.
The private rental sector in areas of high demand (especially London) is growing sleazier by the day, and many men are brazen about what they expect. A supporter of tenant support group Acorn shared one man’s response to a female flat-hunter: “Can you pay with sex twice per week?” In a moment of dark levity, a male commenter offered to provide the sex, reasoning this probably wasn’t what sleazebag-guy was expecting.
Many platforms seem slow or unwilling to deal with such abusive posts, or else tacitly tolerate them. Shelter has picked up on the situation, noting the power imbalance and the distorted sense of entitlement: man provides home, man deems himself entitled to sex with isolated, scared, sofa-surfing young woman lacking genuine alternative options.
The answer is of course for offenders to cease and desist. But failing a mass changing of ways and renunciation of sordid sexual bullying, it seems women must take steps to ensure our own safety. So, when flat-hunting, do not go alone. Always let somebody know where you are. If possible, arrange a guided viewing with an agent (if an agent is being used to let the property). And if you are being coerced into sex, inform the police.
The internet has opened up a whole new fresh hell of sleaze and importuning. On the plus side, it’s also excellent for naming and shaming. And hopefully those women so desperate that they have felt as if there were no choice but to submit can be empowered to summon enough courage to report these abusers.
The answer is of course for offenders to cease and desist. But failing a mass changing of ways and renunciation of sordid sexual bullying, it seems women must take steps to ensure our own safety. So, when flat-hunting, do not go alone. Always let somebody know where you are. If possible, arrange a guided viewing with an agent (if an agent is being used to let the property). And if you are being coerced into sex, inform the police.
The internet has opened up a whole new fresh hell of sleaze and importuning. On the plus side, it’s also excellent for naming and shaming. And hopefully those women so desperate that they have felt as if there were no choice but to submit can be empowered to summon enough courage to report these abusers.
Spot the gender of your future child 26 weeks before conception
Sarah Knapton in The Telegraph
Craving sweets, early morning sickness and a watermelon-shaped stomach are all said to indicate that a woman will give birth to a baby girl.
But an intriguing new study suggests that it is possible to determine the sex of a baby months before it is even conceived.
Scientists in Canada discovered that a woman’s blood pressure at around 26 weeks before conception predicts if she will give birth to a boy or a girl. Higher systolic blood pressure signals she will deliver a boy while lower suggests a girl.
Dr Ravi Retnakaran, endocrinologist at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto, said: “It suggests that a woman's blood pressure before pregnancy is a previously unrecognised factor that is associated with her likelihood of delivering a boy or a girl.”
The team made the connection while trying to work out what determines the ratio between girls and boys in a population.
The sex ration of a population can change depending on societal change CREDIT:GETTYIMAGES-DV1953025.JPG
Several studies have shown that stressful events such as wars, natural disasters and economic depression can change the proportion of boys and girls in a country.
The difference occurs because in stressful times one gender is more likely than the other to survive through pregnancy. So even though the conception sex ratio remains at 50:50, the birth ratio will alter depending on which sex is stronger.
In the new study the mean systolic blood pressure reading for women who had boys was 106 mm Hg, compared to 103 mm Hg for those who had girls, in the months leading up to conception.
“When a woman becomes pregnant, the sex of a foetus is determined by whether the father’s sperm provides an X or Y chromosome and there is no evidence that this probability varies in humans,” added Dr Retnakaran
“What is believed to vary is the proportion of male or female fetuses that is lost during pregnancy
“This study suggests that either lower blood pressure is indicative of a mother’s physiology that is less conducive to survival of a male foetus or that higher blood pressure before pregnancy is less conducive to survival of a female foetus.
“This novel insight may hold implications for both reproductive planning and our understanding of the fundamental mechanisms underlying the sex ratio in humans."
A simple blood pressure test could give some indication on what sex a baby will beCREDIT: ANTHONY DEVLIN
For the study, 1,411 newly-married Chinese women were recruited all who were trying to become pregnant. Their blood pressure was checked at around 26 weeks before conception and they were followed through pregnancy. Overall the women gave birth to 739 boys and 672 girls.
After adjustment for age, education, smoking, Body Mass Index (BMI) , waist, cholesterol, triglycerides and glucose, mean systolic blood pressure before pregnancy was found to be higher in women who subsequently had a boy than in those who delivered a girl.
Fertility expert Prof Charles Kingsland, of Liverpool Women’s Hospital, said: “We have been aware that more male fetuses miscarry than females and more females are born for obvious biological reasons, namely you need more women in the world to have children.
“There is also some evidence that you are more likely to miscarry a boy when you are compromised either by health or environmental issues. So I suppose, blood pressure changes in these circumstances might affect conception of different sexes.
“This study is therefore very interesting. However it does not take into account the potential physiological aspects of race. Will those changes be the same in the Caucasian or Afro Caribbean populations in the world. And what if you want a girl? Do you just go and live in Syria for a few months?”
However some experts were skeptical about the results.
Geoffrey Trew a consultant in Reproductive Medicine and Surgery at the Hammersmith Hospital in west London said: “I haven't heard anything like this before.
“I would be very surprised that a BP measurement , which is notoriously variable, could dictate sex 26 weeks before, some reptiles can have sex differences due to temperature changes at the time of early fetal growth , but not 26 weeks beforehand.”
The study was published in the American Journal of Hypertension.
Craving sweets, early morning sickness and a watermelon-shaped stomach are all said to indicate that a woman will give birth to a baby girl.
But an intriguing new study suggests that it is possible to determine the sex of a baby months before it is even conceived.
Scientists in Canada discovered that a woman’s blood pressure at around 26 weeks before conception predicts if she will give birth to a boy or a girl. Higher systolic blood pressure signals she will deliver a boy while lower suggests a girl.
Dr Ravi Retnakaran, endocrinologist at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto, said: “It suggests that a woman's blood pressure before pregnancy is a previously unrecognised factor that is associated with her likelihood of delivering a boy or a girl.”
The team made the connection while trying to work out what determines the ratio between girls and boys in a population.
The sex ration of a population can change depending on societal change CREDIT:GETTYIMAGES-DV1953025.JPGSeveral studies have shown that stressful events such as wars, natural disasters and economic depression can change the proportion of boys and girls in a country.
The difference occurs because in stressful times one gender is more likely than the other to survive through pregnancy. So even though the conception sex ratio remains at 50:50, the birth ratio will alter depending on which sex is stronger.
In the new study the mean systolic blood pressure reading for women who had boys was 106 mm Hg, compared to 103 mm Hg for those who had girls, in the months leading up to conception.
“When a woman becomes pregnant, the sex of a foetus is determined by whether the father’s sperm provides an X or Y chromosome and there is no evidence that this probability varies in humans,” added Dr Retnakaran
“What is believed to vary is the proportion of male or female fetuses that is lost during pregnancy
“This study suggests that either lower blood pressure is indicative of a mother’s physiology that is less conducive to survival of a male foetus or that higher blood pressure before pregnancy is less conducive to survival of a female foetus.
“This novel insight may hold implications for both reproductive planning and our understanding of the fundamental mechanisms underlying the sex ratio in humans."
A simple blood pressure test could give some indication on what sex a baby will beCREDIT: ANTHONY DEVLINFor the study, 1,411 newly-married Chinese women were recruited all who were trying to become pregnant. Their blood pressure was checked at around 26 weeks before conception and they were followed through pregnancy. Overall the women gave birth to 739 boys and 672 girls.
After adjustment for age, education, smoking, Body Mass Index (BMI) , waist, cholesterol, triglycerides and glucose, mean systolic blood pressure before pregnancy was found to be higher in women who subsequently had a boy than in those who delivered a girl.
Fertility expert Prof Charles Kingsland, of Liverpool Women’s Hospital, said: “We have been aware that more male fetuses miscarry than females and more females are born for obvious biological reasons, namely you need more women in the world to have children.
“There is also some evidence that you are more likely to miscarry a boy when you are compromised either by health or environmental issues. So I suppose, blood pressure changes in these circumstances might affect conception of different sexes.
“This study is therefore very interesting. However it does not take into account the potential physiological aspects of race. Will those changes be the same in the Caucasian or Afro Caribbean populations in the world. And what if you want a girl? Do you just go and live in Syria for a few months?”
However some experts were skeptical about the results.
Geoffrey Trew a consultant in Reproductive Medicine and Surgery at the Hammersmith Hospital in west London said: “I haven't heard anything like this before.
“I would be very surprised that a BP measurement , which is notoriously variable, could dictate sex 26 weeks before, some reptiles can have sex differences due to temperature changes at the time of early fetal growth , but not 26 weeks beforehand.”
The study was published in the American Journal of Hypertension.
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