The Chinese website promoting a controversial test whose makers claim can tell the gender of an unborn child has closed amid claims the product is illegal and unreliable.

Anyone who logs onto the "intelligender.com.cn" website is met with the message "Server not found".

The manufacturers claim the product, marketed as IntelliGender Gender Prediction Test in the United States, can tell expectant mothers the gender of their baby 10 minutes after a urine test if they are more than 10 weeks pregnant.

They say the gender result would be shown by a color match: green for a boy and orange for a girl. The claims say the product can be about 80 percent accurate.

Widely available as a fun product at US drug stores for years, the product appears to have become a hit among some Chinese, though it has never been approved for sale by Chinese authorities and sells at about 800 yuan (US$120) online, about three times its price in the US.

Sales in China had been conducted through the ".com.cn" agent website, despite the fact that China's family planning law prohibits fetus gender identification except in cases of medical necessity.

In China, some parents prefer boys and fetus gender identification may lead to the abortion of baby girls.

The Chinese website stressed it bore no responsibility for inaccurate test results, since it did not promise 100 percent accuracy, a staff member said.

"I've never heard of it and based on my knowledge I don't think there is enough scientific proof to back its accuracy," Wang Lina, a leading expert with the reproduction center of the Peking University Third Hospital, said on Monday.

Yan Wenyu, who is expecting her baby in four months, said she would not mind trying the product as it sounds simple to do and she would like to know the baby's gender before the delivery.

"It'll just be fun taking the test but I won't take the result seriously," said the 25-year-old teacher in Beijing.

Wang said relevant government agencies, particularly China's State Food and Drug Administration (SFDA), should look into the case.

A SFDA official told the Beijing Times on Sunday that online sale of drugs without a permit is illegal.

But the official said the administration does not have the right to enforce the law. "Once such cases are found, we can only transfer them to the industry and commerce authorities," he said.

Qiu Renzong, a bioethics researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said such products should be banned in China.

"It is fake and violates China's laws and regulations on fetus gender tests," he said.

In the US, IntelliGender, though sold at drug stores, has never been registered as a drug or medical device at the US drug authority, according to Lockwood Young, a veteran obstetrician based in Hawaii.

"Apparently, the FDA doesn't regulate this type of product as it is just a test for fun, not something you take into your body," he told China Daily.

(China Daily November 16, 2010)