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Biotech

'Inside the Silicon Valley Push to Breed Super-Babies' (msn.com) 55

Posted by EditorDavid from the wearing-genes-at-work dept.
San Francisco-based startup Orchid Health "screens embryos for thousands of potential future illnesses," reports the Washington Post, calling it "the first company to say it can sequence an embryo's entire genome of 3 billion base pairs." It uses as few as five cells from an embryo to test for more than 1,200 of these uncommon single-gene-derived, or monogenic, conditions. The company also applies custom-built algorithms to produce what are known as polygenic risk scores, which are designed to measure a future child's genetic propensity for developing complex ailments later in life, such as bipolar disorder, cancer, Alzheimer's disease, obesity and schizophrenia. Orchid, [founder Noor] Siddiqui said in a tweet, is ushering in "a generation that gets to be genetically blessed and avoid disease." Right now, at $2,500 per embryo-screening on top of the average $20,000 for a single cycle of IVF, Siddiqui's social network in Silicon Valley and other tech hubs is an ideal target market...

Yet several genetic scientists told The Post they doubt Orchid's core claim: that it can accurately sequence an entire human genome from just five cells collected from an early-stage embryo, enabling it to see many more single- and multiple-gene-derived disorders than other methods have. Experts have struggled to extract accurate genetic information from small embryonic samples, said Svetlana Yatsenko, a Stanford University pathology professor who specializes in clinical and research genetics. Genetic tests that use saliva or blood samples typically collect hundreds of thousands of cells. For its vastly smaller samples, Orchid uses a process called amplification, which creates copies of the DNA retrieved from the embryo. That process, Yatsenko said, can introduce major inaccuracies. "You're making many, many mistakes in the amplification," she said, rendering it problematic to declare any embryo free of a particular disease, or positive for one. "It's basically Russian roulette...."

Numerous fertility doctors and scientists also told The Post they have serious reservations about screening embryos through polygenic risk scoring, the technique that allows Orchid and other companies to predict future disease by tying clusters of hundreds or even thousands of genes to disease outcomes and in some cases to other traits, such as intelligence and height. The vast majority of diseases that afflict humans are associated with many different genes rather than a single gene... And for traits such as intelligence, polygenic scoring has almost negligible predictive capacity — just a handful of IQ points... Or parents might select against an unwanted trait, such as schizophrenia, without understanding how they may be screening out desired traits associated with the same genes, such as creativity... The American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics calls the benefits of screening embryos for polygenic risks "unproven" and warns that such tests "should not be offered" by clinicians. A pioneer of polygenic risk scores, Harvard epidemiology professor Peter Kraft, has criticized Orchid, saying on X that "the science doesn't add up" and that "waving a magic wand and changing some of these variants at birth may not do anything at all."
The article notes several startups are already providing predictions on intelligence. "In the United States, there are virtually no restrictions on the types of genetic predictions companies can offer, and no external vetting of their proprietary scoring methods."

'Inside the Silicon Valley Push to Breed Super-Babies' More | Reply

'Inside the Silicon Valley Push to Breed Super-Babies'

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  • Haven't we had companies [wikipedia.org]q claiming magic testing technology before?

    • Re:What's old is new again (Score:4, Interesting)

      by RossCWilliams ( 5513152 ) on Sunday July 20, 2025 @12:47PM (#65532762)
      There is money to be made. Especially from very bright people with lousy judgment. At some point someone will start creating "certified intelligent" babies.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by taustin ( 171655 )

        The worst part is, these grifters probably believe what they're shoveling.

      • I suspect that the "I made a lot of money selling enterprise resource data munging cloud solutions or something; therefore I am very smart" crowd is more susceptible than average to the specific "Now, I'm not going to say 'eugenics'; but clearly you want your children to be just plain better, like you..." sales pitch; but the genre of hope-and-hype 'this will make life better for your child' seems to have more or less universal appeal. The upmarket techie flavor leans a bit GATTACA, and probably has a lot m

        • I wish I had time to respond fully but skipping the comment about genetic counseling I'll go straight to the funny question:

          "Where are the clones?"

          I seriously think the worst actors would prefer to clone themselves. And that there are probably quite a number of secret clones around here. Not sure about humans, but surely someone has cloned John Henry the horse. Think of the stud fees!

          • Not sure about humans, but surely someone has cloned John Henry the horse. Think of the stud fees!

            Nope. The clones and their offspring would be worth as much as a regular horse. The Jockey Club [jockeyclub.com] that controls American horse racing bans everything but natural breeding done the old fashioned way. Furthermore the U.S. stud book, like the British stud book, is closed -- only horses already registered can be parents of future thoroughbreds. No new genetic material can be introduced.

          • As I recall the cloning process has a high failure rate, as in not producing a viable specimen that would survive into adulthood. As an example the cloned cheep Dolly was the only one of over 200 specimens that survived to be mature enough to bear offspring. On top of that Dolly had developed arthritis and lung cancer.

            I don't know if I read this somewhere or its something I thought up to explain this outcome but when DNA samples are taken from an adult specimen for cloning the clone is then born as having

            • There is also the problem that genetics are not the only biological source of inheritance. Which makes the entire enterprise dubious.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by taustin ( 171655 )

              Dolly the sheep was 1996. I feel like maybe there's been some progress [wikipedia.org] in the last 30 years.

              (But I do believe you're right, for now.)

    • Yeah, a couple sentences into the summary and I thought "is Elizabeth Holmes behind this?"

  • "Right now, at $2,500 per embryo-screening on top of the average $20,000 for a single cycle of IVF, Siddiqui's social network in Silicon Valley and other tech hubs is an ideal target market..."

    Selling upmarket sounds like it's more about the lack of validation than about the actual cost. If you actually knew that it worked a one time $2,500 to mitigate, or even moderately depress the incidence on average, of "bipolar disorder, cancer, Alzheimer's disease, obesity and schizophrenia" would be stupid cheap.
    • As you say, if you could mitigate any of those serious conditions, like schizophrenia, it would be a no brainer if you have the money. I would say "prove it", and it would probably die, for me, right there.

      >selling to the anxiety of the cost-insensitive.

      I think you hit the nail on the head, right there. You don't want your baby to be a cripple, right? Ok, pay money.

    • The good thing about this is that they don't need to prove it to anyone. The only proof is to wait decades to see whether these babies grow up to have the diseases they were supposed to avoid. And even if they do, who is to say you didn't reduce their risk? Anyway, these companies will probably be long gone by then, or if they somehow still exist they can say, "Our methods are much better today."

      Sell someone a promise that they can never tell whether you kept. It's a great business.

  • The Science is not there yet. (Score:3)

    by gurps_npc ( 621217 ) on Sunday July 20, 2025 @12:59PM (#65532784) Homepage

    We still know very little about our genetic variations. Yes, we have mapped out most of the 'standard' basics, but there is so much variation it is astounding and we do not understand most of that at all.

    Most importantly, we do not understand the various interactions of what little we do know

    A prime example of the issue is Sickle Cell Disease and Malaria. The 'standard' gene is HBB. If you have two of them, you will not get Sickle Cell disease but you are particularly vulnerable to Malaria. There are areas of the world where 10% of children get Malaria. While Malaria does not always kill you, you can even get it multiple times. But it does kill a significant number of victims, even with treatment (particularly if you have other illnesses).

    If you have one HBB gene and a variant called HBS gene, you will not get Sickle Cell disease, and you are an estimated 10 times less likely to get Malaria. That is, 1% of children rather than 10% get Malaria.

    But if you have two copies of HBS gene, you get Sickle Cell disease and it reduces your life expectancy by about 20 years on average.

    This is one example of interactions that we KNOW about. How man others exist that we have no idea about? What if a gene for autoimmune disease also makes you immune to cancer?

    This is something that might be a good idea to consider testing in say another 100-200 years. Not now.

    • As another example, sometimes a genetically-influenced mental trait can be good in one environment and problematical in another. For example:
      https://www.psychologytoday.co... [psychologytoday.com]
      "One source of such variation in adaptive stability is surely genetic difference among infants, but genes alone do not make a child an orchid or a dandelion. As work by other researchers has shown, the genetic characteristics of children create their predispositions, but do not necessarily determine their ou

  • Always (Score:2, Interesting)

    by guygo ( 894298 )

    Nazis have always been into eugenics.
    It's so they can dream of their beloved "Ubermensch" who will come and get rid of all us puny weaklings.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by bjoast ( 1310293 )
      The only thing worse than eugenics is dysgenics.

    • Re:Always (Score:4, Interesting)

      by taustin ( 171655 ) on Sunday July 20, 2025 @01:20PM (#65532804) Homepage Journal

      Nazis have always been into eugenics.
      It's so they can dream of their beloved "Ubermensch" who will come and get rid of all us puny weaklings.

      Not realizing that the first weaklings to be gotten rid of will be their parents.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by PPH ( 736903 )

      Nazis have always been into eugenics.

      Hitler was no spectacular physical specimen. More like a sickly little wimp.

      But then see Mussolini, Stalin, Putin, Hirohito, etc. Moral of the story: don't select short leaders.

      • Moral of the story: don't select short leaders.

        Is this a good time to mention that Donald Trump is reported to be 6' 3"? And that his son Barron is 6' 9"?

        Hitler was no spectacular physical specimen. More like a sickly little wimp.

        I recall that was not how Hitler was viewed at the time, not that I recall this firsthand but I can read. He might appear sickly and weak by the standards of today but apparently at the time he was considered quite handsome. People around the world were simply shorter and lighter then. I could not find a good source with a quick search of the web so I'll go with my recollection that the average WW2

    • Nazis have always been into eugenics.

      Nazis were also into universal health care, and expanded coverage beyond what the Weimar Republic had provided.

      That doesn't make UHC bad.

      Likewise, Godwinning eugenics is not a rational argument.

      Millions of people abort fetuses with Down syndrome. That's eugenics.

  • This seems like a bad idea. What is going to happen when Mr and Mrs Singh use this service to have a son named Khan?

  • Reality follows fiction (Score:3, Interesting)

    by dskoll ( 99328 ) on Sunday July 20, 2025 @01:18PM (#65532800) Homepage

    I highly recommend that everyone watch Gattaca [wikipedia.org], a 1997 film on exactly this topic. It's a fantastic watch.

    • I wanted to like GATTACA; but it really ended up being almost the opposite of what it professed to be about(admittedly, in a way that seems very much like something we would do): the premise is supposedly that genetic engineering has allowed all men to not be created equal, and there are some lightweight examples of that being true(none of the engineered characters require corrective lenses; some of the naturals are identifiable by being contact lens users); but in important areas it just never actually see
      • Whenever you don't grok a famous movie or a cult movie - here is what to do: go to youtube and search '[movie name] explained', you'll find what you missed.
        There is a lot going on in GATTACA but the main story many people identify with is to triumph, through grit and determination, even in the face of severe personnel handicaps or handicaps imposed by society. Best Movie You Never Saw captures this main point: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] along with some interesting quotes from the star Ethan Hawke

      • Indeed. The "moral" of Gattaca is that eugenics works.

        The "hero" worked around it to go to space with a weak heart, but even without eugenics, he would've (and should've) been screened out.

        Eugenics wasn't his problem. His defective heart was his problem, and that was caused by his parents not using eugenics.

        The other stupid thing about the movie is that the astronauts board the spaceship wearing suits and ties. WTF???

  • In practice, we still don't know enough to do it right
    Unfortunately, this is how science often proceeds. Fumble and stumble through ignorance and make a lot of mistakes before achieving success

  • Seems like there are some ethics issues Gattaca - 1997 [imdb.com]

  • For example, schizophrenia genetic studies couldn't find genes that would be related to the disease. At least in psychiatry, there are multiple different "diseases" that are given the same diagnosis which make genetic studies unlikely to succeed.

  • "which are designed to measure a future child's genetic propensity for developing complex ailments later in life, such as bipolar disorder, cancer, Alzheimer's disease, obesity and schizophrenia. "

    But his parents will ensure that the little baby will develop to be a cunt.

  • Soup or babies

    But if it's all the same to you, I'll have the soup.

  • SV + ASD prevalence + Joe Rogan machoism (Score:3)

    by Somervillain ( 4719341 ) on Sunday July 20, 2025 @02:07PM (#65532888)
    Silicon Valley is full of a lot of autistic adults. You may have been the nerdy kid with undiagnosed Asperger's that was great at school and bad at sports, but you married a nerdy girl who was just your type and you saw those geniuses at work who were JUST LIKE YOU, only 20 years older having kids that were so autistic they either were fully nonverbal or unable to live independently...or you saw it in your older brother/sister..in their children. It gives you pause in your faith in your genetic fitness.

    Additionally, for some reason, that crowd has gotten into the Joe Rogan brand of machoism...I know so many tech executives that idolize MMA and personal training, starting about 5 - 10 years ago. It's not enough to be smart...everyone at your company is smart and the IQ and productivity improve each generation. You need to be smart and have big arms and cool cars and be able to fight...but really methodically. 10-15 years ago, nerds cared about your mind...now they want a mind and to be physically perfect. I don't honestly get the tech world's affinity towards Joe Rogan, but I also can't deny it, especially at the older/management tiers (young engineers starting their careers/families usually don't have as much time to listen to podcasts)

    With that in mind, it's not a too huge of a leap to imagine people in Silicon Valley wanting to tip the scales towards their kids having the best genetic outcomes.

    Growing up, I was always taught that everyone is mostly equal and our deeds make us great...but competition is fierce for good jobs these days...and being a parent, I realize that nature and nurture play a role. It's gross...it's against my beliefs...but yeah, there's a good chance Mark Zuckerberg's kids are smarter than mine and my peers, if not him, then other SV luminaries...not just because of their financial advantage, but due to biological reasons as well. It goes against my beliefs and values...but I see the patterns and have to admit...a lot more influences outcomes of an individual than just upbringing...even when accounting for diagnosable diseases or conditions, like ASD, ADHD, etc.

    It's tacky and gross, but that's a crowd that has more dollars than sense and some reasonable motivation for not wanting to roll the dice with their genetic lot.
    • It is an unconscious desire to be God in my view. Probably driven by being underwhelmed by our limitations as simple stupid human beings. Oh well, let them fly to the sun. It is the only way they will learn.

  • We know who gave it a bad name, but: eugencs, yes. Eliminate hereditary diseases and genetic birth defects. Even go a step farther, when possible, and choose general health and intelligence.

    Why should we *not* do this?

    • >"Why should we *not* do this?"

      Because it is extremely dangerous. You might be selecting for one trait but getting a bad trait along with it. We actually have VERY LITTLE good information about the actual workings of genetics. Especially since it isn't static but things "trigger" over time and based on environment. If too many people get sucked into this type of stuff for long enough, it could change the entire human population in non-ideal ways that might be difficult to detect in one lifetime and t

      • Yup, just label it as a genetic defect and you can edit it out. Select and delete. Compile and test the result. Baldness for starters!

  • Eugenetics always fail (Score:3)

    by r1348 ( 2567295 ) on Sunday July 20, 2025 @02:18PM (#65532906)

    Evolution naturally select the genetic traits that are best fit for the environment.
    The environment changes unpredictably.
    You cannot select today what will be the fittest for tomorrow.

    For example, some theorize autism was an advantage in the paleolithic: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.co... [wiley.com]

    • Don't underestimate humans' ability to change their environment.

      What good is breeding a human that can survive in extreme heat when everyone has Central Air Conditioning?
    • Went to buy seeds for my lawn. Apparently they mix different types of grass. If you stick to one type, your lawn will not survive the elements. Pretty sure if grass could be autistic, it was in the mix. Not too much though. Keep it balanced.

  • We do not understand enough by far to do this competently. I am all for unlimited liability of the parents that dare to inflict something like that on a person though.

  • Isn't it rich? Are we a pair? Playing with egg and pipettes on a dare? Send in the clones.

    Isn't it bliss? Don't you approve? One edits genes, and one who can't move. Where are the clones? Send in the clones.

    Just when I'd stopped Cracking the shell, Finally mapping The code that I fell. Building my genes, Shaping a life. Telameres in a spiral, Something's not right.

    Don't you love farce? My fault, I fear. Gave you perfection, No flaws to steer. But where are the clones? There ought to be clones. Quick, se

  • Can't wait to watch how this plays out.

  • This is right out of the dystopian Brave New World and should be outlawed. "Future" children are existing children still in the womb and parents seeking these tests (and medical facilities offering them) are willing to sacrifice the unborn for their own comfort. This demeans all human life. I'm all for genetic counseling for potential parents looking to have babies. But after conception, "potential" parents ARE parents, and "future" children ARE children. To say otherwise is to euphemize murder. What comes

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