#16 - Noor Siddiqui - Is Embryo Screening the Future of Reproduction?

Most people want to give their children the best start in life, but what if that "best start" could be determined *before* birth? That's what today's guest Noor Siddiqui believes -- her Mom progressively lost her vision due to a degenerative retinal condition, which made her determined to find a way to prevent her own children from the same fate. A computer scientist by training, Noor has since founded Orchid, the world's first full-genome sequencing platform for embryos conceived through IVF, that enables parents to screen and select the embryo with the highest probability of good health. So as you can imagine, this opens up a lot of fascinating questions, both technical and ethical, and as someone with prospective parenthood on my mind, this was a great opportunity to pick her brains about where the future of reproductive technology is going, and the ethical dilemmas it poses.

Chapters:

00:02:14 - What is genetic testing?

00:09:30 - How IVF works

00:13:38 - How much genetic testing costs

00:19:33 - Genetic Testing and the Disabled Community

00:26:59 - The Naturalism Debate

00:32:29 - Genetic Trade Offs

00:39:30 - Effects on the Gene Pool

00:42:58 - Genetic Control & Eugenics

00:48:45 - Fertility Crisis

01:05:14 - Artificial Wombs

01:21:13 - Vision for the Future

Links: Orchid - https://www.orchidhealth.com/

Noor's Twitter - https://twitter.com/noor_siddiqui_

IVF - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_vitro_fertilisation

Discussion of Cost-tradeoffs - https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2023/07/ivf-screening-costs0.html

Credits
Hosted by Liv Boeree
Produced & Edited by Raymond Wei

Audio Mix by Keir Schmidt

The Win-Win Podcast:
Poker champion Liv Boeree takes to the interview chair to tease apart the complexities of one of the most fundamental parts of human nature: competition. Liv is joined by top philosophers, gamers, artists, technologists, CEOs, scientists, athletes and more to understand how competition manifests in their world, and how to change seemingly win-lose games into Win-Wins.