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Noor Siddiqui
@noor_siddiqui_
When I was in elementary school, my mom started going blind. Retinitis pigmentosa. No family history. No treatments. No cure. I got lucky. She didn’t. It led me to build
@OrchidInc
so my baby —and everyone else's—gets to win the genetic lottery—avoid blindness— and hundreds of severe genetic diseases. Today, the New York Times covered the tech we’ve spent years building: Whole genome embryo screening for *hundreds* of diseases. Not in theory. Not in mice. In humans. In IVF centers. Right now.
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David Watson 🥑
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Noor Siddiqui
@noor_siddiqui_
If you could prevent your child from going blind — would you? From getting pediatric cancer at 5? From heart defects? Schizophrenia at 22? From living a life radically altered by pure genetic bad luck? This is a choice parents are now able to make.
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Noor Siddiqui
@noor_siddiqui_
Sex is for fun. Embryo screening is for babies. I said that in a video. People freaked out. But it’s true. And it will only get more true as the tech improves. We screen for what matters. And nothing matters more than health.
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Noor Siddiqui
@noor_siddiqui_
People say it's "playing God." But let's be honest — humans have been "playing God" since antibiotics, organ transplants, and open-heart surgery. Each breakthrough that extends or improves life faced similar resistance before becoming standard care. Embryo screening represents
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Noor Siddiqui
@noor_siddiqui_
It’s easy to critique from the sidelines. Harder to tell a parent: “Sorry, your baby was born with a disease we could’ve prevented… but chose not to.”
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Noor Siddiqui
@noor_siddiqui_
This is a sensitive topic. And it should be. Because it forces us to grapple with what we value most. What kind of world we want to build. What kind of lives we want our children to have.
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Noor Siddiqui
@noor_siddiqui_
There’s no one-size-fits-all answer. We’re not here to decide which lives are “worth” living. We’re here to give parents more information — and more agency — in one of the most important decisions of their lives.
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Noor Siddiqui
@noor_siddiqui_
Genomics is moving fast and society is scrambling to catch up. But make no mistake: In 10 years, not screening your embryos will feel like not buckling your seatbelt.
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Noor Siddiqui
@noor_siddiqui_
Proud of the Orchid team. Proud of the families making courageous, informed choices. And proud to be building in a space that actually matters. Let the debates rage. We’ll keep building.
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Elise Oyin
@EliseOyinkro
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Noor Siddiqui
@noor_siddiqui_
Some diseases only affect males and others only females, but yes I think disease mitigation is much more important than sex. Different countries will decide what information they allow parents to have access to during IVF
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tbone
@tbonecapital
Thank you for this Noor. My son has a neurodegenerative disorder which can't be detected by any of the standard screens. I love him immensely but I often dread what will happen to him when my wife and I are gone. I will certainly be reaching out to Orchid for my next child.
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Joe Kawaja
@KawajaJoe
Congrats on all the work you do. No sane person can be against preventing disease, but apparently there are many who think we should let the fictional sky daddy sort it out.
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Dr. Novo 🍌
@novocrypto
I’m not against this at all but just can’t help to think that if this was available before your mum was born, and your grandparents had used it to select the least risky embryo, then neither you nor your mum would have existed! Just a thought, not an opinion! Wish you luck 🌸
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Not a Glitch, a Feature ✝️ 🇺🇸
@NottaGlitch
But you're not "preventing it," you're rejecting certain babies. Real humans with their own incredible characteristics. My daughter has a genetic version of diabetes. The idea of not "selecting" one of the most beautiful, tender, interesting, intelligent (and healthy!) people I
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Carlos
@txiokatu
I would love my child no matter the condition. You, however, will only love a child if you can buy one like a favorite bag of chips
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Map Effects
@MapEffects
You’re not treating or healing a problem, you’re preventing certain people from existing because they don’t meet your standard. Based on what? Blindness? Physical fitness? Race? Gender? This is a slippery slope with no line in sight when human hubris is involved.
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Rebecca Downs🇺🇸🟦🇮🇱
@RebeccaRoseGold
I’ve gone back and forth on IVF. Thank you for reminding me why I’m against it and involvement with playing God. Your thread downplaying the concerns with playing God make it worse, too!
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Pulkit
@puhlkit
This is awesome. Where can I read more about how it’s done and the tech? Also, great website.
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Jeffrey Paul Bishop
@jeffreypbishop
Yes! It is better not to exist than to exist in a defective state. If only the technology had existed at the time of your grandmother! Then your mother would have been deselected. And you would not be either. 🤔
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Erika Ahern
@ErikaAhern2
Your story is heartbreaking, but your mom's life was still worth living. What this technology does is erase blindness by eliminating the blind. For every baby selected, the blind babies are destroyed.
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Ian A. Northon
@ocean_lawyer
Sad really. How many of your babies did you have to discard to ensure that one baby might not go blind from one particular disease? Your mother and your unborn babies have no less dignity or right to life because they have imperfections. All humans are imperfect.
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Dave Van de Walle
@Area224
Sure, we won't have death panels. Sure we won't. Except we've now taken those death panels and moved them from people in their 60s and 70s to embryos created in a lab; doesn't matter to the eugenicist which one has outlived its usefulness...only those we deem worthy survive.
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St René of Avignon
@SaintGirard
Desire drives us to engineer 'perfect' babies, but this mimetic quest for control only deepens our rivalry with nature. In screening embryos, we scapegoat the imperfect, blind to the violence we inflict on the sacred diversity of life. True care embraces, not erases, our flaws.
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Jordan Thibodeau
@JWthib
@noor_siddiqui_
is an incredible person and this amount of twitter hate she is receiving because she's trying to make sure children aren't born with terrible genetic diseases makes me absolutely sick.
@noor_siddiqui_
ignore the haters, keep up the good work. <3
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Donna Meuse
@Three21Donna
As mother of a daughter with Down syndrome, this is awesome and scary. Can you eliminate discovered genetic anomalies in utero, or just eliminate the imperfect baby?
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LockediN Christians
@BroLockediN
Like the days of Noah. The cause is always noble in the beginning but if u prevent bad DNA that means u can also edit DNA. If u can buy a baby with no risk to disease then u might as well add some super athletic DNA. Slippery slope from there.
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Rambeck
@rambeck_
This is sick. You help parents “prevent diseases” by offing their genetically defective children.
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George Garcia
@p3_1415926i
So what happens in two generations when everyone chooses the same genetic traits for their designer children? The road to hell is seemingly always paved with good intentions.
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Jeremiroquai
@Jerematic79
Totally different perspective here: if your company had been around decades ago, and your grandmother had utilized it, your mom (and therefore *you*) would never have been born.
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Magills
@magills_
Congrats on letting blind people know their lives aren’t worth living. Best of luck with Gattaca!
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Mike
@OneGodel
This is cool! But there’s nuance in the language here, the baby is not winning the genetic lottery because we’d not be engineering them here, just picking the most desirable one out of a sample. In other words, we’re just picking existing winners, and the ones not passing the bar
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Wilder Larkin
@LarkinWilder
There is no “preventing” a disease here. You are discarding the embryos that you deem invalid. You *are* preventing them from life based on disabilities they *might* have. Funny how words mean things.
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