this post was submitted on 11 Apr 2024

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This Woman Will Decide Which Babies Are Born (www.wired.com)

submitted 7 months ago by jeffw@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

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[–] jimmydoreisalefty@lemmy.world 26 points 7 months ago (19 children)

How much does an Orchid screening cost?

It’s $2,500 per embryo.

And presumably you’d be screening several embryos. What about for families that can’t afford that?

We have a philanthropic program, so people can apply to that, and we’re excited to accept as many cases as we can.

I must now ask a question I’ve been dreading. I’m sorry in advance. Here goes. It’s the inevitable question about Theranos and Elizabeth Holmes.

No, this is the worst question. This is so mean.

Tell me why it’s so mean.

I find it sad. It’s a sad state of affairs where—my friends who aren’t even in health, they say they get it too. It’s like, any female CEO with any tech-adjacent thing is constantly being questioned—by the way, are you like this other fraud? Do you want to comment on this other random fraud that occurred that has absolutely nothing to do with you besides the person being the same gender as you?

If you’re trying to charitably understand where this question is coming from, how do you do that?

What would be the charitable interpretation—besides that our society is incredibly misogynistic and men’s frauds and failings are passed aside and when one female does it she stands for every other female CEO ever?

So there’s no charitable interpretation.

I don’t think there is. Society treats men as, like, default credible. For a woman, the default is skeptical.

[–] snooggums@midwest.social 31 points 7 months ago (17 children)

It’s like, any female CEO with any tech-adjacent thing is constantly being questioned—by the way, are you like this other fraud?

This really sounds like she is admitting that this is fraud, and that she doesn't like being compared to other fraud.

[–] Fal@yiffit.net -1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Wtf? No. What relevance does theranos have to this company? Does the interviewer ask the same thing to any other bio tech CEO?

[–] snooggums@midwest.social 10 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

The reason people are comparing her bullshit made up science crap to Theranos is because she is not a medical person promoting a medical thing that supposedly checks for thousands of times more things than established science with a minuscule sample. Somehow this caught on in a ton of places through being the new hotness and will most likely implode when it is proven to be snake oil in less than a decade.

This is the exact same situation as Theranos.

Plenty of existing companies, like 23andMe, already screen for BRCA variants.

23andMe does an array. They only look at, I think, 44 BRCA variants of the 70,000. If you only look at a few, then you can give people false certainty.

And they’re obviously not testing embryos.

Yeah, they just do people.

Whereas you sequence the entire genome of embryos—orders of magnitude more information, on both monogenic and polygenic conditions, than anything that’s ever been done before. Even your main competitor, Genomic Prediction, only does arrays of embryos, looking for specific things.

Yeah. Whole genome is a big deal and a massive upgrade. You can mitigate risks for thousands of diseases that previously you weren’t able to detect. It’s kind of like a vaccine for everything that we know, genetic-wise, at once.

And all off a very small amount of DNA.

About 5 picograms per cell in an embryo sample. That’s a really, really tiny amount. From both a chemistry perspective and a computational perspective, we had to invent new things to make it so that you can recover whole-genome data.

It's fucking tech bro bullshit, and the fact that she shares a gender with the other high profile person is a coincidence. While there is something to be said about not pushing back on the men doing the same thing, the criticism of her totally not eugenics because it involves computers logic is completely warranted and the comparison is spot on.

[–] Syn_Attck@lemmy.today 6 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

I also liked this bit:

[Reporter] But again, you think that’s unfair because of who your mom is. Because she suffers. Something about her suffering catalyzed in you the desire to end suffering in other people. Does that make sense?

No, that doesn’t make sense. Unfortunately, not all disease is genetic. There will still be disease and suffering. We are not that much of an optimistic fantasy.

Like she knows it's partly optimistic fantasy that will eventually work if she just keeps it going, but let it slip. E. Holmes thought the same thing... just a little more time and we'll have it.

I'm very glad I found the link to read the full article. She really does come off just like Elizabeth Holmes. When there isn't a viable product to sell, you really have to sell yourself. There are plenty female tech CEOs that stay out of the media, just like the majority don't know the names of most male tech CEOs, besides the few largest.

The way she reacted to the question of "your company is basically using exactly the same style of claimed technology as Theranos" as "Ugh. You're a meanie. Women shouldn't only be slaves!" is really quite telling.

[–] snooggums@midwest.social 0 points 7 months ago (2 children)

She also didn't understand the question about of her mom had been screned out then what would she think about not existing, and she said that there would just be a different version of herself.

She think she would exist if her mother did not.

[–] Buddahriffic@lemmy.world 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

It was a dumb answer to IMO a dumb question. Embryo screening won't affect anyone who has already been born unless it gets combined with some kind of time travel.

Yes, filtering out embryos will mean that entire potential family lines won't exist, but other new potentials will replace them, assuming they weren't going to be randomly selected in the first place.

[–] snooggums@midwest.social 2 points 7 months ago

Yes, other people. Not a different version of the same person.

[–] Syn_Attck@lemmy.today -1 points 7 months ago

She knew full well, she was just playing ignorant since she knew it would be printed. better to play dumb while you think of something to say than to give ammunition to your opponents

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