Is Embryo Screening the Future of Reproduction? | Win-Win with Liv Boeree

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 in both child and adulthood. 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.
Chapters:
00:02:14 - What is genetic testing?
00:09:30 - How IVF works
00:13:38 - Current costs of testing
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 - The Fertility Crisis
01:05:14 - Artificial Wombs
01:21:13 - Her vision for the Future
Links:
Orchid - www.orchidheal...
Noor's Twitter - / noor_siddiqui_
IVF - en.wikipedia.o...
Credits
♾️ Hosted by Liv Boeree & Igor Kurganov
♾️ 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.
Watch the previous episode with Boyan Slat of the Ocean Cleanup here: • Boyan Slat on Solving ...

[@raresmircea]

Like philosopher David Pearce says, once we open the mature safe stage of this technology there will be no looking back just like nobody today ever says "I want surgery but without anesthesia", altho people back in the day were at the very least suspicious, sometimes even aggressively opposing it. Individuals who grew up in a world without genetic screening & genetic interventions will see these as something alien or abhorrent, but like the saying says, progress is made one death at a time. The people of the future who will benefit from the mature safe technology will look back at today’s "genetic crapshoot", as Pearce calls it, and be horrified.

[@joelquintin3420]

You have mastered the art of asking questions about complex topics, keep it up liv. ❤

[@Danuxsy]

these are old ideas, you can find books written about this that are a hundred years old, in fact hundreds of years old. They are regurgitating the same thing over and over. Many sci-fi books and movies (Ghost in the Shell) are all about transhumanism, human identity, genetic engineering, etc...

[@MrMark595]

I'm not a luddite and I can see the benefits of what she is saying but Chesterson's fence always spring to mind in these conversations. Be careful not to do away with something unless you know why is there in the first place, ir isn't about inhibiting innovation but I guess it is about being aware of the potential unknowns.

[@roeesi-personal]

I'm a bit too weary with giving parents the power to choose whether or not to have a certain child depending on certain genetic properties. IMO even screening for seemingly "bad" genetical "diseases" such as autism may cause unwanted effects, as there is a high correlation between very high intelligence and excellence, at least in domains like math and computer science, to certain kinds of autism spectrum disorders. I'm specifically afraid that giving the parents labels such as "autism spectrum disorder", assuming such a thing can be genetically screened for, would scare them and lead to a decrease in highly intelligent people. Not to speak of the obvious example which is of course with beauty standards which are artificial constructs that may limit the world's genetic diversity, or if the technology would start as too expensive link certain physical features with wealth and make the connection between wealth and looks, which is currently mediated through ethnicity, even stronger, which, when such a technology becomes cheaper would only compel poorer people harder to also adhere to this look to "give" their child a "better" look to be able to "compete in life", leading exactly to a Molochian "race to the bottom" scenario where we'll all sacrifice our genetic diversity and reduce our visual distinctiveness from each other for some kind of an artificial competition.

[@landspide]

Your true age is actually your age plus your mother's. I dont understand the softy approach to "who am I to judge someone who wants their kids to be deaf", WTF, no... It's morally wrong.

[@Danuxsy]

morals only apply to homo sapiens 😉😉

[@peterford5408]

Suggestion: include guest's name in video title. Question: has something happened to the podcast's website? Been ditched in favour of Liv's personal website?

[@peterford5408]

(Normally I wouldn't care too much about a website change. But my podcast app hasn't given me any new episodes of Win-Win since 2023-12-20, and I suspect that's the reason.)

[@riliash]

@@peterford5408 Same problem here. No podcast updates after Episode 13

[@nowithinkyouknowyourewrong8675]

I often search by guest name and watch few podcasts by them. Guess name also often appears in search autocomplete.

[@JesusChristDenton_7]

"History has shown that breakthroughs in science and technology have often been met with skepticism, only to later be recognized as transformative." -A wise Man

[@rydirban]

Gattaca is one of my favorite movies

[@Danuxsy]

in what way

[@rydirban]

@@Danuxsy Philosophically

[@CrystalCloudPodcast]

Much love.

[@Karma-fp7ho]

Ahh baby Boeree on the way! Nice.

[@Dr.Im-All-In]

Liv ❤❤

[@govcorpwatch]

"Centralized Authority" saying what is good and what is bad is 100% dependent upon us "believing" that we "are" legal fictitious "legal persons", otherwise known is legal identity with legal name. Treating us as "Legal persons" is what ALLOWS and enables such "centralized authority" .... And it's 100% literal and actual human slavery... treating wo/men as THINGS (aka legal identities), under guise of "Citizenship" that are "things" owned by gov't, is still human slavery. Our "legal identity only has "person" status and "person" rights via corporate personhood! We should call it Person Corporatehood. But more importantly, Corporations were NOT actually granted "personhood" back in the late 1800s. The non-legally binding SUMMARY was stated as the case granting corporations personhood but the case itself never said that. The Gov't is not a person, The Banks are not persons. Corporations are not persons. "your" legal identity is not a person. They have no right to sue or be sued. They are all individually culpable.

[@rorod3]

Very interesting ethical questions. She's inventing a technology that if her maternal grandparent had at the time of her mother's conception then not only would her mother never have existed but she wouldn't have existed either. Also, with respect to deaf parents choosing deaf embryos (strange Phrasing) her saying that the parents have the right to choose that for their offspring in some respects conflicts with the pro-choice arguments in the abortion debate because women argue that their body their choice especially when the mother is health can be adversely affected . But in this case, the mother /father can choose a less healthy body for their offspring, even though the offspring has no say. And like she said in the interview, her mother would have preferred not to have her genetic blindness and Noor doesn't want it for her offspring. I'm not taking either side, just pointing out a potential logical inconsistency.

[@Danielfl.]

👶

[@packardsonic]

The hard part is getting the embryo to stick in the uterus.

[@davidrichardson1636]

Liv, it's not that screening embryos for serious genetic illness is evil. What one does with the knowledge once the screening is done is the problematic part. We might, for example, find a way to repair genetic malformations. That is, the abnormality that produces Down Syndrome might be repaired. Right now, however, the solution is only abortion to prevent the Down Syndrome child from being born. But if we are satisfied with the second solution, we might prefer that solution for economic reasons. For even if the embryo's repair were possible, the second solution would remain easier and cheaper. So, let's take this a step. Imagine an embryo with healthy genetics but will develop into a healthy child with an "undesirable" characteristic for some reason. For example, "I don't want a child with red hair or green eyes." Well, if the mother or parents do not want this child, then this child can be aborted cheaply and efficiently to avoid the result. That is, genetic screening may well lead to "designer babies" that match parental preferences, not to avoid catastrophic disease. This would not be a matter of avoiding disease but manipulating childbirth according to aesthetic criteria. Now we have some serious ethical issues. I am afraid that producing "superior" children--according to some arbitrary criteria of "superior"--will become the ultimate focus of genetic screening, not having healthy babies. That is the real ethical issue here. If one doubts this possibility, one need only read some of the writings of the eugenicists from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. To get a sense of how intense the arbitrary cultural discussion of infant "fitness" was during this period, I would recommend viewing the pro-infanticide movie released in 1917, The Black Stork. Here is the link to that movie: kzbin.info/www/bejne/eXbLY56wZ5uHZ80. We may take birth control for granted today, but that does not mean that this technology does not have important Molochian consequences, such as birth rates falling below replacement throughout the West. Accepting a technology does not make its problematic consequences go away, and noting that does not make one anti-technology. My point is that the issue of having "fit" children is not new culturally. It is foolish to believe that avoiding disease is the only possible purpose for genetic screening. Imagine what the Third Reich would have done with genetic screening. We don't let "unknown unknowns" stop us from developing other technologies? Really? That is some kind of rebuttal? I don't doubt that this is true in our development of technologies, but isn't that one of the reasons we have the Moloch problem in the first place? We are willing to secure the advantages of a certain technology and ignore possible disadvantages, especially when we don't understand those disadvantages very well. Rushing to release the genie when we lack understanding of the negative consequences does not make it easier to put the genie back into the bottle. Liv, isn't that one of your major points?

[@BlackAngel-xv4xp]

Если включить режим бога, можно создать дьявола..

[@NineInchTyrone]

CRISPR baby

[@NineInchTyrone]

Partner ? Husband ?

[@starchaser6024]

Simp?

[@TingTong2568]

@@starchaser6024 sh@g?