Noor Siddiqui founded Orchid so people could “have healthy babies.” Now she’s using the company’s gene technology on herself—and talking about it for the first time.
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.
Yeah, she didn’t really address fraud comparisons. Went straight to sexism. Both can be true, and if you are a CEO of a medical company you should be ready to prove your shit works.
If I (man) was being interviewed and the interviewer randomly said “hey, I read in the news a little while ago that a man committed fraud, and well, you’re a man too. Are you a fraud?”, I also wouldn’t dignify it with a response.
If the interviewer had said “This seems like a service a lot of people would want to partake in - how has the efficacy of this procedure has been confirmed, how can we verify that it works?”, he’d have got an answer.
Saying “hey, these people with no link to you other than your genitals are frauds, and it makes me feel like you could be, so are you?” doesn’t deserve to be treated like a question asked in good faith, because it isn’t.
Did you read what she was claiming it could do with a minuscule sample and a fancy algorithm? That is exactly the same claim as Theranos.
Comparing Theranos’ claims with the state of the art at the time should’ve revealed that they were implausible: some blood tests genuinely require a substantial amount of blood in order to properly process and separate and look for a statistically valid measurement of something about that blood, because blood isn’t homogenous and the act of drawing blood actually changes it.
Comparing this embryo screening claim with the state of the art is comparatively less of a leap. It’s just genetic sequencing, which has already advanced to the point where an entire genome can be sequenced with a tiny number of cells (including some single-cell sequencing techniques that are more complex and less reliable), plus actual correlative analysis of specific genes, plugging into existing research (the way 23 and me can do it for like $20).
I have some skepticism, but this business’s model really seems to be assembling steps that others have already established, and not inventing anything new.
I know that you aren’t smart enough to understand since it has already been answered, so I’m just putting this here for future readers before blocking you.
Just because Noor claims that the reasons people are comparing her and Orchid to Theranos is sexist doesn’t mean that is the only reason. There is a grain of truth that women get more of a spotlight than men in the same situations, but this comparison is primarily about the business and science with a small sprinkling of sexism that gets it to the printed page. But people aren’t comparison apples and oranges, there are a ton of similarities about the business claims and how implausible both sounded from existing businesses that have credible reasons for their skepticism.
It’s not exactly the same claim as Theranos. They’re entirely different things.
One is an embryo screening service, and the other was the promise of a blood testing technology that used a ridiculously small amount of blood, carried out tests without any human interaction in a ridiculously short amount of time, and used an impossibly compact device to do so.
E: ok lol just downvote and refuse to answer. That’s fine by me, you’d probably be a waste of time anyway.
But she does have somewhat of a point. Though it’s female and tech and medical - a closer comparison - women in tech leadership roles do get more questioned on their competence than do men.
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.
[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.
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.
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.
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
This really sounds like she is admitting that this is fraud, and that she doesn’t like being compared to other fraud.
Yeah, she didn’t really address fraud comparisons. Went straight to sexism. Both can be true, and if you are a CEO of a medical company you should be ready to prove your shit works.
If I (man) was being interviewed and the interviewer randomly said “hey, I read in the news a little while ago that a man committed fraud, and well, you’re a man too. Are you a fraud?”, I also wouldn’t dignify it with a response.
If the interviewer had said “This seems like a service a lot of people would want to partake in - how has the efficacy of this procedure has been confirmed, how can we verify that it works?”, he’d have got an answer.
Saying “hey, these people with no link to you other than your genitals are frauds, and it makes me feel like you could be, so are you?” doesn’t deserve to be treated like a question asked in good faith, because it isn’t.
E: spelling
If they were committing nearly identical fraud it would be a good comparison.
Did you read what she was claiming it could do with a minuscule sample and a fancy algorithm? That is exactly the same claim as Theranos.
Comparing Theranos’ claims with the state of the art at the time should’ve revealed that they were implausible: some blood tests genuinely require a substantial amount of blood in order to properly process and separate and look for a statistically valid measurement of something about that blood, because blood isn’t homogenous and the act of drawing blood actually changes it.
Comparing this embryo screening claim with the state of the art is comparatively less of a leap. It’s just genetic sequencing, which has already advanced to the point where an entire genome can be sequenced with a tiny number of cells (including some single-cell sequencing techniques that are more complex and less reliable), plus actual correlative analysis of specific genes, plugging into existing research (the way 23 and me can do it for like $20).
I have some skepticism, but this business’s model really seems to be assembling steps that others have already established, and not inventing anything new.
Can I ask if you’ve raped any children? It’s just that I’ve heard of a few paedophiles of the same gender as you.
I know that you aren’t smart enough to understand since it has already been answered, so I’m just putting this here for future readers before blocking you.
Just because Noor claims that the reasons people are comparing her and Orchid to Theranos is sexist doesn’t mean that is the only reason. There is a grain of truth that women get more of a spotlight than men in the same situations, but this comparison is primarily about the business and science with a small sprinkling of sexism that gets it to the printed page. But people aren’t comparison apples and oranges, there are a ton of similarities about the business claims and how implausible both sounded from existing businesses that have credible reasons for their skepticism.
It isn’t only sexism or even primarily sexism.
Except there was zero reason to bring Theranos up other than them both having female CEOs.
Can you please answer? Have you raped any children? It’s just that I’ve heard of a few men who’ve done that, so I wanted to ask.
It’s not exactly the same claim as Theranos. They’re entirely different things.
One is an embryo screening service, and the other was the promise of a blood testing technology that used a ridiculously small amount of blood, carried out tests without any human interaction in a ridiculously short amount of time, and used an impossibly compact device to do so.
E: ok lol just downvote and refuse to answer. That’s fine by me, you’d probably be a waste of time anyway.
That “other” is the possible Freudian slip.
But she does have somewhat of a point. Though it’s female and tech and medical - a closer comparison - women in tech leadership roles do get more questioned on their competence than do men.
I think it’s that in the questioner’s mind, they have decided she is a fraud, and want to know if she’s like the other one.
Wtf? No. What relevance does theranos have to this company? Does the interviewer ask the same thing to any other bio tech CEO?
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.
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.
I also liked this bit:
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.
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.
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.
Yes, other people. Not a different version of the same person.
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
They could just ask who has verified the outcomes… No need to do the ‘are you a fraud’ line