In the time it took you to contemplate that headline, nearly 250 babies were welcomed into the world. And by the end of today, that number will

This CEO wants to find out what’s wrong with you before you’re born

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2024-05-09 20:00:08

In the time it took you to contemplate that headline, nearly 250 babies were welcomed into the world. And by the end of today, that number will multiply 1486 times to result in a grand daily count of 385,000 babies. If these figures seem perplexing and make you question the pace of humanity, here’s a preemptive spoiler: the stats only get scarier.

Within this widening baby pool, a seemingly negligible but quietly growing percentage of newborns suffer from some kind of birth defect. About 8 million out of the 140 million babies born every year, to be exact. These defects could range from obesity to cancer, or even a rare multi-syllabic condition that you may have never heard of. To make matters worse, this genetic bad news is often delivered to new parents at birth or identified in the early years of childhood.

Noor Siddiqui, CEO of Orchid, hopes to “mitigate” these random genetic mishaps all together. But before you conjure a freakish hypothetical of scientists chipping away the disease-causing bits in an unborn baby’s genes, let’s catch a breath. The world is just not that dystopian yet. Orchid uses genome sequencing technology to create a report. A report that encompasses a wealth of genetic information on which babies will grow into the healthiest adults.