Laura Hercher

starting to realize how difficult it is to avoid all the nazi discourse
i think it is because of all the nazis

Puppy-killer says what?

This is the same type of language my father (a biological psychiatrist) used to describe when neurons fire.

decent point

Says more about you than him, doesn’t it?

As if you didn’t have enough reasons to vote for Mamdani….

No one’s gonna tell him?

I mean I was rooting for the Giants but if I weren't rooting for the Giants now I would be rooting for the Giants.

Good news everybody it's Friday

Chris Murphy: "There's a lot of history that has taken place in the East Wing & it was just destroyed without any conversation in the public, without any consent of Congress. It's absolutely illegal. That visual is powerful b/c you're watching destruction of the rule of law as those walls come down"

ICE is stockpiling arms, including chemical weapons, guided missile warheads and explosive components. The spending dwarfs anything we've ever seen in the agency - a 700% increase.

The President is building an army to attack his own country.

You were guilty. They found you guilty.

When I was ten I went to the head of Little League in my town and asked him to show me in the rules where it said a girl couldn't play bsaeball... and he did. So forgive me if I'm sniffling a little bit. Allergies.

So thrilled that my friend and genetic counseling colleague @laurahercher.bsky.social is opening this mornings events at #WCPG2025
She’s speaking about polygenic embryo editing and the ethics associated with it on the context of our current political moment

Stop calling us nazis! Only nazis can use the words nazis.

A long thread I posted earlier on the Today Show’s pretty awful segment on embryo selection.

Best of luck to the couple now expecting their second child. If this is what you need to do to feel safe then that's the right choice for you. Congrats.

But equating this with (but wait! there's more!) PGS or suggesting only one WILDLY EXPENSIVE company can do it -- that's a disservice.

THE END.

If Orchid was misleading you about this, maybe they were not being entirely truthful about everything else.

Just a thought

The Today Show correspondent does fact check Orchid once right at the end, post-interview when she notes that there is another company doing the same type of test, Genomic Prediction. (sorry Nucleus and Herasight, no earned media for you today). She looks proud of herself!
But maybe consider...

They do bring in the wonderful Gabriel Lazaro-Munez who makes these points, but they give him like two sentences and no context. Still Gabe points out the basic flaws -- don't give much information, not equally valid in all populations. But it's too little too late.

PGS don't diagnose anything - they incrementally adjust your lifetime risk. Apparently the Today Show did not consult any of the approximately 1 billion other articles on PGS, wherein experts are almost universally dubious about the value of these tests in this context - scoring sibling embryos.

But wait! There's more! Excited nterviewer adds that Orchid will go beyond these rare diseases and check for adult-onset stuff like "heart disease, schizophrenia or even cancer." Okay, STOP. Totally different type of test. The Today Show doesn't explain, but these are polygenic scores (PGS).

Carrier screens are limited BY DESIGN to testing for changes whose impact we understand. Beyond that, you get into weird territory. Report all the changes and you will be lucky to ever find a normal embryo. Narrow it down to changes we understand and… you are back to carrier screening, but more $$$.

The most important (in terms of affecting function) and best studied part of the genome is called the exome. We've done a lot of those. We still come up with unknowns all the time. We see variants that might pose a risk -- or maybe not. It's frustrating.

That's not my problem here. The issue for me is that the interviewer hears 100% (which OF COURSE NOT) and says, essentially, wow you get all the information! But this is far more complex issue, and more DNA in this setting is not always for the best. Not intuitive? Let me explain.

Siddiqui then claims that their tech sequences 100% of the DNA. 100%? That's a bold statement. WGS on embryo samples (not much DNA) are problematic. Are their claims true? Hard to tell because they are "validated" (she says that word a lot) but only by them. A big claim for secret sauce. But...

The testing the couple did on their 1st pregnancy — likely carrier screening and a check of the fetal chromosomes -- missed it.

Might Orchid have found it? Yes. Is this testing available in other labs and other settings? Also yes. 100% of the time? Absolutely not.

If questioned on this first misleading sales pitch, orchid ceo Noor Siddiqui would likely say they are the only company that would have caught their daughter’s condition in the first place, which is not what was being discussed. Still, this is partly true.

Interviewer accepts at face value Orchid's assertion that they alone can help this couple. This is going to come as a great surprise to every other IVF lab! Proper care for this couple would start by finding out what caused their daughter’s condition.If known, testing would be routine IVF care.

Note: they adore their daughter AND they don't want it to happen again. If you can't get your head around this or think it is (aha!) hypocritical, I strongly suggest you stop wasting time judging that you could put to good use working on developing some empathy.