Whole-Genome Sequencing Will Change Pregnancy

The world of pregnancy is going to radically change, predicts Noor Siddiqui. “I think that the default way people are going to choose to have kids is via IVF and embryo screening,” she said at the WIRED Health summit last week. “There’s just a massive amount of risk that you can take off of the table.”

Siddiqui is the founder and CEO of Orchid, a biotech company that offers whole-genome screening of embryos for IVF. By analyzing the DNA of different embryos before selecting which one to implant, Orchid says, parents can lower the risk their children grow up affected by conditions with a genetic basis. Siddiqui was speaking with George Church—a pioneer in genomics and a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School—at the summit in Boston, exploring the promise and potential of whole-genome sequencing.

An estimated 4 percent of people worldwide have ...