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At Orchid, we strive to operate at the highest ethical and scientific standards. Here are the guiding principles that inform how we serve our clientele.
As the saying goes, “health is wealth.” Better health enables people to engage more fully with all aspects of life.
Orchid focuses on being able to meaningfully measure and mitigate risks presented by the most common diseases. We want to help prospective parents have a way to better protect their future children from common chronic, debilitating conditions such as cancers, heart disease, diabetes, and Alzheimer's disease. We build these products with our own friends and family in mind, in hopes of bettering health for many future families.
Genetics provides each of us with an instruction manual for life. For most of human history, we have not been to read these assembly instructions — until recent years. It turns out being able to decipher our life manual is invaluable. It can tell us whether a person has a higher risk of developing the most common conditions.
Here’s how we think about it: at birth, we’re each dealt a starting hand of cards with our unique genetic makeup. But most of us walk through life unaware of what's in the cards. Advanced genetic testing helps uncover what’s in our starting hand to better understand and improve our health.
We stand for a couple’s right to access the best available scientific information that can enable them to make responsible choices and improve their children’s prospects. Bringing a child into this world is hard. There are endless unknowns and uncertainties — many that feel entirely out of our control. For some couples, they would prefer not to go into this already emotionally fraught process blind.
Ultimately, we want to give parents more clarity and take away at least some of the scary unknowns about their future child’s health risks.
Orchid wants to ensure that our products are accessible to all that could benefit; applications for financial assistance are available here. We are also building out resources for fertility and genetics education and a forum for broader conversation in the community.
In line with access to information to make personalized informed choices, couples should be given the option to reduce disease risk for their future children through embryo screening.
Prevention of adult-onset disease through embryo screening and IVF is not new. In fact, it has been done since the 1990s. Adult-onset disorders now represent over 20% of all preimplantation genetic testing for single gene disorders (PGT-M) cases, with the most common indication being for cancer predisposition syndromes such as BRCA1/2.
Over the last 20 years, the field has advanced from the detection of very rare mutations to the ability to measure genetic susceptibility for the top chronic conditions. From a reproductive freedom perspective, we stand for a couple’s right to have access to information that enables them to mitigate disease risk for their future child.
As is the case for any useful technology or knowledge, advanced genetic testing can be used in a responsible, thoughtful manner, or it can be misused or misinterpreted. Orchid is committed to combining the use of advanced tools with the counsel of our caring, dedicated team to help you conceive with greater confidence and peace of mind.
