Elon Musk Using Eugenics Startup to Inspect DNA of Potential Babies for Intelligence
📄 Article Content
An Austin eugenics startup apparently counts billionaire Elon Musk and his girlfriend, Neuralink director Shivon Zilis, among its clients.
That company, Orchid Health, provides tony clients the opportunity to screen their embryos for genetic illnesses starting at around $22,500. While there are a handful of similar genetic prediction firms, Orchid stands out by claiming that it can sequence embryos' entire genome using as few as five cells and predict far more than its competitors.
And according to two sources close to the company who spoke to the Washington Post, its services have been used for at least one of Zilis and Musk's four children.
While it's not at all news that Musk, the father of at least 14 children by multiple women, is obsessed with reproduction, this claim — which expands on reporting from The Information last year — casts the billionaire's pronatalism in a new and even more unsettling light.
One of WaPo's Orchid insiders, who was not named to protect their privacy, told the newspaper that 30-year-old company found