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Theranos Ran Tests Despite Quality Problems

wsj.com

11–20 of 70 posts

Re: Theranos Ran Tests Despite Quality Problems

#11

I've never seen so much scrutiny over a company before. Everyone is screaming "death to Theranos" at every opportunity. How much of that is purely balking over the high valuation? I have a feeling if they didn't raise so much money then journalists wouldn't be swarming this at all. All of the critiques I see don't seem even close to show stoppers. No public peer reviewed studies? Some lab updates to match FDA regulat…

> How much of that is purely balking over the high valuation?[...]this is a fairly normal health startup otherwise

Absolutely not. Start-ups are supposed to fail early and fail often but when you're in the medical space you simply can't act entirely like a technology start-up. People's lives depend on many of these tests; you can't just go "well let's ignore the FDA and we'll take the slap on the wrist" like in other industries. Here they might deliver inaccurate test results that are then used to treat someone for a medical issue.

That can be deadly. Yeah many people are going crazy from the valuation and secrecy but there is plenty of legitimate scrutiny here especially if you read this article (I'm assuming you didn't because of your very generic Theranos comment versus addressing the issues in the article itself which sound grossly negligent, IMHO).

Re: Theranos Ran Tests Despite Quality Problems

#12

I've never seen so much scrutiny over a company before. Everyone is screaming "death to Theranos" at every opportunity. How much of that is purely balking over the high valuation? I have a feeling if they didn't raise so much money then journalists wouldn't be swarming this at all. All of the critiques I see don't seem even close to show stoppers. No public peer reviewed studies? Some lab updates to match FDA regulat…

Let's see: Due to quality control “Those results are not worth anything,” Yet doctors were relying on them to adjust warfarin levels, where "Too much warfarin can cause fatal bleeding, while too little can leave patients vulnerable to clots and strokes, according to medical experts."

But the attention is because people can't stand high valuations?

Re: Theranos Ran Tests Despite Quality Problems

#14
post #2

At what point here do people go to jail? The FDA can and has done that for faking lab tests.[1][2] [1] http://www.nytimes.com/1983/10/22/us/3-ex-officials-of-major... [2] http://pubs.acs.org/subscribe/archive/tcaw/10/i11/html/11reg...

>At what point here do people go to jail?

Generally the FDA will give companies several outs to fix problems, they only bring out the handcuffs after several ratcheting steps (one of which includes bringing in a US Marshal and a team from the FDA, at your expense, to be at your business every day and tell you how to run your company).

Re: Theranos Ran Tests Despite Quality Problems

#15
The key takeway I have from all this is if you are relying on Blood Tests for data that is critical to your health (as opposed to informative, educational, or personal interests) - it's probably a good idea, if you can afford it, to get results from three completely separate diagnostic systems - kind of like time with ntpd.

Re: Theranos Ran Tests Despite Quality Problems

#16

I've never seen so much scrutiny over a company before. Everyone is screaming "death to Theranos" at every opportunity. How much of that is purely balking over the high valuation? I have a feeling if they didn't raise so much money then journalists wouldn't be swarming this at all. All of the critiques I see don't seem even close to show stoppers. No public peer reviewed studies? Some lab updates to match FDA regulat…

A company offering medical services that pose "immediate jeopardy to patient health and safety" deserves scrutiny. If they knew that their results weren't good and didn't act on that information, why should they ever be trusted in the future?

Re: Theranos Ran Tests Despite Quality Problems

#17

I've never seen so much scrutiny over a company before. Everyone is screaming "death to Theranos" at every opportunity. How much of that is purely balking over the high valuation? I have a feeling if they didn't raise so much money then journalists wouldn't be swarming this at all. All of the critiques I see don't seem even close to show stoppers. No public peer reviewed studies? Some lab updates to match FDA regulat…

> How much of that is purely balking over the high valuation?[...]this is a fairly normal health startup otherwise Absolutely not. Start-ups are supposed to fail early and fail often but when you're in the medical space you simply can't act entirely like a technology start-up. People's lives depend on many of these tests; you can't just go "well let's ignore the FDA and we'll take the slap on the wrist" like in other…

True, if a startup in the medical didn't have the resources for quality control they should not have started up in the first place.

Re: Theranos Ran Tests Despite Quality Problems

#19

Alternate text on Pastebin here: http://pastebin.com/CqwL0iHR No images but it has the full text of the story. WSJ has a paywall for subscribers.

I don't think we want to be a community that shares content like this.

Ever wondered what the "web" link was for? It Googles the link title. Accessing via Google gets around the paywall.

I agree that this post is ethically dubious, but at the same time we actively bypass the paywall anyway.

Re: Theranos Ran Tests Despite Quality Problems

#20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think we want to be a community that shares content like this.

Ever wondered what the "web" link was for? It Googles the link title. Accessing via Google gets around the paywall. I agree that this post is ethically dubious, but at the same time we actively bypass the paywall anyway.

The Google workaround no longer works for the WSJ.
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