Regulators Propose Banning Theranos Founder from Blood Testing • Hacker News Board

Re: Regulators Propose Banning Theranos Founder from Blood Testing

#61

Post by entee » Wed, Apr 13, 2016, 7:58 PM UTC

jonwachob91 wrote: post #54

entee wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of Biotech VCs in the bay area. The one I know best is Third Rock Ventures, but there are others. The timelines for success are extraordinarily long so it's not quite as splashy a space. It's almost impossible to "fail fast" with a "MVP" in the biotech space, so you have to put in tons of capital for a long time. That said personalized medicine should end up being interesting, but I think it's really…

Bull Shit. Biotech companies produce more MVP's then any other sector. Just because we don't need to test if the business will work (as much as say a facebook) we do need to test the science. My startup is working on infection resistant materials for around hospitals. Infections are a problem, if we solve it we will have customers, how many and at what cost is the question. But because science is the question, and it…

That's fair, absolutely if you put it that way then yeah MVPs are much more frequent.

I think I see the experiments you're doing more as internal development. I.e. I run bits of my code dozens of times a day to make sure it's working (or not), which I see as analogous to running bench experiments.

Also, I'm thinking more about traditional pharma biotech where you can run tons of experiments but the drug has to be put into people at some point and there's actually a lot that can go wrong there that can't be easily forecast. The only time you get hints at whether your drug is "viable" is when you're in clinical trials and even then until succeeding in Phase III there's a ton of potentially catastrophic risk.

For the record I was a bench biochemist for the better part of a decade, so under no circumstances do I mean to denigrate bench science.

Re: Regulators Propose Banning Theranos Founder from Blood Testing

#62

Post by hga » Wed, Apr 13, 2016, 8:00 PM UTC

kneel wrote: post #27

dwolfson wrote: post #3

How did a company like Theranos get so "far" with all signs early and present pointing to deep, fundamental problems? I refuse to believe investors simply failed to perform due diligence.

It's not obvious that the diagnostic assays they were running couldn't scale down. These assays are performed regularly on large samples no problem, but the sensitivity and accuracy of the assay becomes erratic when you only have a couple micro liters of blood. Either they couldn't develop proper assays (an engineering problem) or microliters of blood don't contain enough substrates for their assays (a major lapse in…

It's more like the method of drawing the blood was thought to be the problem. A venous draw is going to be pretty clean, in that whatever tissue got stuck in the aperture of the needle is going to be dwarfed by the quantity of blood taken; I've read that the actual assaying machines use very little of the blood, which makes sense because the reagents used are expensive, plus to the extent you're using optical scanning to read the results (what else might you use?), thinner will tend to be better (note most of the preceding is WAGs on my part from basic principles).

Whereas a fingerstick produces a few drops of blood that flow to the surface moving past the tissue and cells that were cut getting to the blood vessels, and they'll contribute unrelated proteins, lipids from cell membranes, etc. etc. On its face, many many people have said this is so problematic real evidence that it worked was needed; heck, even a theory would have been nice, but neither were forthcoming.

Re: Regulators Propose Banning Theranos Founder from Blood Testing

#63

Post by facetube » Wed, Apr 13, 2016, 8:00 PM UTC

plainOldText wrote: post #58

It's sad to hear Theranos still has issues, but I think people should give them credit for showing the world the lab experience can be quick, simple and painless; not to mention the fact that they actually publish their prices online, which other labs do not do. You can also order and view all your results on the phone app, which is also nice.

Quick, simple, painless, and wrong.

Re: Regulators Propose Banning Theranos Founder from Blood Testing

#64

Post by return0 » Wed, Apr 13, 2016, 8:00 PM UTC

electic wrote: post #47

I wonder how much Quest and LabCorp have lobbied to get Theranos under the microscope. Almost all labs have findings including FDA labs that need be to corrected. I just find it odd that WSJ seems to get access to government documents, internal information, and competitor benchmarks over and over again. Theranos faults aside, something does not smell right here.

Yeah, as if Theranos doesn't have the money or the board to lobby ...

Re: Regulators Propose Banning Theranos Founder from Blood Testing

#65

Post by entee » Wed, Apr 13, 2016, 8:00 PM UTC

plainOldText wrote: post #58

It's sad to hear Theranos still has issues, but I think people should give them credit for showing the world the lab experience can be quick, simple and painless; not to mention the fact that they actually publish their prices online, which other labs do not do. You can also order and view all your results on the phone app, which is also nice.

Lots of things are quick, simple and painless, but also utterly useless. If the labs don't work, how did they prove it could be all of those things?

I like public prices and a nice phone app, but that's completely peripheral to the actual objective of real, reliable, verifiable medical data.

Re: Regulators Propose Banning Theranos Founder from Blood Testing

#66

Post by shas3 » Wed, Apr 13, 2016, 8:06 PM UTC

electic wrote: post #47

I wonder how much Quest and LabCorp have lobbied to get Theranos under the microscope. Almost all labs have findings including FDA labs that need be to corrected. I just find it odd that WSJ seems to get access to government documents, internal information, and competitor benchmarks over and over again. Theranos faults aside, something does not smell right here.

> I just find it odd that WSJ seems to get access to government documents, internal information, and competitor benchmarks over and over again.

Umm, what's odd? FOIA? Perseverance in reporting? High quality investigative journalism from someone (John Carreyrou) with a track record?

Re: Regulators Propose Banning Theranos Founder from Blood Testing

#67

Post by dubdubbub » Wed, Apr 13, 2016, 8:13 PM UTC

entee wrote: post #45

rzt wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In discussion on other HN threads, some commenters suggested that the board was composed that way to grease the wheels of a DoD acquisition of the company's "tech". As OP put it [ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11403165 ]: John the more I think about Theranos the more I think this “mess” is actually deliberate. Looking at the history of Theranos and the composition of the board it appears Theranos was designed…

I'm a little confused, does the military acquire companies wholesale? I've never heard of that happening, that's not to say it can't but what are some examples of this kind of scheme? Instead was the plan to milk the military for a long time on R&D expenses and just pocket the cash as one goes along? If so how does that work for the VC-backed structure of the company?

The military pays as much, if not more, for contracts and products as the private sector would pay to acquire the companies involved.

Re: Regulators Propose Banning Theranos Founder from Blood Testing

#68

Post by desireco42 » Wed, Apr 13, 2016, 8:14 PM UTC

WalterSear wrote: post #13

desireco42 wrote: post #6

I can't imagine being in her shoes. Kind of sorry for her, she was supposed to be an inspiration for women everywhere. On the other hand, she is an excellent example of how not to be disconnected from reality for founders.

That statement borders on the obscene. Just because someone gets anointed by family connections to money and PR, that doesn't make them an 'inspiration', regardless of gender.

It is not that I studied her, it seemed like young, well educated, successful women, that is all.

Re: Regulators Propose Banning Theranos Founder from Blood Testing

#69

Post by pfarnsworth » Wed, Apr 13, 2016, 8:15 PM UTC

blakeyrat wrote: post #55

pfarnsworth wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess you prefer the old way where taxi cabs had a virtual monopoly, and it was expensive as hell. Uber did the right thing by disrupting this market. Theranos potentially could have been amazing for medicine, but more and more this looks like an epic disaster.

Unless you want a taxi cab with wheelchair access; Uber utterly fails that market. The traditional cab companies (who have to cover that market by law ) are quite right in crying foul, IMO.

Uber isn't a taxi company, and wheelchair access is a very small percentage of customers. Also, Uber's 5-6 years old, give them a chance to fix that problem in the coming months/years before crying foul along with a bunch of monopolists like the taxi companies. They have done nothing for us, except sit on their monopolies. The number of times I was passed by open taxis on the street, or stuck waiting hours for a scheduled taxi makes me glad they are all going out of business.

Re: Regulators Propose Banning Theranos Founder from Blood Testing

#70

Post by plainOldText » Wed, Apr 13, 2016, 8:19 PM UTC

entee wrote: post #65

plainOldText wrote: post #58

It's sad to hear Theranos still has issues, but I think people should give them credit for showing the world the lab experience can be quick, simple and painless; not to mention the fact that they actually publish their prices online, which other labs do not do. You can also order and view all your results on the phone app, which is also nice.

Lots of things are quick, simple and painless, but also utterly useless. If the labs don't work, how did they prove it could be all of those things? I like public prices and a nice phone app, but that's completely peripheral to the actual objective of real, reliable, verifiable medical data.

My understanding is that they've had issues with just some of their tests, not all of them. For instance, I wouldn't call Google useless if it couldn't answer reliably a small percentage of my queries. Yep, I know it's not a perfect analogy, but still.

Theranos could ditch the faulty tests and provide only those which are reliable, and the experience they would provide would still be superior to that of other labs, by a long shot.

Now if you want to question their honesty as a company, as a way of doing things, well, that's a different story.