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Regulators Propose Banning Theranos Founder from Blood Testing

wsj.com

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Re: Regulators Propose Banning Theranos Founder from Blood Testing

#71

Post by entee »

numair wrote: post #43
theseatoms wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bill Frist is a medical doctor and has focused on healthcare policy throughout his career, for whatever that's worth.

Umm, the good doctor's wealth comes from HCA, a chain of for-profit hospitals that once held the record for the largest fraud settlement in US history. Frist clearly has excellent PR, because very few people ever mention this. http://www.forbes.com/2000/12/15/1215disaster.html

Frist makes sense on the board in that he definitely knows who to call at the FDA and would get his call answered. As unsavory as it is, lobbying experience is valuable in tightly regulated industries. I have no idea if he's a good doc, or the ethics of HCA, but from a purely pragmatic perspective, of all the names his makes the most sense on that board.

Re: Regulators Propose Banning Theranos Founder from Blood Testing

#72

Post by aab0 »

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.

WSJ has been going after Theranos for a long time now and I believe they broke the first stories. If you're an internal leaker, ex-employee, or hostile official, who are you going to leak to or give tips about where to dig up bodies? The WSJ, of course.

Re: Regulators Propose Banning Theranos Founder from Blood Testing

#73

Post by plainOldText »

facetube wrote: post #63
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.

Read my comment above!

Re: Regulators Propose Banning Theranos Founder from Blood Testing

#74

Post by pg_is_a_butt »

dcgudeman wrote: post #9

The more I read about theranos the more apparent it is that there is something fundamentally wrong with it's core goals, leadership and technology. One easily identifiable red flag is the composition of its board. It's nearly all ex-military and government officials not veteran entrepreneurs and technologists. Just to name a few: George Shultz (former Secretary of State), Sam Nunn and Bill Frist (former U.S. Senators…

Bill Frist... famous for taking $20,000,000 in cash from harrahs to staple the UIGEA (online poker shutdown) to the PORT act with 1 minute left in the session, which by some fuckup of logic, automatically becomes a law without a single person ever seeing it.

he is scum. he deserves reckoning.

Re: Regulators Propose Banning Theranos Founder from Blood Testing

#75

Post by blakeyrat »

pfarnsworth wrote: post #69
blakeyrat wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sche…

I also disagree with things like "taxi medallions", I'm just saying that Uber throws out the baby with the bathwater.

Right now, there's a real risk they'll put legit taxi companies out of business, and then those people in wheelchairs who need transportation are simply screwed. But nobody at Uber cares, of course, because the company is run by complete jerks.

Re: Regulators Propose Banning Theranos Founder from Blood Testing

#76

Post by [deleted] »

dubdubbub wrote: post #67
entee wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

Re: Regulators Propose Banning Theranos Founder from Blood Testing

#77

Post by joezydeco »

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 was obvious to a great number of other diagnostics firms that this technology was hard to scale down.

I was at one of those firms 25 years ago and they were working on it back then. Either they abandoned the effort, or are still trying, but they haven't launched a single microfluidic immunoassay.

Re: Regulators Propose Banning Theranos Founder from Blood Testing

#78

Post by joezydeco »

hga wrote: post #62
kneel wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 scannin…

...optical scanning to read the results (what else might you use?)

There's been some research into using piezoelectric elements coated with antigen or other reactive surfaces.

A positive result (meaning antibodies are attaching themselves to the substrate) would change the resonant frequency of the surface.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0003267000...

Re: Regulators Propose Banning Theranos Founder from Blood Testing

#79

Post by vonmoltke »

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.

No, the traditional cab companies do not have to cover this market by law. I am aware of only one cab company in the DFW area (Yellow) that offers wheelchair vans as an option. A quick search shows that there are plenty of cab companies around the US that do not have wheelchair capabilities at all.

Also, for the record, small cab companies were allies of Uber here in Dallas.

Re: Regulators Propose Banning Theranos Founder from Blood Testing

#80

Post by jboydyhacker »

dcgudeman wrote: post #9

The more I read about theranos the more apparent it is that there is something fundamentally wrong with it's core goals, leadership and technology. One easily identifiable red flag is the composition of its board. It's nearly all ex-military and government officials not veteran entrepreneurs and technologists. Just to name a few: George Shultz (former Secretary of State), Sam Nunn and Bill Frist (former U.S. Senators…

Only those with the title "Director" are board members. Only about 3 people are directors. None of those you mentioned are directors just advisors.
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