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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

#121

Post by lawnchair_larry »

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.

A combination of greed, badly wanting to win the VC lottery, and not wanting the obligation of knowing whoever holds their stock is a whale.

If you've ever invested in something and found out you were about to lose it, part of you flirts with the idea of selling while you still have plausible deniability. You know that if you ask too many questions, you'll lose that plausible deniability. Of course it doesn't really make a difference, you know damn well, but it's part of the grieving process.

Re: Regulators Propose Banning Theranos Founder from Blood Testing

#122

Post by FireBeyond »

plainOldText wrote: post #70
entee wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, b…

"Just some of their tests, not all of them"

As of now, the -only- test they are allowed to perform is for HPV, by traditional methods.

The FDA has "concerns" about every other test they offer or have offered.

Re: Regulators Propose Banning Theranos Founder from Blood Testing

#123

Post by madgar »

hga wrote: post #98
vonmoltke wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 From the many blood draws I have done, standard practice is to fill a tosser vial before collecting the real samples in order to remove these contaminants.

From the ones done on me for bog standard tests in the last dozen years or more, that wasn't done, but the extra gunk in the vial just might be intended to grab the contaminants as well as stabilize the blood. Or maybe these more standard tests allow for whatever amount of contamination is in the drawn blood, suppose it's 2-3 orders of magnitude less.

They don't throw out the first vial right there in front of you.

Re: Regulators Propose Banning Theranos Founder from Blood Testing

#124

Post by ageofwant »

wsj's paywall prevents me from getting to their version of "the facts" and their presentation of it. So I'll just make up my own.

Suffice to say that this debacle won't do any further biotech investment any good, and that's a great shame.

US$ 10B is a lot to piss away, I hope some good came of it.

Re: Regulators Propose Banning Theranos Founder from Blood Testing

#125

Post by mrnd »

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…

no duh

Re: Regulators Propose Banning Theranos Founder from Blood Testing

#126

Post by trhway »

desireco42 wrote: post #68
WalterSear wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>well educated

she dropped from Stanford at something like first year.

Re: Regulators Propose Banning Theranos Founder from Blood Testing

#127

Post by khomenko »

jonathankoren wrote: post #102
stevebmark wrote: post #91

Federal regulators "banning" a specific person from an industry is rare. 23 and Me didn't receive anything close to this type of regulation, scrutiny, and public accusations. Theranos may not be a perfect company, but it's likely some powerful people are pulling strings to snub them out for an agenda that supersedes regulation.

I think that's because 23 And Me's tests actually did what they said they did. The problem with 23 And Me was that all about the reporting of the results, not that the results were fundamentally flawed. The FDA's problem with 23 And Me was that they were coming very close to, and perhaps were, crossing the line into giving medical advice. It's legitimately very hard to interpret the results of say a BRCA1[0] test, an…

that. there are no real parallels here.

Re: Regulators Propose Banning Theranos Founder from Blood Testing

#128

Post by mistermann »

jobu wrote: post #84
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…

The first part seems probable (sell to the DoD), but intentional fraud is unlikely. Remember Hanlon's Razor - "Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence." It seems more likely they were very close on the science, and decided to run with it while they worked out the last 10%. That works great for most tech companies, but healthcare technology is very different.

> intentional fraud is unlikely. Remember Hanlon's Razor

Hanlon's razor isn't proof of anything.

Re: Regulators Propose Banning Theranos Founder from Blood Testing

#129

Post by danieltillett »

AJ007 wrote: post #89
jobu wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first part seems probable (sell to the DoD), but intentional fraud is unlikely. Remember Hanlon's Razor - "Never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence." It seems more likely they were very close on the science, and decided to run with it while they worked out the last 10%. That works great for most tech companies, but healthcare technology is very different.

Has there been any publicized and verifiable facts that they were close to having something that worked?

No. In fact all the independent data suggests that it is impossible with less than 4 drops of blood (~100µl) due to sampling issues. No matter how great the detection technology is if you are not able to get a representative sample then the end result will be garbage.

Re: Regulators Propose Banning Theranos Founder from Blood Testing

#130

Post by aceperry »

entee wrote: post #71
numair wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Frist made some ethically questionable statements with respect to a brain damaged woman who was removed from life support. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/16/politics/schiavo-autopsy-r...
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