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Theranos Is Subject of Criminal Probe by U.S

wsj.com

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Re: Theranos Is Subject of Criminal Probe by U.S

#101

Post by blakeross »

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #88
blakeross wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you! Currently it's a hobby; my background is in tech. This is the second script I've written. The first was a fake premiere for S3 of Silicon Valley ( http://bit.ly/1LOZZpT ).

Just wanted to say that I found this so funny when I read it a few months ago (if I remember correctly). You perfectly captured the characters and I could see them saying those exact words. I'm curious what it takes to break into the world of writing for existing TV shows. Can you sell scripts written on spec for shows like this?

I appreciate it.

You can't sell a script for a show to the show itself. In fact, the staff isn't even allowed to read it for legal reasons (if they happen to conceive a similar idea, they're worried you'll sue them later).

However, an agent could shop your script to other shows to demonstrate that you're able to integrate well into a world you didn't create. It's rather strange: If you want to write for Breaking Bad, you should write a script for The Wire.

Re: Theranos Is Subject of Criminal Probe by U.S

#102

Post by ben_jones »

FireBeyond wrote: post #95
cft wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uncovering? They pissed off (justly) somebody very important, probably in the military, and they used WSJ to orchestrate this.

No, the other way around. They were all set to get it in at a high level into the military, when some pesky medical lower ranking officer said, hey, doesn't this need FDA approval? Theranos tried to squelch that, but to no avail.

Is it possible both of you are right?

Re: Theranos Is Subject of Criminal Probe by U.S

#103

Post by BurningFrog »

jfoutz wrote: post #91
BurningFrog wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is a good factual overview of why Single Payer won't make health care cheap in the US: http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-04-30/single-paye...

two things struck me as a little odd. One, the private costs are off the chart with regard to our peers, but the government spending is just "more than average". but more than average is presented as being just as bad as the outlier we are in the first case. Two, medicare is responsible for the most expensive health years of a person's life. The time when our bodies just start to fall apart and require a lot of speci…

I think the argument is that US government financed health care that only pays for maybe half the population is already more expensive then paying for 100% of the population in other countries.

So it's a stretch to imagine that having the US government take on many more patients would lower costs.

Re: Theranos Is Subject of Criminal Probe by U.S

#105

Post by bonniemuffin »

mattzito wrote: post #90
nextos wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The healthcare industry is quite inefficient at allocating money to things that are needed and have a decent chance of working. For example, in the field of oncology there's very little money put into cheap accurate early screening. And an almost obsessive pour of money into trying to understand mid-to-late stage cancers. Even James Watson has criticized this. It's a sad situation, because we now know early pre-clini…

> For example, in the field of oncology there's very little money put into cheap accurate early screening. And an almost obsessive pour of money into trying to understand mid-to-late stage cancers. Even James Watson has criticized this. I'm in no way an expert, but isn't part of that related to increasing evidence that early detection of a tumor isn't necessarily a benefit? I recall reading many tumors stop or grow s…

You're definitely right that merely detecting tumors earlier doesn't always help, because many of them are relatively slow-growing and fairly harmless. But this actually makes a very specific kind of early detection research even more important: research to help us predict which early-stage tumors will progress to becoming deadly, and which ones won't. Currently we're pretty bad at making this prediction for many kinds of cancer, but if we could detect them all early AND distinguish the really bad ones from the mellower ones, we'd know exactly who to treat aggressively.

Re: Theranos Is Subject of Criminal Probe by U.S

#106

Post by wpietri »

Mz wrote: post #68
supernova87a wrote: post #63

I think the reason we (maybe secretly) take so much satisfaction / schadenfreude at this story is that someone who was so hyped and the darling of Silicon Valley got so much funding and attention. While others who toil away on good ideas, without nearly so many connections and silver spoons, struggle to even get 1 minute of air time with the kind of funders and backers that she got. That, plus seeing the cluelessness…

Or maybe some folks feel relieved to have their mental models for actual reality validated. Folks who thought it smelled like vaporware at best, or BS at worst, may not be engaging in schadenfreude so much as "Ha! I knew it! I'm not crazy!" It is possible to have not ugly reasons for finding satisfaction in seeing how this is turning out.

Good point. For me it's not exactly schadenfreude. I'm ok with hype that turns out to be justified. And I'm mostly resigned to people who go wrong through an excess of enthusiasm and naivete. But when unjustified hype shades into negligence or fraud, I take a rich pleasure in seeing people get their comeuppance. It's not schadenfreude precisely, but more about seeing justice done, about seeing karma fulfilled.

Re: Theranos Is Subject of Criminal Probe by U.S

#107

Post by home_boi »

wstrange wrote: post #80
BurningFrog wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is a good factual overview of why Single Payer won't make health care cheap in the US: http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-04-30/single-paye...

Summary of the article: A single payer system works well everywhere else, but is politically impossible in the US. That is a sad indictment of US politics.

There's hundreds of factors affecting the efficiency of a singe payer system in the US compared to other countries, including population size, illegal immigration, crime rates, etc.

Solutions for one country may not work for another

Re: Theranos Is Subject of Criminal Probe by U.S

#108

Post by wpietri »

cft wrote: post #94
Fede_V wrote: post #9

Man, the shoe fell really, really quickly. Also - huge congratulations to the reporting team of the WSJ, that did an incredible job of unconvering this story back when Theranos was still considered a golden goose. John Carreyrou in particular did some exceptional reporting.

Uncovering? They pissed off (justly) somebody very important, probably in the military, and they used WSJ to orchestrate this.

Really? I don't know these reporters, but I know ones of similar caliber, and they are very, very hard to use. They are of the "if your mother says she loves you, check it out" school of reporting. So in that spirit, could you provide your evidence that the reporters were used? And also explain by whom, and why these military VIPs didn't just have the DOJ go after Theranos directly?

Re: Theranos Is Subject of Criminal Probe by U.S

#110

Post by chii »

zzz157 wrote: post #89
toomuchtodo wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Someone out there needs to attack healthcare. All the attacking that needs to be done is political/social, not technical. Want to attack healthcare? Strip middlemen out so that the money flows to providers and researchers (Single payer + pouring additional money into the NIH/NSF, with the results being public domain). All of these YC startups I see "hacking" healthcare (Dr Chrono, HealthSherpa, etc) are just bandai…

Single Payer would be great if you can trust the uh, payer. But our government is delightfully corrupt, so I'm sure a lot of people with more rare medical conditions would end up with worse treatment than they can get now.

Is it better that the majority who have common ailment get easy and very cheap treatment, at the cost of having a more expensive treatment for rare ailments?
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