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Theranos Is Subject of Criminal Probe by U.S

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

#131

Post by ProAm »

daurnimator wrote: post #96
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…

FWIW, I had never heard of Theranos until they came up in the news with all these issues (and I read HN every day).

They were on 60 Minutes last year

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

#132

Post by awl130 »

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…

I think part of it is that the founder comes from a very well-connected family and her connections to institutional capital (Draper is a family friend; Lucas) and ridiculously high-level advisors in business (Oracle's Ellison) and the government (Frist) are not generally available to others.

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

#133

Post by alanfalcon »

blakeross wrote: post #21

Here's a television parody I wrote about Theranos that ends right where this story begins... http://pricks.com

FWIW (a fleeting warm fuzzy at best, sadly) I'd give you an interview for a comedy writing room if I were in charge of that kind of thing.

You ever listen to the Sam and Jim go to Hollywood podcast? Awesome stuff, not least because now they're showrunners for a major Steven-King backed television program and when they started they were just former Minnesotan restaurant owners who moved to Hollywood to try to become writers.

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

#134

Post by alanfalcon »

sdoowpilihp wrote: post #124
mrdmnd wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just read a 32 page script and now I want you to write major television shows. Is that your actual job? This is really good.

I genuinely laughed out loud when Allison announced the general council, who has a religious objection to email, would be working from home in Iceland.

I immediately sent that scene to my lawyer friend, with a link the script and a bad pun.

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

#135

Post by adventured »

dcgudeman wrote: post #22

Investigators are also examining whether Theranos misled government officials, which can be a crime under federal law, some of the people said. Such subpoenas don’t necessarily mean prosecutors are actively seeking an indictment. People familiar with the matter said the investigation is at an early stage. In addition to the criminal probe, the Securities and Exchange Commission is examining whether Theranos made dece…

Sure. Adelphia Cable was a large company - the fifth largest cable company in the US - founded by John Rigas, and he was indicted when it imploded:

"Federal prosecutors proved that the Rigases used complicated cash-management systems to spread money around to various family-owned entities and as a cover for stealing $100 million for themselves."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adelphia_Communications_Corpor...

A few other examples from that time are not as clean when it comes to the direct "entrepreneur" part. Kenneth Lay is sometimes considered the founder of Enron, but he didn't build or found most of the pieces of it. Bernie Ebbers of Worldcom was a bit closer to being a traditional entrepreneur story:

"Ebbers began his business career operating a chain of motels in Mississippi. He joined with several other people in 1983 as investors in the newly formed Long Distance Discount Services, Inc. (LDDS). Two years later he was named chief executive of the corporation. The company acquired over 60 other independent telecommunications firms, changing its name to WorldCom in 1995."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Ebbers

Crazy Eddie is a famous story, but quite a lot smaller than Theranos (well, in regards to b.s. market valuation):

"At its maximum, Crazy Eddie had 43 stores in the chain, and earned more than $300 million in sales" [that $300m in sales would adjust quite a lot higher in today's dollar]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crazy_Eddie

Bernie Madoff is maybe the most famous example (he ran his own firm for 48 years!):

"Madoff founded the Wall Street firm Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC in 1960, and was its chairman until his arrest on December 11, 2008"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Madoff

Allen Stanford was sort of out of the same mold:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen_Stanford

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

#136

Post by rayiner »

nextos wrote: post #87
Animats wrote: post #31

Theranos isn't even at the leading edge of blood testing. There are now hand-held FDA-approved immediate blood testing devices.[1][2][3] Most of these require smaller amounts of blood than a remote lab, although more than a drop. Theranos is still in the send-it-to-the-lab-and-wait era. Even if Theranos' technology eventually works, it may be obsolete before it ships. [1] https://www.abbottpointofcare.com/products-se…

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…

Maybe it's doable. Early screening methods like mammograms have huge problems with false positives. Early screening has to be extremely accurate to overcome the false positive problem for low base rate events. That's hard.

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

#138

Post by BurningFrog »

wpietri wrote: post #111
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...

That is in their opinion section, and is written by a columnist with an ideological bent so I would hesitate to call it a factual overview. For those wondering why the US health care system is so much more expensive than any other country, I recommend this nice series of posts from Dr. Aaron Carroll: http://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/what-makes-the-u...

Fair enough. It's a reasoned argument based on facts, but the conclusions are certainly opinions reasonable people can disagree with.

I suppose I got carried away by my agreement with it.

The Carroll posts look both very interesting and devastating for my productivity...

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

#139

Post by dnautics »

zadig wrote: post #115
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…

There is actually now a LOT of interest in the biomedical community for circulating tumor DNA - a quick Pubmed search yields 3317 results and Illumina is practically throwing money at the field. You have to keep in mind that the sequencing technology has only recently become cheap and sophisticated enough for this kind of highly sensitive testing to be possible.

came here to post exactly this.

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

#140

Post by trsohmers »

blakeross wrote: post #21

Here's a television parody I wrote about Theranos that ends right where this story begins... http://pricks.com

I loved your Silicon Valley script, and seriously hope they invite you on for a least a guest writer spot. I haven't gotten to read the full "Pricks" script yet, but I just cracked up in my office (with a bunch of strange looks) when I read (and had a beautiful mental picture of) Dr. Oz, Dr. Phil, and Dr. Dre at the board meeting.

It's not super sexy anymore, but if you ever want to write/learn anything about the silicon (semiconductor) part of "Silicon" Valley, let me know!

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