Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

U.S. Files Criminal Charges Against Theranos’s Elizabeth Holmes, Ramesh Balwani

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 533 posts

Re: U.S. Files Criminal Charges Against Theranos’s Elizabeth Holmes, Ramesh Balwani

#101

Post by anonymous5133 »

jonnycomputer wrote: post #73
mchannon wrote: post #43

I have been in this exact place before. For the two of them, this day will be just about the worst of their lives. This is ordinarily when hard-core criminals are taken into custody. If their experience was like mine, they had to show up in front of a magistrate with their lawyers, plead not guilty, then go to a dungeon for about 30 minutes while they get handcuffed, fingerprinted, mugshotted, and DNA-swabbed. Then,…

you do the crime, you pay the time. look, this society will fall apart if its only the poor who will pay the price for flouting the law.

Often times the paying the time part causes far more destruction than intended. The cost to jail someone is huge and the criminal record that people get often forces them into a cycle of crime because they cant even get a legitimate job.

Re: U.S. Files Criminal Charges Against Theranos’s Elizabeth Holmes, Ramesh Balwani

#102

Post by dbt00 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #57
tptacek wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They did. They had two devices, the "Edison" and the "MiniLab". The Edison was intended to run a full panel of blood tests, both chemical and immunological assays, off a finger stick of blood. It was also intended to allow Theranos to function as its own lab. The Minilab was intended to run a full panel of blood tests I believe off a larger venous sample, and was expected to be marketed to existing labs (at this poin…

Do you believe Theranos could have beee successful company with less delusional management? (Honest question for a HN colleague for whom I have tremendous respect.)

Not a domain expert, but as I recall most of the things they want to test for aren't present at a sufficient level in the blood stream to get a statistically significant sample from a few drops.

Blood sugar is a relatively high percentage of your blood stream, which is why strip-based glucose monitors work.

Re: U.S. Files Criminal Charges Against Theranos’s Elizabeth Holmes, Ramesh Balwani

#103

Post by sarchertech »

jcranmer wrote: post #69
maxxxxx wrote: post #6

Does anybody know if Theranos got started with at least an idea how to accomplish what they wanted to do? From what I have heard in interviews they started with the thought "Doing xxx would be super useful" but didn't have an approach for accomplishing this but instead took in money and tried to figure it out. It's like me saying "An antimatter drive would revolutionize space exploration" and starting to collect mone…

Holmes and Balwani had some experience with microfluidics (IIRC), which is certainly sufficient chemical background to give them a credible belief that they could do what they wanted to do (run blood tests on smaller sample sizes). The ultimate problem with their goal is that when you do a finger prick, a large fraction of the sample is not blood but interstitial fluid and skin layers, which makes the results noisy a…

Holmes dropped out after 3 semesters. As far as I can tell she took one intro chemical engineering class.

Not what I would call experience with microfluidics.

Re: U.S. Files Criminal Charges Against Theranos’s Elizabeth Holmes, Ramesh Balwani

#104

Post by mchannon »

aphextron wrote: post #97
mchannon wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does not show that. Being familiar with the process, it looks like they're out on supervised release. Non-custody. No point in putting a warrant out for someone when they're at the courthouse to be arraigned.

I must be confused then. Why does the defendant section say “Warrant, no bail”?.

Probably chalk it up to a very confusing and esoteric form. No bail could just mean they don't have to post bail to get out.

"Warrant" could just mean they came in on a warrant vs. a summons.

More important is the top of the form: "Defendant is NOT in custody".

Re: U.S. Files Criminal Charges Against Theranos’s Elizabeth Holmes, Ramesh Balwani

#105

Post by 21 »

maxander wrote: post #72
zitterbewegung wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After the company launched professionals in the medical testing said it was impossible. I believe it was even posted to HN. They stated it was impossible to get the results they would get from the amount of blood given.

Any citations on that? In all the hullabaloo about Theranos I haven't heard that there were serious theoretical difficulties with what they were trying to do. It would make me feel somewhat better about the whole mess to know this was the case. A successful Theranos would have been the best thing to come out of SV since the Apple II. It was sad to see it fail because of executives' delusions.

I am no expert, but it's my understanding that blood in the capillaries (fingertip) is not exactly the same as blood in the veins.

> In addition, the small volumes involved and the variability in sample quality based on puncture site and technique make capillary sampling particularly susceptible to errors during the pre-preanalytical phase, which are beyond the control of clinical laboratory personnel

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4622200/

Re: U.S. Files Criminal Charges Against Theranos’s Elizabeth Holmes, Ramesh Balwani

#106

Post by jcranmer »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #57
tptacek wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They did. They had two devices, the "Edison" and the "MiniLab". The Edison was intended to run a full panel of blood tests, both chemical and immunological assays, off a finger stick of blood. It was also intended to allow Theranos to function as its own lab. The Minilab was intended to run a full panel of blood tests I believe off a larger venous sample, and was expected to be marketed to existing labs (at this poin…

Do you believe Theranos could have beee successful company with less delusional management? (Honest question for a HN colleague for whom I have tremendous respect.)

Could they have successfully run tests on smaller sample sizes? Possibly, but the target market size is small (needing less blood isn't particularly advantageous unless you're dealing with children or babies without much blood in the first place).

The finger-prick-testing was always very likely to fail; the biology just doesn't work out in your favor. However, getting finger-pricks working was the entire basis of their strategy, not the "test using less blood" idea.

Re: U.S. Files Criminal Charges Against Theranos’s Elizabeth Holmes, Ramesh Balwani

#107

Post by MBCook »

zitterbewegung wrote: post #8
maxxxxx wrote: post #6

Does anybody know if Theranos got started with at least an idea how to accomplish what they wanted to do? From what I have heard in interviews they started with the thought "Doing xxx would be super useful" but didn't have an approach for accomplishing this but instead took in money and tried to figure it out. It's like me saying "An antimatter drive would revolutionize space exploration" and starting to collect mone…

After the company launched professionals in the medical testing said it was impossible. I believe it was even posted to HN. They stated it was impossible to get the results they would get from the amount of blood given.

Well, to be fair, experts in the field called the original iPhone impossible.

Turns out in this case they were right.

Re: U.S. Files Criminal Charges Against Theranos’s Elizabeth Holmes, Ramesh Balwani

#108

Post by mozumder »

maxxxxx wrote: post #6

Does anybody know if Theranos got started with at least an idea how to accomplish what they wanted to do? From what I have heard in interviews they started with the thought "Doing xxx would be super useful" but didn't have an approach for accomplishing this but instead took in money and tried to figure it out. It's like me saying "An antimatter drive would revolutionize space exploration" and starting to collect mone…

My understanding is that they could measure ~95% of what they wanted, but the remaining 5% needed for full accuracy certification was out of reach with the limited tests they were performing. And that this was the difference between their tests and more expensive tests.

Re: U.S. Files Criminal Charges Against Theranos’s Elizabeth Holmes, Ramesh Balwani

#109

Post by godzillabrennus »

aphextron wrote: post #14

Between this and Manafort being sent to jail, what a wonderful day for the DOJ. God I love this country so much.

I’ve heard our justice system best described as a slow moving giant boulder that rightfully positioned will crush those who hurt society.

The problems manifest when the innocent get trapped in its path.

Good to see today that a few folks who deserved justice got some. It feels like it has been a long time since rich and powerful people were in its sights.

Re: U.S. Files Criminal Charges Against Theranos’s Elizabeth Holmes, Ramesh Balwani

#110

Post by joezydeco »

maxander wrote: post #72
zitterbewegung wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After the company launched professionals in the medical testing said it was impossible. I believe it was even posted to HN. They stated it was impossible to get the results they would get from the amount of blood given.

Any citations on that? In all the hullabaloo about Theranos I haven't heard that there were serious theoretical difficulties with what they were trying to do. It would make me feel somewhat better about the whole mess to know this was the case. A successful Theranos would have been the best thing to come out of SV since the Apple II. It was sad to see it fail because of executives' delusions.

The major medical diagnostic companies had been working on microfluidic assays for a couple of decades before Holmes came along. It's a very difficult subject especially when it comes to immunoassays. This wasn't a blue sky field by any means.

There were numerous research papers on the topic, and some time spent with experts in the field would have also pointed her in the direction of the current research.

Almost too late she hired an expert from Abbott Diagnostics (who headed up a number of successful system projects for them), and he walked away after 6 months.

Post reply on HN