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

Theranos Is Subject of Criminal Probe by U.S

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 226 posts

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

#31

Post by Animats »

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-services/istat-ha... [2] http://www.epocal.com/system.html [3] http://www.pixcell-medical.com/products/in-the-pipeline

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

#33

Post by Mz »

forgetsusername wrote: post #29

Always fun to go back in time and look at what people were saying about Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos, like 2 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7951019 or https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8181339 I find it insightful to see who was "right" and who was "wrong". There were a surprising number of people from the medical field expressing doubts about the technology.

Perhaps should have been titled "30 year old vaporware sector billionaire"

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

#34

Post by leroy_masochist »

thrownaway2424 wrote: post #17

One thing I'd love to know, and that might come out in court eventually, is which early investors exited in the huge dumb-money round in 2014. What did they know and when did they know it, and all that.

IANAL, but I'm pretty sure that in this kind of situation, unless said investors have a seat on the board of directors -- and none at Theranos did -- they're almost certainly not in trouble with the SEC.

Theranos is a private company so the SEC rules around MNPI are not relevant here. However, if (IF) any of the earlier investors told later investors things about Theranos that they had reason to doubt in an effort to up the valuation of the next round, then I suppose that might be lawsuit fodder.

How you would prove that? Dunno.

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

#35

Post by lvs »

jackcn wrote: post #11

Like I've mentioned before, Theranos needs to shut down. The technology doesn't work (and likely it never will since blood constituents are not evenly distributed at small volumes) and its investors and executives are complicit in fraud. While half-completed/non-working solutions are fine in software world and with consumer electronics, a misreading or missed reading of blood parts can easily cost the health or life…

> blood constituents are not evenly distributed at small volumes

You're saying they're running into statistical stochasticity? Are you claiming they were sampling femtoliter volumes? That's the how small you'd have to get for your claim to be true.

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

#36

Post by alva »

thrownaway2424 wrote: post #17

One thing I'd love to know, and that might come out in court eventually, is which early investors exited in the huge dumb-money round in 2014. What did they know and when did they know it, and all that.

Out of interest, does any one know what liabilities such investors might have? If the outside investors had knowledge of the problems we are now seeing and sold off without disclosing the issues, are they somewhat accountable?

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

#37

Post by jonknee »

smaili wrote: post #32

This eerily reminds me of Enron.

Enron was much more of a real company. It collapsed due to poor investments and cooking the books, but Enron really did own a lot of assets. It would be more akin to Enron if Theranos' tech actually worked, but they were reporting much more profit than they were really getting.

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

#38

Post by trhway »

forgetsusername wrote: post #29

Always fun to go back in time and look at what people were saying about Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos, like 2 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7951019 or https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8181339 I find it insightful to see who was "right" and who was "wrong". There were a surprising number of people from the medical field expressing doubts about the technology.

i remember that one https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8182026

That day I just basically learned about Theranos existence from the posted article, and that comments post explained to me what it is about :)

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

#39

Post by ddorian43 »

wrong_variable wrote: post #16
jackcn wrote: post #11

Like I've mentioned before, Theranos needs to shut down. The technology doesn't work (and likely it never will since blood constituents are not evenly distributed at small volumes) and its investors and executives are complicit in fraud. While half-completed/non-working solutions are fine in software world and with consumer electronics, a misreading or missed reading of blood parts can easily cost the health or life…

healthcare is a very hard problem. While we in the tech community may find it morbidly entertaining to watch Theranos burn to the ground. Someone out there needs to attack healthcare. The not dying motivation is fairly important.

It's better to make photo-sharing apps and sell iphones. While healthcare is very hard, also needs alot of money. My idea would be: create photo-sharing app/telegram/iphones etc to make alot of cash and THEN try real-science-shit (like Elon Musk / ~Paypal Mafia).

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

#40

Post by 467568985476 »

wrong_variable wrote: post #16
jackcn wrote: post #11

Like I've mentioned before, Theranos needs to shut down. The technology doesn't work (and likely it never will since blood constituents are not evenly distributed at small volumes) and its investors and executives are complicit in fraud. While half-completed/non-working solutions are fine in software world and with consumer electronics, a misreading or missed reading of blood parts can easily cost the health or life…

healthcare is a very hard problem. While we in the tech community may find it morbidly entertaining to watch Theranos burn to the ground. Someone out there needs to attack healthcare. The not dying motivation is fairly important.

The attacking part is great. It's the "fail fast" part that they messed up on. If the machines worked, would we be having this conversation about a company accused of lying to regulators and defrauding investors?

Maybe it's a problem of Theranos setting investor expectations poorly, maybe the regulators are looking to make an example of someone for playing fast and loose in the traditionally tightly regulated healthcare industry, maybe both. Hopefully it's growing pains for a burgeoning biotech market and not actually fraud from the top.

Post reply on HN