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Regulators Propose Banning Theranos Founder from Blood Testing

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Re: Regulators Propose Banning Theranos Founder from Blood Testing

#81

Post by entee »

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…

I think there's plenty of evidence to question their honesty as a company :-P

You're right there are a few labs they do on commercial hardware that does work, and I think they're allowed to provide a test (for Herpes I think? could be wrong on specific test) that is inherently based on very small sample sizes. As I recall though, none of those tests use any new tech at all, and if it's an old blood test then it's not going to require less sample, therefore not that much less painful re. needles anyway.

Take that all away and you have a nice app and pricing experience. Pluses to be sure, and I'd love those things to happen more in medicine, but not very innovative or well positioned to take down $10B megacorps.

Lab tests aren't 100% reliable either, it's true. But the nature of that unreliability is understood and the value of the resulting tests are well established to be related to a clinical outcome. The main criticism of Theranos is that they never put themselves to that kind of test or scrutiny.

Re: Regulators Propose Banning Theranos Founder from Blood Testing

#82

Post by vonmoltke »

hga wrote: post #62
kneel wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not obvious that the diagnostic assays they were running couldn't scale down. These assays are performed regularly on large samples no problem, but the sensitivity and accuracy of the assay becomes erratic when you only have a couple micro liters of blood. Either they couldn't develop proper assays (an engineering problem) or microliters of blood don't contain enough substrates for their assays (a major lapse in…

It's more like the method of drawing the blood was thought to be the problem. 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; I've read that the actual assaying machines use very little of the blood, which makes sense because the reagents used are expensive, plus to the extent you're using optical scannin…

> 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.

Re: Regulators Propose Banning Theranos Founder from Blood Testing

#83

Post by sndean »

drcode wrote: post #57
searine wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I feel like current research models have seriously underperformed in recent years... The research models have performed as they always have, if not better. The only thing that's changed is the introduction of know-it-all Silicon Valley VCs who think bio is the same as software.

> The research models have performed as they always have, if not better. I'm not an expert on the history of progress in medical research... however, I do have a medical degree. Bottom line, I have higher standards and think we could be doing a lot better. Regardless, without counterfactual data it's really a very subjective question.

If you haven't seen it, this a pretty interesting and controversial paper:

Increasing disparities between resource inputs and outcomes, as measured by certain health deliverables, in biomedical research http://www.pnas.org/content/112/36/11335.full

Basically, increased funding of biomedical research hasn't resulted in better output, and that we do, indeed, need to change the model. The current model is really inefficient.

Re: Regulators Propose Banning Theranos Founder from Blood Testing

#84

Post by jobu »

rzt wrote: post #40
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…

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.

Re: Regulators Propose Banning Theranos Founder from Blood Testing

#85

Post by pfarnsworth »

blakeyrat wrote: post #75
pfarnsworth wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uber isn't a taxi company, and wheelchair access is a very small percentage of customers. Also, Uber's 5-6 years old, give them a chance to fix that problem in the coming months/years before crying foul along with a bunch of monopolists like the taxi companies. They have done nothing for us, except sit on their monopolies. The number of times I was passed by open taxis on the street, or stuck waiting hours for a sche…

I also disagree with things like "taxi medallions", I'm just saying that Uber throws out the baby with the bathwater. Right now, there's a real risk they'll put legit taxi companies out of business , and then those people in wheelchairs who need transportation are simply screwed. But nobody at Uber cares, of course, because the company is run by complete jerks.

I know many friends and former Googlers who are now at Uber and can tell you that it's not run by complete jerks. The company and the employees take their commitments to the cities they operate in very seriously. There might have been issues pre-2015, but not anymore.

Also, you appear to be wrong about each taxi company requiring to support wheelchairs. As far as I can tell from my brief search, the ADA requires training, not supporting vehicles that allow wheelchairs.

Re: Regulators Propose Banning Theranos Founder from Blood Testing

#86

Post by alanh »

electic wrote: post #47

I wonder how much Quest and LabCorp have lobbied to get Theranos under the microscope. Almost all labs have findings including FDA labs that need be to corrected. I just find it odd that WSJ seems to get access to government documents, internal information, and competitor benchmarks over and over again. Theranos faults aside, something does not smell right here.

Pedantic, but… you mean Quest, not Qwest. The latter is (was?) a telecom company.

Re: Regulators Propose Banning Theranos Founder from Blood Testing

#87

Post by haberman »

jonwachob91 wrote: post #54
entee wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of Biotech VCs in the bay area. The one I know best is Third Rock Ventures, but there are others. The timelines for success are extraordinarily long so it's not quite as splashy a space. It's almost impossible to "fail fast" with a "MVP" in the biotech space, so you have to put in tons of capital for a long time. That said personalized medicine should end up being interesting, but I think it's really…

Bull Shit. Biotech companies produce more MVP's then any other sector. Just because we don't need to test if the business will work (as much as say a facebook) we do need to test the science. My startup is working on infection resistant materials for around hospitals. Infections are a problem, if we solve it we will have customers, how many and at what cost is the question. But because science is the question, and it…

Correct me if I'm wrong but I thought one of the key ideas of a MVP is that it's something you put in the hands of customers to get feedback on. How many of those 1,000s have you given to customers?

Re: Regulators Propose Banning Theranos Founder from Blood Testing

#88

Post by plainOldText »

entee wrote: post #81
plainOldText wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think there's plenty of evidence to question their honesty as a company :-P You're right there are a few labs they do on commercial hardware that does work, and I think they're allowed to provide a test (for Herpes I think? could be wrong on specific test) that is inherently based on very small sample sizes. As I recall though, none of those tests use any new tech at all, and if it's an old blood test then it's not…

From my experience, their prices are much lower than those offered by the competition.

All things being equal, even if the only advantage Theranos has over its competition is lower pricing, I'd take it, because having access to affordable medicine has numerous positive implications for the entire society. What's the point of all the medical innovation if people cannot afford it? Ideally we should strive for both innovative and affordable healthcare, but unfortunately things in the healthcare sector are moving extremely slow.

Re: Regulators Propose Banning Theranos Founder from Blood Testing

#89

Post by AJ007 »

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.

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

Re: Regulators Propose Banning Theranos Founder from Blood Testing

#90

Post by dv_dt »

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.

A simpler theory might be that once the board picked up a couple of members in certain areas, it expanded along the social network of the board.
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