Reading through the press and Theranos response it's certainly ... weird. My theory, assuming they aren't outright committing fraud. The technology works, at

Reading through the press and Theranos response it's certainly ... weird. My theory, assuming they aren't outright committing fraud. The technology works, at least within a tolerance they think is reasonable. It's possible that early scientific staff (part of the huge turnover commented elsewhere) weren't happy with that tolerance. Now they are in the process of getting FDA approved. At the same time Theranos is also following a Silicon Valley strategy, building an audience with a loss leading product. In this case it's doing blood tests at a price well below cost, using normal lab equipment, and covering the difference with VC money. They dont want to admit this for two reasons 1) It exposes them to the competition, who know they are losing money on every transaction and it also would make doctors and patients wary of dealing with them 2) As discussed in the WSJ article taking less blood and using normal machines just means a less accurate blood test, which makes the benefit of not getting a needle much smaller and messes with their core marketing message I think this also explains the directive discussed in WSJ to only submit sample results from normal lab equipment, as at the moment they are simply operating as a normal lab. I think this is a clash between staff who think Theranos was all about creating a reliable way of doing blood tests with less blood, and the current direction they are taking building scale with traditional equipment.