3 ms·

I watched the Q&A and part of the presentation on Periscope. It was a little hard to follow, but Holmes appeared to be on a short leash during the Q&A period,

I watched the Q&A and part of the presentation on Periscope. It was a little hard to follow, but Holmes appeared to be on a short leash during the Q&A period, constrained to only talking about the new invention and cloud architecture, and deferring all the pointed questions about nanotainer numbers and anomalies to the three employees she brought on stage. It also looks like they're going to attempt to get some kind of fast track approval of this new device by playing on Zika virus fears. There was one very pointed audience/expert question about the validity and inconsistency in their Zika virus claims that didn't appear to be fielded well. As I understand it, this device will still take a small amount of blood, dilute it, and then theoretically perform up to hundreds of tests. So while Holmes made no attempt to answer the question of "how many finger pricks will it take to do these tests", one of her employees was still making the claim that a microliter dilution was enough--going from 170 uliter to 1 uliter. The play could very well turn into Theranos waging a press and political war with the FDA around Zika in order to rush this out. The board advice may be paying off from a political/PR standpoint even though the presentation didn't answer any questions from a scientific standpoint.

joezydeco 10y ago
Except the FDA has already cleared one Zika assay, and from this tweet at the AACC keynote the Theranos test is 50x less sensitive. And Dennis Lo isn't just some random guy in the audience. https://twitter.com/DrDanHolmes/status/760232173836185600 https://twitter.com/DrDanHolmes/status/760232173836185600 The science is the science. You can't really wage a press war around the facts.
- Phlarp 10y ago
  Hah, tell that to our current crop of presidential candidates!
- firebones 10y ago
  Agree with Dr Lo as being the expert--didn't get into that detail in my comment. He was a moderator and it was difficult to tell which parts of the question he read was the original audience question versus his own--but the question was a devastating moment nonetheless, and the Theranos response was weak (something to the effect of "that 50x number isn't comparable/relevant because our measures use the new ranges the CDC gave us". It was more of an "are you lying now, or were you lying in this 2008 paper?" question. Holmes didn't open her mouth at all for that one, and there was an awkward moment of silence and glance over to figure out which employee was going to take that one. I am less optimistic around the FDA's ultimate neutrality when it comes to political pressure. Facts certainly need to win, but Theranos didn't hire a board like they did if they were counting on facts alone to save the day. It's the same playbook from before, now pivoted to public health crises instead of a DoD endgame.

joezydeco 10y ago

Except the FDA has already cleared one Zika assay, and from this tweet at the AACC keynote the Theranos test is 50x less sensitive. And Dennis Lo isn't just some random guy in the audience. https://twitter.com/DrDanHolmes/status/760232173836185600 https://twitter.com/DrDanHolmes/status/760232173836185600 The science is the science. You can't really wage a press war around the facts.

Phlarp 10y ago
Hah, tell that to our current crop of presidential candidates!
firebones 10y ago
Agree with Dr Lo as being the expert--didn't get into that detail in my comment. He was a moderator and it was difficult to tell which parts of the question he read was the original audience question versus his own--but the question was a devastating moment nonetheless, and the Theranos response was weak (something to the effect of "that 50x number isn't comparable/relevant because our measures use the new ranges the CDC gave us". It was more of an "are you lying now, or were you lying in this 2008 paper?" question. Holmes didn't open her mouth at all for that one, and there was an awkward moment of silence and glance over to figure out which employee was going to take that one. I am less optimistic around the FDA's ultimate neutrality when it comes to political pressure. Facts certainly need to win, but Theranos didn't hire a board like they did if they were counting on facts alone to save the day. It's the same playbook from before, now pivoted to public health crises instead of a DoD endgame.