4 ms·
The existing industry has rigorous standards that have been established over decades of tragedies. Theranos announced that it had a technological breakthrough
by iaw 10y ago
The existing industry has rigorous standards that have been established over decades of tragedies.
Theranos announced that it had a technological breakthrough that took less time/money/blood for the same results.
Walgreens, seeing a potential competitive advantage, partnered with Theranos to start administering the tests with a promise from Theranos that everything was good & on the up-and-up.
When the FDA started looking at the quality of the tests Theranos was administering they felt that they were not good & not on the up-and-up. The tests failed the criteria that made them valid.
In the mean time Walgreens customers potentially received treatments for illnesses they didn't have (or worse, missed illnesses they did) because Theranos misrepresented, implicitly or explicitly, the quality of their tests.
The part that makes it hard to disentangle the internet hates from the actual problems with the company is it's founder: Elizabeth Holmes. Questions have been raised around whether Elizabeth Holmes did anything meaningful or if she simply curried some personal connections into a company that then became a shell game of smoke and mirrors. She spent a lot of time currying press attention, bilking herself as the next Steve Jobs while her company was being ran by ???
- perseusprime11 10y agoThanks. Just re-read the original WSJ article that started it all. Here are some things that caught my attention: - No Research to prove this methodology worked - Influential parents with connections in D.C helped create a powerful board with members such as Henry Kissinger - Theranos knew their results were flawed but did not report - According to FDA, labs were deficient and their quality control methods themselves were deficient - They claimed to run 70 tests from a tiny sample of blood from your finger tip when they had permission to do only one test from FDA. This stuff is crazy. Kudos to the folks who did the investigative journalism to uncover these things. It looks like people's lives were put at risk with this company.
- perseusprime11 10y agoThanks. Just re-read the original WSJ article that started it all. Here are some things that caught my attention: - No Research to prove this methodology worked - Influential parents with connections in D.C helped create a powerful board with members such as Henry Kissinger - Theranos knew their results were flawed but did not report - According to FDA, labs were deficient and their quality control methods themselves were deficient - They claimed to run 70 tests from a tiny sample of blood from your finger tip when they had permission to do only one test from FDA. This stuff is crazy. Kudos to the folks who did the investigative journalism to uncover these things. It looks like people's lives were put at risk with this company.
- digler999 10y agoNot defending theranos, but I'm surprised that something so ineffective could even make it into production. Do you happen to know if their tests were absolutely bogus, or were they just not accurate enough to be clinically valid ? I mean, round up ~25 HSV+ test patients, and ~1000 HSV- samples, and hand them over randomly to a statistician and you should know, right ? It seems like if they were just not accurate enough, they could have tried to save face and call it a "screening", while acknowledging that it's not as conclusive as a test. If it's easy and convenient, you could weed out type 1 errors (false positives) in subsequent standard testing, while acknowledging that the test isn't 100% accurate (has type 2 errors).