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People here gave me talking points based on what you are saying years ago when I expressed skepticism about Theranos. I worked in the diagnostic industry and kn

People here gave me talking points based on what you are saying years ago when I expressed skepticism about Theranos. I worked in the diagnostic industry and know that 1. Many tests (that are in the comprehensive panel that is routinely ordered) cannot be done with a finger stick, they need venous blood. 2. This isn't like a social network you can start out of a dorm room, it is a 50+ billion dollar industry that is highly regulated and needs real science. What if some 20 year old business major drop out said they are going to make chipsets double the speed of the old and lumbering tech companies like Intel? Everyone here would say no way and never think that would be disrupted so easily. So yes it is a case of people with HN mentality thinking that well taking blood via a venous draw and giving me my results a day later is cumbersome and stupid, and rife for disruption. Someone thinking outside the box despite me or that person knowing next to nothing about clinical lab tech can easily make it better than Roche, Quest, Lab Corp, Abbot etc. because they can move quicker, and disregard the old paradigms. With no consideration for the physical impossibility with known scientific knowledge! So yeah please by all means look at how smug a lot of us were on earlier Theranos postings about the Steve Jobs of med tech. It is a valuable lesson to learn. Not everything is inconvenient for no reason, and not everything can be disrupted without some serious demonstrable tech.

dang 9y ago
I don't doubt that the comments you're referring to existed, but the HN community has been overwhelmingly skeptical about Theranos for years, to the point of cliché.
- specialp 9y ago
  Yes you are right later on people had more skepticism especially after the FDA piled on. The argument I am making is the initial claims they had about testing a single drop of blood were pretty outrageous to anyone that even knows a little bit about how this stuff works. Look at some of the downvoted comments they said exactly this! There are things that can be said well we didn't know they were hiding this, and there are things that people should have listened to someone that has even elementary knowledge of how this stuff works. Look how many people dismissed the impossibility of this stuff with remarks on her connections and the might of SV.... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8181339 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8181339 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7951019 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7951019
  - dang 9y ago
    I skimmed those threads and read them pretty differently. Even many of the pro-Theranos comments were careful to say things like "How can I know to trust their numbers?" and "the enormous change her company is saying is possible" (emphasis added). Those seem to me to have aged pretty well, and then there are the many skeptical ones, including from people like you who have direct experience in that field.

dang 9y ago

I don't doubt that the comments you're referring to existed, but the HN community has been overwhelmingly skeptical about Theranos for years, to the point of cliché.

specialp 9y ago
Yes you are right later on people had more skepticism especially after the FDA piled on. The argument I am making is the initial claims they had about testing a single drop of blood were pretty outrageous to anyone that even knows a little bit about how this stuff works. Look at some of the downvoted comments they said exactly this! There are things that can be said well we didn't know they were hiding this, and there are things that people should have listened to someone that has even elementary knowledge of how this stuff works. Look how many people dismissed the impossibility of this stuff with remarks on her connections and the might of SV.... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8181339 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8181339 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7951019 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7951019
- dang 9y ago
  I skimmed those threads and read them pretty differently. Even many of the pro-Theranos comments were careful to say things like "How can I know to trust their numbers?" and "the enormous change her company is saying is possible" (emphasis added). Those seem to me to have aged pretty well, and then there are the many skeptical ones, including from people like you who have direct experience in that field.