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Here's something that Theranos was deliberately misleading about: how many tests can be done on one prick's worth of blood? Before the downfall, the website cl

Here's something that Theranos was deliberately misleading about: how many tests can be done on one prick's worth of blood? Before the downfall, the website claimed that hundreds of tests could be performed with a single drop of blood. But, is that hundreds of tests on one single drop at once? Or is it one test per drop? Squeezing dozens of blood drops out of multiple pricks would not be easy or painless. Nowhere on the website, or in any press releases, or in any interviews that I could find, did Theranos clarify this. If they could do 100+ tests on a single drop of whole blood it would be a revolution, and there would be no reason to hide it. But, if it was one 4-hour test per drop, that's actually worse than current state of the art, and they would have every reason to hide it. This is one of the things that would have been clear if journalists had spent more time talking to lab experts, rather than Theranos' PR and laypeople in their offices.

incompatible 9y ago
Theranos was claiming amazing technical breakthroughs, but never published anything that would verify the claims. This was pointed out by a couple of researchers, Eleftherios Diamandis and John Ioannidis, in early 2015. https://www.vox.com/2015/10/31/9646356/theranos-peer-review-evidence https://www.vox.com/2015/10/31/9646356/theranos-peer-review-...
bsder 9y ago
The problem, which people in medicine know full well, was the fact that blood is highly variable depending upon when and where you take it. It's why you have to take so much to get decent lab results. A "fingerprick" was always going to be ferociously unstable. It could have had value if taken repeatedly. I would be far more inclined to monitor myself if I had to only give a drop every 3-4 days. That way you could spot trends. However, that was never going to produce a unicorn.

incompatible 9y ago

Theranos was claiming amazing technical breakthroughs, but never published anything that would verify the claims. This was pointed out by a couple of researchers, Eleftherios Diamandis and John Ioannidis, in early 2015. https://www.vox.com/2015/10/31/9646356/theranos-peer-review-evidence https://www.vox.com/2015/10/31/9646356/theranos-peer-review-...

bsder 9y ago

The problem, which people in medicine know full well, was the fact that blood is highly variable depending upon when and where you take it. It's why you have to take so much to get decent lab results. A "fingerprick" was always going to be ferociously unstable. It could have had value if taken repeatedly. I would be far more inclined to monitor myself if I had to only give a drop every 3-4 days. That way you could spot trends. However, that was never going to produce a unicorn.