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I don't think this is what you meant, but just in case: I certainly wasn't implying anything negative about you or your idea. If you think I'm being too harsh o
by retsibsi 8y ago
I don't think this is what you meant, but just in case: I certainly wasn't implying anything negative about you or your idea. If you think I'm being too harsh on Theranos, well, my mind was open too until I read the book. :)
I don't think Theranos was intended as a scam from the start, and even when it was well into fraudulent territory, Holmes seems to have had some kind of genuine belief. (If not, I think she could have got out earlier with lots of money and less legal/reputational exposure.) But unless Carreyrou got almost everything wrong, there's no reasonable way to see the Theranos story as a tale of more-or-less well-intentioned people responding in forgivable ways to the pressures and challenges of a difficult industry, as I think you're suggesting might be the case.
It was more like a death spiral of unrealistic promises bleeding into outright lies, a cult-like working environment, bullying and legal intimidation of critics, and eventually the deliberate (or, to be extremely charitable, wilfully ignorant) use of unreliable technology to conduct medical tests on, and give inaccurate results to, unsuspecting patients.