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In the wake of the Theranos debacle, I would expect to see the FDA take a stronger stance against medical startups that are taking actions that have real potent

In the wake of the Theranos debacle, I would expect to see the FDA take a stronger stance against medical startups that are taking actions that have real potential impact without evident clinical support.

mc32 8y ago
At least theranos had real, good scientists doing real research work. Of course we know management went awry [failing to admit defeat and pushing on despite the problems] and threw everyone under the bus, but they had real researchers. This company here from the outside looks closer to quackery. [and can't imagine them having a good team of scientists behind it].
- theli0nheart 8y ago
  Management never "went" awry. The whole thing was a fraud from day one. And hiring "real researchers" to front your fraudulent operation as a way to hide what's going on behind the scenes shouldn't be reason to look the other way. In some ways it's worse than the alternative, since there's not just fraud, but activity intended to take attention away from it.
  - Fricken 8y ago
    It wasn't a fraud from day one, Elizabeth Holmes was a teenager when she got started on Theranos, she had no idea at that time that it had no chance of working. Uncle Tim gave her $200k in seed funding and she ran with it. Shit got progressively more fucked up along the way.
    - SilasX 8y ago
      Yes, and she bought into the “fake it till you make it”, “no one knows what they’re doing”, “all self doubt is impostor syndrome” mentality that’s so popular on this site and which inevitably leads to idealistic people doubling down on fundamentally confused ventures where they should have realized they’re out of their depth.
      - Fricken 8y ago
        Are those attitudes really that popular on HN? Most of the comments I see are pretty cycnical about emerging technologies and longshot bets. The thing is, after she got that $200k in branded VC capital from family friend Tim Draper, Holmes went knocking on the doors of all the big silicon valley VC firms and all the big bio-sciences VC firms. They consulted with blood scientist type people who informed them device had zero chance of living up to it's promise. All of them said "Sorry Elizabeth, we must politely decline your invitation to flush our money down the toilet." The money she did get after that seed funding was from fly-by night wannabe VCs, and the bandwagon effect took off from there. Who did their due diligence? Nobody. I'm not shedding any tears for Rupert Murdoch, but there were hedge fund managers in charge of people's pensions who gave Theranos 100s of millions of dollars without looking into what it was they were spending other people's money on. It baffles me that anyone that stupid can get to be in charge of that much money in the first place.
        asveikau 8y ago
        I think what the parent means is that it is indeed very popular on many tech sites where career discussion occurs to overstate imposter syndrome and imply that solid competence without imposter syndrome does not exist, everyone is just faking it. Imposter syndrome is a real phenomenon and successful people are mere mortals who should not be put on pedestals. But it's possible to attribute too much to these factors. And dishonesty (faking it) should not be where you turn.
        dmix 8y ago
        I’ve been on this site forever and I remember the early Theranos articles were highly skeptical or had as little information about what they were actually doing as this site has primarily programmers and software people, not as much people in bio. Regardless faking state-funded health experiments in a heavily regulated industry has nothing to do with fail fast mentality of the software world either (just like how everyone here criticized that personal banking startup who tried that in the heavily regulated finance industry). We have nothing to defend here.
        8y ago
    - doingmyting 8y ago
      She was almost 20 and was told repeatedly by her professors at Stanford that they don't think it would work. If you don't know by the time you're 20 that using off the shelf machines to do blood tests and telling everyone that you're using some new revolutionary method is fraud, then I dont know what to tell you. And no she didn't start with 200k, she had 6 million in venture capital the very year she started which ballooned to over 400 million.
      - Fricken 8y ago
        The first investment in Theranos was 6 million dollars? No. She started with $200k from a reputable venture capitalist and that's all it took to get the ball rolling. Nobody was pointing a gun to the heads of the people who invested in Theranos. They were just idiots, is all.
    - trimbo 8y ago
      > Shit got progressively more fucked up along the way. Okay, but the biggest reason for that is because Holmes and Balwani are sociopaths[1]. I wanted to point this out because I feel like your comment is defending her somehow by way of naiveté. Their actions are indefensible on so many levels, from very early in the company's history. To the grandparent's point, there were people working there in earnest on research. They often did not last long, or, in the case of Ian Gibbons, was driven to suicide by the stress of potentially revealing Theranos's faulty technology in a court case, or lying and hurting patients [2]. Be sure to read "Bad Blood". It was a very good read about this company and Holmes. [1] - Yes, this label is overused, but not in this particular case. [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Gibbons_(biochemist) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Gibbons_(biochemist)
- twtw 8y ago
  Did theranos have anyone doing real research work? My understanding was that theranos had real, good scientists who were continuously pressured to fabricate results and do quick hacks to keep up appearances. What real research work could anyone have been doing if everyone there was ignoring the fact that their procedures and equipment did not product accurate results?
  - mc32 8y ago
    Good question, I don't know. It's possible they were sent on wild goose chases knowing they were in vain and just a front. I have no idea, but I know they had good scientists in their employ. In any event, research labs have many lines of inquiry and separate teams working on their specialty. I don't know if they produced good IP, just that they had good scientists working for them, and have moved on to other reputable companies since. This outfit singled out by the FDA though, it looks like complete fraud.
    - nradov 8y ago
      Any scientist who compromised his or her ethics by continuing to work for Theranos after seeing how they operated from the inside was not "good", by definition. Their reputations will be stained forever.
      - mc32 8y ago
        Not necessarily. Teams aren’t privy to everything in other teams. It's possible their reps be stained forever, but it's not all deserved. Mgmt can be deceptive. Just because you're an expert in one line of inquiry does not mean you're an expert in another (and can call out fakery, esp if it's kept from them).
      - asveikau 8y ago
        Unethical people can hide it well. They probably also had people at all stages of their careers, eg. imagine a very junior person being impressed with the position, with very little work experience to be able to see through office sociopathy. I am sorry for anyone who now has such a stain on their record after being exploited like that.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- newnewpdro 8y ago
  Any scientist/researcher with Theranos on their CV should be viewed as complicit in the fraud, not exempted from it.

mc32 8y ago

At least theranos had real, good scientists doing real research work. Of course we know management went awry [failing to admit defeat and pushing on despite the problems] and threw everyone under the bus, but they had real researchers. This company here from the outside looks closer to quackery. [and can't imagine them having a good team of scientists behind it].

theli0nheart 8y ago
Management never "went" awry. The whole thing was a fraud from day one. And hiring "real researchers" to front your fraudulent operation as a way to hide what's going on behind the scenes shouldn't be reason to look the other way. In some ways it's worse than the alternative, since there's not just fraud, but activity intended to take attention away from it.
- Fricken 8y ago
  It wasn't a fraud from day one, Elizabeth Holmes was a teenager when she got started on Theranos, she had no idea at that time that it had no chance of working. Uncle Tim gave her $200k in seed funding and she ran with it. Shit got progressively more fucked up along the way.
  - SilasX 8y ago
    Yes, and she bought into the “fake it till you make it”, “no one knows what they’re doing”, “all self doubt is impostor syndrome” mentality that’s so popular on this site and which inevitably leads to idealistic people doubling down on fundamentally confused ventures where they should have realized they’re out of their depth.
    - Fricken 8y ago
      Are those attitudes really that popular on HN? Most of the comments I see are pretty cycnical about emerging technologies and longshot bets. The thing is, after she got that $200k in branded VC capital from family friend Tim Draper, Holmes went knocking on the doors of all the big silicon valley VC firms and all the big bio-sciences VC firms. They consulted with blood scientist type people who informed them device had zero chance of living up to it's promise. All of them said "Sorry Elizabeth, we must politely decline your invitation to flush our money down the toilet." The money she did get after that seed funding was from fly-by night wannabe VCs, and the bandwagon effect took off from there. Who did their due diligence? Nobody. I'm not shedding any tears for Rupert Murdoch, but there were hedge fund managers in charge of people's pensions who gave Theranos 100s of millions of dollars without looking into what it was they were spending other people's money on. It baffles me that anyone that stupid can get to be in charge of that much money in the first place.
      - asveikau 8y ago
        I think what the parent means is that it is indeed very popular on many tech sites where career discussion occurs to overstate imposter syndrome and imply that solid competence without imposter syndrome does not exist, everyone is just faking it. Imposter syndrome is a real phenomenon and successful people are mere mortals who should not be put on pedestals. But it's possible to attribute too much to these factors. And dishonesty (faking it) should not be where you turn.
      - dmix 8y ago
        I’ve been on this site forever and I remember the early Theranos articles were highly skeptical or had as little information about what they were actually doing as this site has primarily programmers and software people, not as much people in bio. Regardless faking state-funded health experiments in a heavily regulated industry has nothing to do with fail fast mentality of the software world either (just like how everyone here criticized that personal banking startup who tried that in the heavily regulated finance industry). We have nothing to defend here.
        8y ago
  - doingmyting 8y ago
    She was almost 20 and was told repeatedly by her professors at Stanford that they don't think it would work. If you don't know by the time you're 20 that using off the shelf machines to do blood tests and telling everyone that you're using some new revolutionary method is fraud, then I dont know what to tell you. And no she didn't start with 200k, she had 6 million in venture capital the very year she started which ballooned to over 400 million.
    - Fricken 8y ago
      The first investment in Theranos was 6 million dollars? No. She started with $200k from a reputable venture capitalist and that's all it took to get the ball rolling. Nobody was pointing a gun to the heads of the people who invested in Theranos. They were just idiots, is all.
  - trimbo 8y ago
    > Shit got progressively more fucked up along the way. Okay, but the biggest reason for that is because Holmes and Balwani are sociopaths[1]. I wanted to point this out because I feel like your comment is defending her somehow by way of naiveté. Their actions are indefensible on so many levels, from very early in the company's history. To the grandparent's point, there were people working there in earnest on research. They often did not last long, or, in the case of Ian Gibbons, was driven to suicide by the stress of potentially revealing Theranos's faulty technology in a court case, or lying and hurting patients [2]. Be sure to read "Bad Blood". It was a very good read about this company and Holmes. [1] - Yes, this label is overused, but not in this particular case. [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Gibbons_(biochemist) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Gibbons_(biochemist)
twtw 8y ago
Did theranos have anyone doing real research work? My understanding was that theranos had real, good scientists who were continuously pressured to fabricate results and do quick hacks to keep up appearances. What real research work could anyone have been doing if everyone there was ignoring the fact that their procedures and equipment did not product accurate results?
- mc32 8y ago
  Good question, I don't know. It's possible they were sent on wild goose chases knowing they were in vain and just a front. I have no idea, but I know they had good scientists in their employ. In any event, research labs have many lines of inquiry and separate teams working on their specialty. I don't know if they produced good IP, just that they had good scientists working for them, and have moved on to other reputable companies since. This outfit singled out by the FDA though, it looks like complete fraud.
  - nradov 8y ago
    Any scientist who compromised his or her ethics by continuing to work for Theranos after seeing how they operated from the inside was not "good", by definition. Their reputations will be stained forever.
    - mc32 8y ago
      Not necessarily. Teams aren’t privy to everything in other teams. It's possible their reps be stained forever, but it's not all deserved. Mgmt can be deceptive. Just because you're an expert in one line of inquiry does not mean you're an expert in another (and can call out fakery, esp if it's kept from them).
    - asveikau 8y ago
      Unethical people can hide it well. They probably also had people at all stages of their careers, eg. imagine a very junior person being impressed with the position, with very little work experience to be able to see through office sociopathy. I am sorry for anyone who now has such a stain on their record after being exploited like that.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
newnewpdro 8y ago
Any scientist/researcher with Theranos on their CV should be viewed as complicit in the fraud, not exempted from it.