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> Another former employee confirmed that staffers at the company would make jokes comparing Upside to Theranos. that's taking it a little far... their goal is

> Another former employee confirmed that staffers at the company would make jokes comparing Upside to Theranos. that's taking it a little far... their goal is providing an ethical food source, not revolutionizing human diagnoses can't wait for meat-less meat tech to get through its paces and take the time to mature. humans took hundreds of years to figure out how to herd cattle; what's another few years to make it in a lab?

catgary 3y ago
Honestly, the roller bottle approach seems pretty reasonable when they’re making sure that the process is making good chicken. They’ve at least reduced the problem to making giant sheets of chicken-paper.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago
Yeah, I agree. Honestly, as long as the product isn't contaminated, the consumer doesn't care if it made in roller bottles or futuristic machines. At worse they are misleading investors, but are not endangering the health of consumers. Theranos on the other hand, actually hurt not just investors but the end consumer by promising them blood tests that did not actually work.
- brightlancer 3y ago
  > At worse they are misleading investors, but are not endangering the health of consumers. > Theranos on the other hand, actually hurt not just investors but the end consumer by promising them blood tests that did not actually work. Elizabeth Holmes was _acquitted_ of defrauding patients; her convictions were only for defrauding investors. This looks a lot like Theranos.
  - amanaplanacanal 3y ago
    Balwani was convicted of defrauding patients though.
flangola7 3y ago
It's a time sensitive issue unfortunately
crooked-v 3y ago
Also, there's a significant difference between "the process works on a small scale, and would work at a large scale if we can solve the reliability/consistency issues" versus Theranos' "the process literally isn't physically possible at any scale and we've been outright lying about it the whole time".
- civilitty 3y ago
  I think lab grown meat is closer to a Theranos type scam than most people realize. The problem with Theranos wasn’t that their tech didn’t work at any scale; it’s that blood drawn from finger capillaries is useless for most diagnostic tests that they claimed to do. It’s a very subtle problem that only investors with proper scientific advisors with diagnostic experience caught onto (aka all the biotech VCs, who stayed far away). “If only” Theranos took regular blood samples from the arm instead of a few droplets from a finger prick, it could have worked but then it’d be just another unsexy competitor in onsite diagnostics. Lab grown meat is full of those kinds of caveats and while no company has committed as egregious a fraud as Theranos, they’re all going to eventually find themselves in the position where they either have to lie to keep getting investments or admit that it’s not feasible and fold. Personally, my bet is that without advanced bioengineering that can design entire artificial immune systems that protect the growing tissue, bioreactors will just be too expensive to scale up and compete with animals. IMO the only way it’ll work is if we have giant (semi-)open vats like salt evaporation pools that convert solar energy directly into protein and fat, with an engineered biome that responds to contamination like an immune system. And that's probably decades if not centuries ahead of us.
  - jareklupinski 3y ago
    > the only way it’ll work is if we have giant (semi-)open vats like salt evaporation pools that convert solar energy directly into protein and fat if we could replace the typical cattle pastures of today with this other system (basically the same idea without needing an organism that has a nervous system attached to it), I think we'll be closer to "making it" > with an engineered biome that responds to contamination like an immune system I saw a farmer once demonstrate how their barn has an automatic ventilation system that kicks in when the temperature gets too high :)
smegsicle 3y ago
i suppose "we're getting the cell growing procedure worked out so that we're ready for when we can make our own stem cells" is a bit more believable than "we're getting the blood pinprick transport device worked out for when we have the sensor technology to do anything with it"

catgary 3y ago

Honestly, the roller bottle approach seems pretty reasonable when they’re making sure that the process is making good chicken. They’ve at least reduced the problem to making giant sheets of chicken-paper.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago

Yeah, I agree. Honestly, as long as the product isn't contaminated, the consumer doesn't care if it made in roller bottles or futuristic machines. At worse they are misleading investors, but are not endangering the health of consumers. Theranos on the other hand, actually hurt not just investors but the end consumer by promising them blood tests that did not actually work.

brightlancer 3y ago
> At worse they are misleading investors, but are not endangering the health of consumers. > Theranos on the other hand, actually hurt not just investors but the end consumer by promising them blood tests that did not actually work. Elizabeth Holmes was _acquitted_ of defrauding patients; her convictions were only for defrauding investors. This looks a lot like Theranos.
- amanaplanacanal 3y ago
  Balwani was convicted of defrauding patients though.

flangola7 3y ago

It's a time sensitive issue unfortunately

crooked-v 3y ago

Also, there's a significant difference between "the process works on a small scale, and would work at a large scale if we can solve the reliability/consistency issues" versus Theranos' "the process literally isn't physically possible at any scale and we've been outright lying about it the whole time".

civilitty 3y ago
I think lab grown meat is closer to a Theranos type scam than most people realize. The problem with Theranos wasn’t that their tech didn’t work at any scale; it’s that blood drawn from finger capillaries is useless for most diagnostic tests that they claimed to do. It’s a very subtle problem that only investors with proper scientific advisors with diagnostic experience caught onto (aka all the biotech VCs, who stayed far away). “If only” Theranos took regular blood samples from the arm instead of a few droplets from a finger prick, it could have worked but then it’d be just another unsexy competitor in onsite diagnostics. Lab grown meat is full of those kinds of caveats and while no company has committed as egregious a fraud as Theranos, they’re all going to eventually find themselves in the position where they either have to lie to keep getting investments or admit that it’s not feasible and fold. Personally, my bet is that without advanced bioengineering that can design entire artificial immune systems that protect the growing tissue, bioreactors will just be too expensive to scale up and compete with animals. IMO the only way it’ll work is if we have giant (semi-)open vats like salt evaporation pools that convert solar energy directly into protein and fat, with an engineered biome that responds to contamination like an immune system. And that's probably decades if not centuries ahead of us.
- jareklupinski 3y ago
  > the only way it’ll work is if we have giant (semi-)open vats like salt evaporation pools that convert solar energy directly into protein and fat if we could replace the typical cattle pastures of today with this other system (basically the same idea without needing an organism that has a nervous system attached to it), I think we'll be closer to "making it" > with an engineered biome that responds to contamination like an immune system I saw a farmer once demonstrate how their barn has an automatic ventilation system that kicks in when the temperature gets too high :)

smegsicle 3y ago

i suppose "we're getting the cell growing procedure worked out so that we're ready for when we can make our own stem cells" is a bit more believable than "we're getting the blood pinprick transport device worked out for when we have the sensor technology to do anything with it"