
How a $9B startup deceived Silicon Valley - joering2
http://www.businessinsider.com/john-carreyrou-how-theranos-deceived-silicon-valley-startup-bad-blood-sample-technology-2018-5
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mortdeus
I want to know what was wrong with the prototype. Why didn't it deliver as
promised and if the technology can be salvaged.

I think the way I feel about this story depends completely on whether or not
they knew they were going to be able to deliver on their promise soon.

One thing that this article gets wrong is the fact that they say it's not a
software company. Do they think these machines are built mechanically or
something? Of course it is a software company.

The kind of AI that would be required to analyze a couple of drops of blood
and be able to tell what is wrong with people would have to be extremely
sophisticated.

Not only that but they would probably need to start gathering a lot of blood
from people to be able to build up the AI's intelligence when it comes to
discerning the properties of healthy blood samples when compared to diseased
blood.

These are the kind of questions that are worth asking. But instead we just
have the media who wants to get the jump on a juicy story.

What Elizabeth Holmes did was fraud in that she was dishonest. But how
dishonest and was that dishonesty necessary?

Like I said there is a lot more here than meets the eye. Otherwise she
wouldn't be trying to get share holders to take more shares to not sue.

From what I gather, she either expects to get acquired (which means the
technology and patents are very valuable but for whatever reason there is
something getting in the way) or she expects that she will actually be able to
deliver on her promises.

I personally think that she is an unsettling and creepy woman, but I do think
that having a machine that you can go into a walgreens, get your finger
pricked and run a quick blood lab, with "better than most doctor" diagnostics
printing/sending out results right there in front of you, has crazy life
saving possibilities.

I really don't think Silicon Valley was duped. I am thinking that they saw the
crazy potential something like this could bring to the world if it actually
existed.

So like I said before, I really want to know what is wrong with the prototype
and can it be fixed?

Also the notion in the article that these things tend to be developed in open
forums is nonsense. Big Pharm doesn't spill the beans on drugs they are
developing until they have to when filing for Patents/FDA Approval. And
Doctors don't spill the beans on procedures/tools they are developing until
they have to when filing for patents/FDA approval.

You have to be very skeptical when dealing with these kind of disruptive "job
killing" innovations. Who needs to go to their local doctor when medicine is
become more and more electronically driven?

Some day people will be able to go to a CVS or Walgreens and step into a photo
booth like machine, get a finger prick, EKG, MRI, blood pressure taken, answer
a quick survey and have their prescriptions printed out in less than 15
minutes.

And it will actually work better at making people healthy than doctors do
today.

All these doctors who spent $320k going to an ivy league med school and have 3
million dollar 30 year mortgages don't like the idea of being replaced by HAL.
So why should we believe they wouldn't try to curtail any innovation that
makes them more and more redundant?

Nobody likes having to have a person stick a finger up your ass to tell you
whether your baby maker is still good to go.

