
FDA warning brings young-blood transfusion company to a halt - mips_avatar
https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/19/fda-warning-blood-transfusions-ambrosia-medical/
======
duchenne
I am now reading "Red Star" a 1908 utopian novel by Alexander Bogdanov, where
another advanced Humanity is living on Mars. In this Utopia, people frequently
transfer blood one from another. The author presents blood donation as one of
the greatest form of Fraternity.

Interestingly, Bogdanov founded one of the first blood transfer institute with
only volunteering donors. At that time, most blood donations were paid. Later
on, thanks to better conservation techniques, less blood was needed, and
volunteering became generalized world-wide.

Bogdanov also believed that blood donation could rejuvenate people. His wife
said that he looked 7-10 years younger after his experiments. But, in the end,
he died, because he received malaria-infected blood.

That is interesting to know that some 2019 issues already existed more than a
century ago: blood transfer, paying for blood, rejuvenation, etc..

~~~
Pristina
they are actual non-problems.

If you own your body, you own your blood. You should be able to sell or do
whatever you please with it.

If some people think they can become younger by bathing in young blood, let
them. It's their money and time, and blood too, as long as they buy the blood
legitimately.

~~~
raquo
Be careful what you wish to turn into a commodity because in increasingly
deregulated capitalism there is often no way back.

That would be yet another way to increase inequality.

Do you really want to force people to pay down loans with blood, skin and
kidneys? Because that will inevitably happen if allowed.

~~~
hippich
I can see issues with the widely available market for blood donors, but I
disagree about "paying down loans with blood, skin, and kidneys".

If you do physical work you already destroy some muscles, and if work is
stressful you destroy your kidney trying to get relief by drinking yourself
out. The skin on your hands also gets damaged from hard work. Or skin on your
body after constant exposure to the sun.

We should strive for a society where we do not have to work ourselves out to
pay off the loan, and not focus on preventing people from paying off loans
destroying their bodies specifically, no matter if it is blood donation, or
herniated disks, or destroyed lungs, or anything in between.

~~~
raquo
> We should strive for a society where we do not have to work ourselves out to
> pay off the loan

When we have such a society we can reevaluate. But right now we don't, and in
the current environment creating more ways for inequality moves us away from
such society.

------
BurningFrog
How can plasma transfusions not have gone though rigorous testing? Has it not
been done routinely millions of times for decades?

I understand it's not been proven to have any health benefit. But the _safety_
of the procedure must be extremely well known.

~~~
ianhowson
For a treatment to be granted 'FDA approval', the FDA needs to see evidence of
two things: safety and efficacy. Even if a treatment is demonstrated to be
safe, if there's no evidence of therapeutic benefit, they won't approve it.

~~~
BurningFrog
Yeah, if you parse out the words, that is all they're actually saying.

"There is no proven clinical benefit" and "there are risks associated with the
use of any [...] product".

~~~
ianhowson
They're also _not_ saying "Ambrosia Medical must stop administering this
treatment". They're just saying "we don't approve". So this thing on the
Ambrosia website:

> In compliance with the FDA announcement issued February 19, 2019, we have
> ceased patient treatments.

doesn't quite make sense, because the FDA hasn't publicly asked Ambrosia to
stop, and the FDA never _did_ approve transfusions for the purpose of life
extension or anti-aging. They're not complying with anything, because that
announcement wasn't a 'cease treatments' notice.

So we don't really know why Ambrosia has chosen to stop.

------
dswalter
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
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
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
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
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
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.

~~~
SilasX
Every time I bring up the impostor syndrome overdiagnosis and “no one knows
what they’re doing” meme in the context of Theranos, the replies take umbrage
at the reference, and insist that HNers and VCs in SV saw through Theranos the
whole time.

Which is true! But also, very beside-the-point.

The point is, that some people really are impostors. Some people really don’t
know what they’re doing, _in a much deeper sense_ than the usual “oh I
struggled over a judgment call yesterday while doing 90% of my job the routine
way”.

From the inside, it’s hard to know whether you have excessive self doubt, or
you’re an Elizabeth Holmes. _And it’s a pretty freaking important distinction
to make._

The HN/SV mentality I’m criticizing is the one that jumps straight to “oh
that’s impostor syndrome” rather than giving concrete tests for whether the
self-doubt is justified. Who swears that every expert engineer, manager, and
businessperson occupies the same epistemic state that Holmes felt, who equates
the occasional judgment call with knowing nothing about the core problems of
the domain you’ve entered.

So yeah, you called Theranos early on. Good for you!

Now, for your victory lap, stop telling the next 100 Holmeses to double down
on their “faking it” on the way to the inevitable “making it”. Help them
determine whether they’re a Holmes or just worrying too much.

~~~
dwild
There's a HUGE difference between self doubt and others peoples doubting you.
One is inflicted on our self without evidence while the other is inflicted by
others, often with evidence.

Impostor syndrome is caused because you believe you aren't good enough, but
how can you know that when you are still new in a domain? Why would someone
that better in that domain would pay you to works on that? Because he has
evidences that suggest that you can do what's required in that job.

Now if experts tell you that your idea already exist and doesn't works for X,
Y, Z, it's no longer self doubt.... it's actively ignoring evidences.

> So yeah, you called Theranos early on. Good for you!

Which make it no longer a self-doubt.

Faking until you make it was never about faking results or evidences, it's
about faking confidence. Confidence is a great motivator, it's a great way to
push beyond, but it doesn't replace real evidence.

The real issue here is that theses VC didn't require more than confidence to
invest that much money. The fact that plenty of expert called out that scam
early on show how an easy due diligence weren't done correctly.

------
kkarakk
Has there been any research on what happens when you pump "old-blood" into
young people? any gains in wisdom/maturity/dementia?

~~~
jokowueu
On mice only

------
DKnoll
I think a good enough reason to forbid it would be to prevent companies from
paying donors more (or at all) and diverting blood that could be used for
necessary medical treatments.

~~~
mips_avatar
I don’t think this should be allowed as a treatment, if it’s efficacy hasn’t
been established. But I wish there were a trial. I want to be able to live
healthily to 100.

~~~
nradov
There is zero scientific basis to expect that this would allow people to live
healthily to 100. We have limited resources for clinical trials and those
resources should be focused on areas more likely to produce useful results.

~~~
ibeckermayer
And what precisely gives you (or the bureaucrats running the FDA) the
authority to decide for everybody in America what is the best use of _our_
blood?

I should be free to decide for myself what to do with my own body, and which
authorities to trust on matters beyond my domain of expertise. If you have a
good argument for why this is a waste of resources then _make the argument_ ,
don’t legistlatively prohibit me from thinking for myself.

~~~
rscho
There are things that are a public necessity and indeed collectively-enforced
rules simply because they won't work if too few people agree to it.

Another example of this process is vaccines. If herd immunity is too low, then
vaccination cannot work, although it is a perfectly good solution if everyone
is on board.

A second point is that you probably are no expert on the topic of human
plasma. This could motivate the enforcement of rules under certain
circumstances, given that you are unable to personally judge if the use of
such precious material is a waste or not.

I personally, think that your opinion is the epitome of selfishness.

~~~
krageon
It is true that not all vaccinations work 100% of the time and that herd
immunity helps protect the people for who they have not worked. It is very,
very wrong to say that this means that "If herd immunity is too low, then
vaccination cannot work".

~~~
rscho
Oh yeah? Please expand on this, I'm curious.

If that is your point of contention, you could replace "cannot work" by "may
do more harm than good at a social level".

~~~
krageon
I don't know what to expand on, as I don't understand how it wasn't clear from
what I have already told you - can you indicate roughly where I stopped being
clear?

~~~
rscho
You mentioned I said something very very wrong, but it's not clear to me if
this is a language or fundamental issue.

For instance if I say, as I have tried to enunciate above, "if herd immunity
is too low, vaccines may do more harm than good at a social/epidemiologic
level", does that still seem very very wrong to you?

To be clear, your above comment gave the impression that you thought that a
low herd immunity could not increase deaths due to disease compared to no herd
immunity at all, which is wrong and was probably the reason why you were
downvoted.

------
rscho
For some reason, the only appropriate name that comes to my mind for such
companies is "Bathory".

~~~
porphyrogene
Dr. Acula would like a word with you.

------
CaliforniaKarl
The company mentioned, Ambrosia Medical, has been on HN before.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14470314](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14470314)

From the Vanity Fair article that the above linked to, it seemed it was run by
Jesse Karmazin, with Peter Thiel either as a booster, or maybe providing
funding? The article isn't clear on that, although he's mentioned (and quoted)
multiple times.

------
jfultz
It's like the company used Normal Spinrad's "Bug Jack Barron" and the goofy
sci-fi premise invented by its mustache-twirling villain as an operating
manual.

------
ErikAugust
No JavaScript, etc:
[https://beta.trimread.com/articles/92](https://beta.trimread.com/articles/92)

------
dmourati
I'm reminded of the title of a distributed systems post the original appears
to be no longer working but here's a HN link:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12245909](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12245909)

------
kfwhp
Are there any actual, proven benefits to these blood transfusions, or are they
just something rich people like to do for the sake of it?

------
transfire
I'd rather hear from the people brave enough to have tried this to gain their
perspective.

~~~
hannasanarion
Why do you think that someone who would literally suck your blood out of your
veins so that they can live forever would bother to tell you what it feels
like?

Why are we pretending this is anything but horrifying? We have multiple works
of dystopia and horror fiction about this very premise: The Golden Compass,
The Waterworks, Get Out, The Supernaturalist, Unwind...

~~~
sanxiyn
> someone who would literally suck your blood out of your veins

Blood is renewable. You aren't losing blood you donate (or sell).

