
Theranos' Highly-Anticipated Defense of Its Tech Is Called a 'Bait-And-Switch' - marcusgarvey
http://fortune.com/2016/08/01/theranos-presentation-panned/
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firebones
I watched the Q&A and part of the presentation on Periscope. It was a little
hard to follow, but Holmes appeared to be on a short leash during the Q&A
period, constrained to only talking about the new invention and cloud
architecture, and deferring all the pointed questions about nanotainer numbers
and anomalies to the three employees she brought on stage.

It also looks like they're going to attempt to get some kind of fast track
approval of this new device by playing on Zika virus fears. There was one very
pointed audience/expert question about the validity and inconsistency in their
Zika virus claims that didn't appear to be fielded well.

As I understand it, this device will still take a small amount of blood,
dilute it, and then theoretically perform up to hundreds of tests. So while
Holmes made no attempt to answer the question of "how many finger pricks will
it take to do these tests", one of her employees was still making the claim
that a microliter dilution was enough--going from 170 uliter to 1 uliter.

The play could very well turn into Theranos waging a press and political war
with the FDA around Zika in order to rush this out. The board advice may be
paying off from a political/PR standpoint even though the presentation didn't
answer any questions from a scientific standpoint.

~~~
joezydeco
Except the FDA has already cleared one Zika assay, and from this tweet at the
AACC keynote the Theranos test is 50x less sensitive. And Dennis Lo isn't just
some random guy in the audience.

[https://twitter.com/DrDanHolmes/status/760232173836185600](https://twitter.com/DrDanHolmes/status/760232173836185600)

The science is the science. You can't really wage a press war around the
facts.

~~~
firebones
Agree with Dr Lo as being the expert--didn't get into that detail in my
comment. He was a moderator and it was difficult to tell which parts of the
question he read was the original audience question versus his own--but the
question was a devastating moment nonetheless, and the Theranos response was
weak (something to the effect of "that 50x number isn't comparable/relevant
because our measures use the new ranges the CDC gave us". It was more of an
"are you lying now, or were you lying in this 2008 paper?" question. Holmes
didn't open her mouth at all for that one, and there was an awkward moment of
silence and glance over to figure out which employee was going to take that
one.

I am less optimistic around the FDA's ultimate neutrality when it comes to
political pressure. Facts certainly need to win, but Theranos didn't hire a
board like they did if they were counting on facts alone to save the day. It's
the same playbook from before, now pivoted to public health crises instead of
a DoD endgame.

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linuxkerneldev
How is a person with a track record that tainted still in this position? And
how is that organizations like the American Association for Clinical Chemistry
(AACC) would still grant such a person access to such a large group?

~~~
Aelinsaar
"The wheels of justice turn slowly, but grind exceedingly fine."

~~~
bitchypat
They sure turned quickly for Martin Shkreli.

His company raised the price of a drug to an absurd level and overnight he
became "the most hated man in America".

Her company endangered, and likely caused real harm to, numerous patients'
health and she gets to keep on selling and is even given a platform by the
AACC to due so.

~~~
Aelinsaar
I mean, Shkreli turned out to be such a psychopath that he couldn't even
pretend not to be a monster for the media or a _judge_. I see him as the
Jeffry Dahmer of that end of the spectrum to be honest, and just... extreme.
Holmes seems like a much more composed fraudster.

~~~
jshevek
If Shkreli was really incapable of pretending not to be a monster, then he is
much less of a monster than many who lead pharmaceutical companies.

It saddens me that so many people delighted in indulging in a visceral hatred
of this one individual, while seeming to be unaware that our entire system is
overly influenced by many hundreds or thousands of people with similar values
as him. The world would be a better place if the majority of Shkreli haters
invested a tiny fraction of that energy into looking at the pharmaceutical
industry as a whole, and the abuse of various mechanisms (patents included) to
inflate prices and stifle competition.

Some of the other scumbags (at other pharmaceutical companies) were probably
relieved that so many of us focused on hating Shkreli the person, rather than
asking deeper questions about the legal and moral framework in which they all
operate.

Hate the player _and_ the game. Some of Shkreli's despicable actions were
perfectly legal, so we should try to change the rules of the game
(legislatively) rather than focusing so much on the character of one bad
player.

------
chollida1
> “We hope to achieve FDA market authorizations of these exciting technologies
> in the coming years,” she said.

I've never thought about what it takes to run a medical devices company but
think about that statement. It looks like Theranos just did a huge pivot and
they won't be able to generate any revenue from the resulting pivot for
atleast a few years?

At this point, shouldn't goal number one be to get a product, any product
approved by the FDA, are they the only governing body they need to get
approval from?, and then get it to market ASAP?

Someone get Holmes a copy of Ben Horowitz book "The hard thing about hard
things". If she wasn't already, she is now a war time CEO.

~~~
ceejayoz
> If she wasn't already, she is now a war time CEO.

It looks more like she's a post-Hiroshima CEO.

------
kqr2
The complete video presentation:

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=n6JRG733ReQ](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=n6JRG733ReQ)

Slides:

[https://www.aacc.org/~/media/files/annual-
meeting/2016/thera...](https://www.aacc.org/~/media/files/annual-
meeting/2016/theranosaaccpresentation.pdf)

------
thanatropism
Legitimate question to people involved in funding, incubators, etc. Does this
hurt the perception of women founders/CEOs in the margin (where a VC or maybe
YCombinator has to pick five companies out of ten where eight look pretty
good)?

I mean, I've seen a lot of criticism in the non-stupid parts of the internet
about Marissa Mayer, for example -- and she arrived really late to the party.

Now, I know that rushing to conclusions about "women entrepreneurs" from
three, five, fifteen, sixty-seven cases is really sexist because we don't rush
to say men are terrible entrepreneus because of countless projects gone awry.
I mean, I can only imagine the vitriol Nick Denton would have gone through
were he a woman.

But people are sexist. People are racists -- if instead of female CEOs we were
talking Sri Lankan CEOs, we'd have long arrived at a cliché conclusion, I
think. Am I too pessimistic?

~~~
linuxkerneldev
> if instead of female CEOs we were talking Sri Lankan CEOs, we'd have long
> arrived at a cliché conclusion

I wasn't able to follow this sentence. What is the cliché with Sri Lankan
CEOs? I'm not even sure I know of any. I had to look up Sri Lanka to find out
that it is not part of India because initially I assumed you were trying to
say something about the Indian CEOs we see in the valley.

~~~
nyolfen
I think the idea is that our (American) culture doesn't have an 'immune
system' that responds defensively and automatically to criticisms of Sri
Lankan professionals in the way that is extended to some women today

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marcusgarvey
Substantive issues aside, Holmes seems to be getting very bad PR advice.

~~~
DavidHm
Which is kinda surprising. With her board of directors stacked with people
coming from the politics environment, you would think they can get better PR
people.

~~~
dennisnedry
Typically people from politics don't understand business very well.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
Typically people from politics don't understand anything very well - except
begging for cash from sponsors.

Politics is upscale professional pan-handling - which goes a long way to
explaining the quality of so many political decisions.

------
fredgrott
It somewhat indirectly highlights how much of common public understands
statistics and their application.

------
elgabogringo
Tigers don't change their stripes.

------
ryanmarsh
I'm inspired by Holmes. It's clear that she's trying to do something very hard
that would benefit humanity but instead her company's failures are making
headlines. People on Twitter are spewing sexist garbage about her, or trashing
her character, but to me she looks like she's just soldiering on. Respect.

I don't know how I'd handle the level of scrutiny she's under.

~~~
jacquesm
> I don't know how I'd handle the level of scrutiny she's under.

I'd hope that you would step down from your post as CEO because you're too
damaged to lead the company any further rather than to cling to your CEO
position and likely accelerate the sinking of the ship.

