Report: Feds To Ban Theranos Founder Elizabeth Holmes For 2 Years (cbsnews.com) 104
An anonymous reader writes: According to the Wall Street Journal, health regulators have proposed pulling the federal license for the company's California laboratory and banning its founder and CEO, Elizabeth Holmes, and company president Sunny Balwani from the blood-testing business for two years. The letter which the WSJ cited in its report found that Theranos had not corrected problems at its lab in Newark, California, and faced possible sanctions as a result. In October 2015, the WSJ reported all but one of Theranos' analyzers in use were off the shelf, and that their tiny samples may not always have been accurate. The company was facing allegations of data manipulation in late December 2015. Earlier this year, U.S. regulators found serious deficiencies at Theranos' laboratory in Newark, California, putting the company's relationship with the Medicare program in danger. Theranos has said that The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has not imposed sanctions on its Newark Lab. "Due to the comprehensive nature of the corrective measures we've taken over the past several months, which has been affirmed by several experts, we are hopeful that CMS won't impose sanctions," the company said in an emailed statement. "But if they do, we will work with CMS to address all of their concerns."
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Tell that to my friends that lost their plans, and now pay $5k/year(up from $2k/yr) more for private insurance with a higher co-pay, and poorer quality of care, along with reductions in drug coverage.
Re:For-profit healthcare in action. (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps you need a proper national medical scheme then - regardless of what you think of the quality of it, I would much rather live with the NHS here in the UK than have to use the US system.
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They live in the US. I live in Canada and still pay out the ass for private coverage so I don't go broke. The NHS? That entire fucking scheme is broken, and I don't even want to get started on it.
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Random, but I saw your username and thought of this article I saw today -- http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2016/04/15/national/mashiki-quake-survivors-describe-terror-homes-collapsed/ [japantimes.co.jp]
Any connection to you?
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Any connection to you?
Only in family history.
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But, the question is, would you rather live on medicare/medicaid/tricare (military medical)/VA than the current commercial system?
It isn't if your government can do it better than commercial, it is if our government can. The government run medical care programs in the US have been terrible, just look at all the scandals the VA has gone through recently:
https://www.google.com/search?... [google.com]
They had people dying waiting to come in for care, while having an enormous surplus of funds for care. This is what a US h
Re: For-profit healthcare in action. (Score:2, Insightful)
Thats right. Weekends are also terrible socialist ideas
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How the hell would that solve the underlying problem?
A big first step would be information transparency. Require doctors to publicly post their prices. Prohibit them from banning patients for posting reviews. Malpractice information, and outcome data should be publicly available.
Wow, how unsurprising (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone who has the least bit of common sense could have told you she's a fraud. She has yet to submit her process to anyone else for confirmation it does what it says it does, her own company has been relying more and more on standard tests rather than their supposed "miracle" process, and companies which have been using her service have been dropping her and going back to what is known to work.
I remember seeing her listed as one of those youngest self-made billionaires and all I could think was how much she's pulled the wool over on everyone. I can't wait for the lawsuits to come flying in.
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all I could think was how much she's pulled the wool over on everyone
Oops, I saw the same but all I could think was "she's hot!"
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She was touted as hot stuff, because of her identity and political connections. This is what happens when you allow politics to interfere with business decisions.
Still, thank goodness for the free market - She made promises she couldn't deliver on, and when she couldn't deliver, she lost customers, her investors are suing her, and the government is investigating (and punishing) her fraud.
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Thank goodness for the free market? WTF are you talking about? She's being investigated by FEDERAL FREAKING HEALTH REGULATORS.
Literally the first three words of the article are "Federal health regulators".
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Correction: She's being investigated by federal authorities now. Prior to that she was touted as the next great thing because of her gender, because it's trendy as fuck to do that right now(and for the last few years). Not because she had a good product, not because it was great. But because of the location of her sex organs, and the media was complicit in that.
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Re:Wow, how unsurprising (Score:5, Insightful)
I get the results in 24 hours on their phone app, I can order my own tests, test are a FRACTION of the cost
1. Cheap
2. Fast
3. Accurate
You can pick any 2, as long as you don't pick #3.
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I get the results in 24 hours on their phone app, I can order my own tests, test are a FRACTION of the cost
Oh wow! The tests are fast, cheap and come in on an APP (because a website is just too unfashionable now).
With service that good I really don't care if the results are accurate at all!
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Oh wow! The tests are fast, cheap and come in on an APP (because a website is just too unfashionable now).
Pfffff! Chatbot or no sale.
Just Like Cold Fusion... (Score:2, Insightful)
...I had hoped that the technology was really valid.
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Would have been nice, yeah.
And hell, who knows, sooner or later, it might happen for real. I mean, 30 years ago, things like smart phones, virtual reality gaming (okay, good virtual reality gaming), and self-driving cars were the province of science fiction.
We could still get to this type of blood testing. It's just not through Theranos.
Litmus test that you're in a tech bubble (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Litmus test that you're in a tech bubble (Score:5, Informative)
Has it been revealed how much capital they actually raised? A $9b "valuation" probably means they raised a couple hundred million. No doubt a big chunk of that went straight into her own bank account.
so secretive nobody even knows what their actual product is or whether it even works
Their product was well known (quick blood tests that used a tiny amount of blood). But everyone knew from the start that it simply didn't work. A college freshman designing a new way of testing blood that the big labs couldn't figure out how to do? Really?
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Re:Litmus test that you're in a tech bubble (Score:5, Insightful)
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Everyone? Please there are a lot of people that believed her and your hindsight is 20/20 bullshit is just that. The idea itself is plausible.
If you can design an IC microchip that could measure chemical composition in blood you'd make billions on a device that could measure things with a finger prick and provide instantaneous results that right now require a plunger in the arm and days to measure. They've got a few similar tests that do work already out there (mainly in the insulin area) and it's not implau
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To me, "highly inaccurate" translates directly to "it doesn't work". This is hardly 20/20 hindsight, though - there were plenty of people back during Theranos's boom days that were saying they were suspicious of the whole thing.
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What if it's the right result 9 times out of 10? Because that level of incorrectness is unacceptable in the medical field. Medical tests need to have accuracy in the four to five nines to be considered accurate. Most of the non-medical world would consider a 9 out of 10 result pretty good, hell a 300 batting average is a 30% success rate and is considered good.
I believe the hope at Theranos was that they could get to medical level of accura
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A college freshman designing a new way of testing blood that the big labs couldn't figure out how to do? Really?
But she's an empowered female disrupter! You're just jealous!
Not tech, healthcare (Score:2)
When investors are willing to place a $9B valuation on a tech unicorn that is so secretive nobody even knows what their actual product is or whether it even works.
It's a health care bubble, actually. There's over-investment in the health care sector right now, at least in startup costs.
Of course, there are also massive startup hurdles there for regulatory and bill-payment reasons
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They filled a zillion patents. Why did they think the secret sauce would be.. well, secret.
Ban? (Score:3)
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Putting her in prison would just put us even more on the hook, and she could probably still get elected governor of Florida.
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She isn't a billionaire, and never was.
You start a company. I'll give you a dollar in exchange for 0.00000001% equity in your company. Voila! The company is valued at $1b, and you are a billionaire. Not.
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Yes, she's what is known as a "provisional" billionaire. Until she can cash out and diversify a bit, her billions are a little light in the reality department.
If her company sinks, she's toast as well. However, if she's smart and remains unindicted, she might still be a millionaire at the end of it.
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How about putting her in jail for fraud?
Because jails should be used to protect the public from violent criminals, not as a substitute for VC due diligence.
Differnet Groups` (Score:2)
That's a different group of authorities (and a different standard of proof). They're stopping her from supplying services to the government.
I suppose the state authorities (or FBI or similar) could investigate her for fraud.
Seems like they drank their own koolaid (Score:1)
It's possible this is an Enron type scam, but I think it's more likely that Holmes kept thinking they were on the verge of the big breakthrough, and was able to sell that to lots of investors who should've done more homework. It's like Curt Schilling with 38 Studios, the video game maker that convinced the state of Rhode Island to cosign $75 million in loans in exchange for relocating there and hiring hundreds of engineers.
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It's possible this is an Enron type scam, but I think it's more likely that Holmes kept thinking they were on the verge of the big breakthrough, and was able to sell that to lots of investors who should've done more homework. It's like Curt Schilling with 38 Studios, the video game maker that convinced the state of Rhode Island to cosign $75 million in loans in exchange for relocating there and hiring hundreds of engineers.
Nope, she gave people fake healthcare information leading to misinformed self-care while promoting self-care based on that bad data. She's probably responsible for more deaths than anyone could even accurately account for along with everyone else at that sham of a company.
ugh, a few years too late (Score:3)
Perhaps it was a case of having too much fame too soon, and feeling the pressure to lie to cover the failures/shortcoming? If only the truth and exposure had come sooner. There are plenty of entrepreneurs and good ideas out there that deserve the publicity + funding that she got, but didn't because they weren't so well connected.
Banned for two years? (Score:1, Insightful)
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Or at least "allegedly brilliant female entrepreneur" anyway. It's good journalism to not jump to any conclusions, right?
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Why not life in jail? How does the whore get to keep millions of dollars for doing nothing and giving people fake health data?
Or she could run for president. Worked for Carly Fiorina, didn't it?
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Hehe, not really. At least Carly was upfront about her incompetence and didn't/couldn't hide it. Yet some people still hold her out to be some kind of gifted business person.
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Unnecessary and derogatory name-calling on Slashdot.
Take a shot.
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I know she's a fraud and I know you hate women, but calling her a whore isn't necessary.
Sigh. Sometimes I wish homosexuals such as yourself could just accept it instead of shitting on women.
If I were a homosexual I doubt she would have sucked enough dick to have more resources than me. The fact is she has no skills, no product and a bunch of bullshit. Logically the only conclusion is she got that vast wealth from sex-starved nerds by taking a lot of dick, she has no actual skills so there is no other explanation for it. If using the term "whore" in this context were a knock on all women as you suggest it would not be logically sound as for it to be so all women would have vastly more wealth
Crappy headline (Score:1)
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She's being banned from Federal contracting and participating in anything federally funded. It's called a federal contracting death sentence and it will pretty much end her career in anything involving federal research dollars (which is almost all research). Basically the only research she can participate in during this time frame is something entirely funded by private dollars and there is very little research that is funded like that.
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Another Possible Reason . . . (Score:1)
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" Or, they are simply trying to sink the company to extend their present business plan(s)."
The only conspiracy here was the sale of smoke and mirrors. Nothing more than selling the dream with a compelling staff and story, ala Madoff. Time and financial forensics will eventually show the real product, which I imagine is just that, a story without the IP to support any of it.
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WSJ and Slashdot late to this party (Score:2, Insightful)
The story of Theranos and Elizabeth Holmes have been covered at length at, how shall I put it, "other places" on the Web.
Many of us here on Slashdot toil away at technical jobs in the vain hope of getting paid health coverage or maybe a retirement plan, forget about becoming wealthy let alone famous. Then there are these techies who get hyped as the "Next Steve Jobs" or "the most influential tech entrepreneurs under age 30" and we read their stories in a mixture of wonderment, envy, and resentment of why-a
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1. Theranos makes(?) diagnostics. Pharm industry makes drugs.
2. The diagnostic industry already knew that blood from skinpricks not only doesn't contain the same quantities of many biomarkers as blood from venous draws, the levels can also vary wildly from drop to drop, making the results pretty useless. Why compete with that?
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It may be possible that Theranos has been experiencing problems because one or more of the entrenched interests in the pharm industry wants to slow the company down so they can catch up and come up with competing products with a known brand name.
That doesn't really make any sense. If there really was some kind of Big Pharma conspiracy like that, the smart move would be to wish Theranos godspeed, let them come up with their big breakthrough, and then right when they're ready to go to market, use Big Pharma influence to trip them onto their faces. File lawsuits, file objections with regulators, what-have-you, the whole time Theranos is bleeding money, and then finally Big Pharma says, "Look, all of this can end tomorrow if you just let us buy a contr
Silicon Valley in healthcare: Break All The Rules! (Score:1)
Schadenfreude (Score:1, Insightful)
The investors around this tried to _construct_ a female Anglo-saxon technology success story... and failed.
There is another story like this: Danielle Fong - "green energy storage" by a woman, so famous people threw a lot of money at it and it waffles around indefinitely. She should legitimately be a researcher working on this at maybe at university or government or corporate lab, not as co-founder of a startup.
Marissa Mayer is this too... installed by delusional religious/political thinking.
And here's what'
rofl (Score:2)
And she was just named as an example of a self-made rich person in another topic here.
Thanks for reminding me, I should have added "criminal" to "inherited".
She will still glide through life (Score:4, Insightful)
But her real contribution will be to sour the milk for any company that wants to actually do what she pretended to be doing. They will go to raise money for a valid, real, not fraudulent product, and their requests will be filed beside cold fusion and madoff investments.
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To me it all boils down to a strange little incident in my old highschool. A guy I knew was running for school president and encouraged everyone to make posters that made fun of him. The school was suddenly filled with posters, except that most were complementary. His win was assured. Then the
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I thought it said "Thermos" (Score:2)
David Boies (Score:2)
I knew they didn't stand a chance as soon as they retained David Boies as their legal counsel (despite the conflict of interest, since he sits on their Board). Why on Earth do people think he's some kinda super-lawyer? I mean look at his track record:
Defended Napster (they were shut down).
Convicted Microsoft (overturned on appeal)*
Worked for Al Gore in the 2000 election (he didn't become president)
Represented Andy Fastow from Enron (he went to jail).
Worked for Oracle in their case against Google for Java (
Elizabeth Holmes is hot (Score:1)