Forbes Just Cut Its Estimate of Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes's Net Worth From $4.5 Billion To Zero (qz.com) 215
It wasn't long agon when Elizabeth Holmes, the founder and CEO of Theranos, was regarded as one of the U.S.'s most successful female entrepreneurs with Forbes estimating her net work to be $4.5 billion. Thanks to all the evidence that Theranos' technology is largely a gimmick and false advertising, the publication has revised that figure to essentially zero, reports Quartz. From the report: Last year, Forbes pegged its value at $9 billion, based on the sale of stakes to investors. Since that lofty estimate, Theranos has been battered by bad news (paywalled; alternate source), starting with reports in the Wall Street Journal in October that its tests were inaccurate. That triggered an inquiry from the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which proposed banning Holmes from the industry. Forbes went back to its slide rule and, after talking to venture capitalists and industry experts, recalculated Theranos' value at $900 million, based on its intellectual property and money it has already raised. "At such a low valuation, Holmes' stake is essentially worth nothing," Matt Herper writes. That's because Theranos' other investors own preferred shares, and since Holmes owns common shares, they would get paid first if the company were forced to liquidate.
Economy built on pipedreams (Score:2)
...such as this is in deep, deep trouble.
Whatever happened to the value of good honest labour?
Re: (Score:3)
Whatever happened to the value of good honest labour?
It got bought out by Angel VC's in Silicon Valley.
Re: (Score:3)
Bernie's trying to make it $15/hr.
Re:Economy built on pipedreams (Score:5, Insightful)
Replaced by 3rd world commodity labor. Soon to be replaced by robots.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Whatever happened to the value of good honest labour?
To be fair, Elizabeth had a reputation for working very long hours. She arrived early, stayed late, and worked through the weekends. Her tech may have failed, but it wasn't because of a lack of hard work.
Re:Economy built on pipedreams (Score:4, Funny)
Like my granddad used to say "Working hard at being stupid is much less valuable than half-assing being smart."
Of course, he also warned me to never trust a kraut or jap, so take it for what it's worth.
Re:Economy built on pipedreams (Score:5, Interesting)
She arrived early, stayed late, and worked through the weekends. Her tech may have failed, but it wasn't because of a lack of hard work.
You know that is actually characteristic behavior of financial fraudsters. They avoid delegating large numbers of essential tasks because they don't want others seeing the books and asking questions. They like to be the first there and last to leave to make sure nobody is nosing around too. Finally they like taking care of certain transactions with third parties over weekends and after hours were things get done 'out of process' and it may be possible to evade some other normal checks and controls.
Its actually considered a good anti-fraud practice to have anyone who handles accounting or inventory to take a least one mandatory five consecutive business day vacation each year! That way someone else has to perform at least some of their job functions for a time and there is a second pair of eyes on things. It also may cause some schemes where things have to be kept in constant motion like 'lapping' to fall apart.
A fraud investigator would consider her 'work ethic' here a reason to be more suspicious not less.
Re: (Score:2)
Its actually considered a good anti-fraud practice to have anyone who handles accounting or inventory to take a least one mandatory five consecutive business day vacation each year!
Accountants who never take a vacation is a classic red flag for auditors, both private and government.
Re: (Score:2)
Plus, nearly every picture you see of her shows her sporting a black turtleneck! She's hardworking and a visionary.
An economy void of pipe dreams is in deep trouble (Score:2)
[An] economy built on pipe dreams such as this is in deep, deep trouble.
Once people stop dreaming our economy will stall to a level not seen in hundreds of years. Most of human history has shown a 1-2% rate of economic advancement until the industrial age. The dreamers are the ones who have given us the advancements our ancestors 200 years ago couldn't even have dreamed of.
Re: (Score:2)
[An] economy built on pipe dreams such as this is in deep, deep trouble.
Once people stop dreaming our economy will stall to a level not seen in hundreds of years. Most of human history has shown a 1-2% rate of economic advancement until the industrial age.
Not hardly. Before the Industrial Revolution the economic growth rate was 0.1-0.2% [warwick.ac.uk], one tenth of what you suggest (actually over the very long term it was just 0.01%). After the IR growth rates shot up to almost 1% initially, eventually reaching 2-3% annually in some decades of the 19th Century (see The Handbook of Economic Growthby Steven Durlauf, Philippe Aghion, 2013, chapter 5).
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
" Unsecured creditors are higher up on the BK ladder than employees."
Could you be any more wrong if you tried?
Re: (Score:2)
Unsecured bank debt falls under 11 USC 507(a)(2), unsecured debt incurred after declaring is under (a)(3), and wages fall under (a)(4) and are limited to $10,000. Secured debt is covered under 507(b) and is explicitly declared to be higher priority. Private (i.e. non-bank) debt is in fact lower priority than wages - I actually hadn't known that.
If you feel I've misinterpreted things, I'm open to discussing it - I've been wrong before and will be in the future, but what I'm
Re: (Score:2)
Whatever happened to the value of good honest labour?
They off-shored that to China, which is why they can afford to build a blue-water navy now.
Theranos still worth $900 million? (Score:3)
I'm surprised that it has that high a value at all, given that their legal and accounting expenses must be tremendous (even if they were somehow to win every lawsuit against them) and their liability insurance provider is doubtless going to fight them over every single claim.
The real question is whether Holmes was as good at deceiving herself as she was at deceiving others. If she was, her net worth may indeed be limited to personal property (which certainly she'll get to keep since it's very difficult to confiscate personal property from the wealthy), but if she was aware of just how much of it was all smoke and mirrors, then I'm sure she found ways to hide as much as she could.
What she really needs to do is declare that she's found religion, write a book, and then become a talk show guest.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I'm more interested in how much this devalues Forbes. $4bn to zero in one year suggests their opinion on such things is also pretty worthless.
Re: (Score:2)
> Defining something as distinctly un-manly because it's a thing that defines how women act tends to draw more attention when someone breaks from the norm. I still don't know how to portray that, because the thing I defined is so alien to any society.
What was the thing that you defined?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
off topic, but can I just tell you how cool is bernie sanders? when he first started, at every press conference they would ask him Are you a socialist? Instead of getting defensive or denial about it, he would answer yes, and then explain what a socialist is and why he identified that way. You know what happened then? People stopped asking him about it. The issue went away. compare this to hillary and all her scandals. the choice is clear, people!
Due Diligence... anyone, anyone, Bueller? (Score:5, Insightful)
What I don't get is did no one bother to see if her so-called game changing blood tests actually WORKED? I get the impression, no
I'm just kind of dumbfounded that no one thought to check with some actual PhDs, MDs, researchers, etc.
Re: (Score:2)
Everyone was just too willing to accept the idea that the existing companies involved in blood testing are crooks (Spoiler alert: they are), that they were all too willing to jump on board with "disruptive" technology that will "change the game" and "beat the system."
Re: (Score:2)
Everyone was just too willing to accept the idea that the existing companies involved in blood testing are crooks (Spoiler alert: they are) [...]
My third-grade teacher recommended her child doctor to my mother, who took me to see him for various childhood aliments. Each visit ended with the doctor shoving his finger up my fat ass and requesting a blood test from the lab. Turned out he had a financial arrangement with the lab. He retired to Florida in a hurry before the police shut down the lab and the DA office made an announcement to the press.
Re: (Score:2)
Nobody cared.
They have preferred stocks in a company worth millions. The more they are hyped, the higher the price went, until it gets to the point just before the news breaks that they are worthless and pointless... and then they sell making money from - quite literally - investor's stupidity.
It's up to the investors to investigate about viability at the early stages (i.e. before they put a product to market or out for FDA approval, etc.) and they didn't bother because it's a game of hot-potato and if the
Re: (Score:2)
Well did YOU make your own due diligence before coming to the conclusion that it doesn't do what Theranos actually claims it does (as opposed to all the made up bullshit)? or did you just jump on the bandwagon and assumed that if there's a story about it in the WSJ then it must mean Theranos are crooks?
do you even KNOW what the real story is about, or did you just assume that Theranos claimed miracles of some kind and got caught in their lies?
post a fucking link that proves that Theranos themselves actually
Re: (Score:3)
Sounds like you invested in them, financially if not emotionally. 10 secs of searching shows they're under federal investigation for fraud, and have themselves invalidated 2 years of tests basically admitting it was all bogus.
http://money.cnn.com/2016/05/1... [cnn.com]
http://www.businessinsider.com... [businessinsider.com]
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/08b1... [ft.com]
http://www.usatoday.com/story/... [usatoday.com]
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/... [zerohedge.com]
Re: (Score:3)
10 secs of searching shows they're under federal investigation for fraud, and have themselves invalidated 2 years of tests basically admitting it was all bogus.
Then you should have taken 11 seconds because here's a quote from one of your articles.
Theranos has also had issues with quality control of tests run on the standard blood-testing devices that Theranos uses for most of its tests.
See, that whole Medicare thing is not about the "bleeding edge" technology, it's about the regular Theranos business, which is to become the Walmart of private labs. But the way it's spinned in the media, it looks like it's all one big scam.
They do millions of tests for less money than other labs. Did they cut corners doing that? Apparently so, although some of the complaints in that report seem flimsy (like having a lab
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not your personal research assistant, bro. The point is, don't point fingers at people for not being diligent if you can't yourself be bothered to look into what the situation really is.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Interesting. It's hard to grasp (to me anyway), that people wouldn't do some pretty basic investigating especially with the kind of money involved.
Most things still fall under that "if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is" category.
Hmm (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
She's probably worth less than zero (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
CEOs (and other C-level types) are routinely insured for such legal fees (paid for by the company of course) so... no real risk to her. But you know, because they have no personal risk like that, and get a big payout if they turn out to be incompetent and get fired, is exactly why they deserve 8 figure salaries, right?
Oh... wait...
Actually, C-type are generally indemnified by the company, not independently insured. There is a difference.
Indemnification is that the company itself promises to pay for legal consul and any resulting judgments against for actions you take in the course of your job (save some fraudulent action on your part). The directors and officers insurance that the company purchases to cover this may or may not fully cover this liability in the case that the company fails**. The theory is that plaintiff lawyers gene
Mass Media coverage with no Peer Review (Score:5, Insightful)
As soon as anyone asks why they would do that, the answer is obvious. You'd think.
Re: (Score:2)
The argument against publishing in the scientific literature is that there are bucketloads of patented / confidential technology that would have to be exposed. However, they could have gone a long way to assuaging all of the complaints by allowing unbiased observers to give them known samples and observing the Theranos machines in an open room without restrictions. That they never did that suggests that they have something to hide.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
What Theranos does (Score:2)
Thanks to all the evidence that Theranos' technology is largely a gimmick and false advertising
Theranos's main product, by the way, is a blood-testing device, which may or may not actually work as well as Theranos says it does.
You could have at least briefly hinted at this in the summary.
Modern stock market is a sccam (Score:2)
Why not hire her for a speaking engagement? (Score:2)
Re:900,000,000 != 0 (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
This is normal practice. Common shares get to vote, preferred do not. The CEO needs/expects to have voting power in her/his own company. The issuance of preferred shares is how venture capital is attracted. Venture capitalists don't really care a fig about the future of the company, its technology, or anything -- they just want to get paid and won't invest unless they are first in line for payment.
Re: (Score:2)
Plus they don't really care about voting, since they hold the purse strings and can pretty much dictate how things are run from a practical perspective.
Re: (Score:2)
Am I missing something here? Her net worth was valued at about $4,000,000,000 and about 1/4 of that is essentially 0?
I wish I had essentially 0 dollars...
Forbes is estimating that in very likely that Theranos can't recover and the business will fail. In case of a a liquidation bankruptcy proceedings the banks that have loaned it money recover their money first from the sale of the assets, second is the shareholders who hold preferred stocks, these are shareholders that bought shares early on from Holmes to fund Theranos. Once these 2 groups that take precedence are paid back there is essentially nothing left to divide among the common shareholder. In fact i
Re: (Score:2)
Modern common stock doesn't even have voting rights, and common stock has always had such diluted rights as to effectively have zero. It's also defined as being canceled if the company files bankruptcy; the only real rights you get with common stock are profit sharing, and that is elective (most companies don't pay dividends; the ones that do will cancel their dividend when finances are bad--a wise move, as they need the money for restructuring). Common stock is only worth what you can sell it for on a p
Re:900,000,000 != 0 (Score:5, Interesting)
The $900M is the value of the COMPANY, not her net worth. They figure the only way to get value out of the company is to liquidate it, and she would get almost none of the proceeds. So HER net worth is $0.
Re:900,000,000 != 0 (Score:5, Informative)
She owns 50% of the company. This is the poster child for diversification of the portfolio.Theranos is private so the stock is only as valuable as the next private market buyer will pay.
Preferred investors get paid first. She only has common stock. So, nothing left for her no matter how much of the company she owns.
Re: (Score:3)
Not all ownership is the same. There are common shares and preferred shares. The preferred shares get paid before anyone else. Her shares are common shares and get paid only after every dollar of preferred shares has been paid. Then she only gets 50% of whatever remains. The $900 million they estimated won't cover the preferred shares so she and the other common shareholders won't get anything.
Re: (Score:3)
Correct. It also includes your debt.
Plenty of people (and companies), homeless or otherwise, have a less-than-zero net worth.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
What she owns are shared, and if her shares are not preferred, when the company declared bankruptcy what will happen is that all its assets will be liquidated and preferred investors paid first. Nothing will be left for her because of that. Therefore, her net worth is zero.
Re:900,000,000 != 0 (Score:4, Informative)
Forbes is relying on the written law to figure that out. But this is the age of Obama. As we saw with the GM bankruptcy proceedings during the auto bailout, the government can order the bankruptcy judge to ignore the law and pay whomever the government wants paid. This allowed the union to get paid before shareholders despite the law saying the shareholders had priority.
There is no liar like a right-wing AC liar. In the GM bankruptcy proceeding debts were paid in strict accordance with the law. The bondholders (not shareholders) that were upset about not getting preferential treatment were unsecured creditors, unlike the banks that did get paid off first, and had no seniority in settling GM's obligations [reuters.com]. They were in the same asset category as the union to whom GM owed a lot of money, and it is up the administrator of the filing to determine how the parties in the same category get treated.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
That's the valuation of the company. If the editors had made it easier to get the the ACTUAL news report, you could see the explanation, which is that because of the way the investors are paid off before she is, her stake is what's now presumed to be worthless.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ma... [forbes.com]
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Rough numbers:
She owns 45% of the company
45% of 9B = 4B
But...someone else invested 1B, and they have rights to the first 1B in a sale.
If the company is only worth 900M, then all of that 900M is allocated to the investor first, and she get $0.
Re: (Score:2)
Learn to read. The $9B is the value of the COMPANY, not the value of her stake in the company. She owns only common stock, which is essentially worthless.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It's an interesting question: how come so many of these "successful females in IT" are just charlatans? For another example the ex-CEO of Reddit, married to an extremely unscrupulous gay man.
Perhaps they view technology as a "social construct"? That's quickly turning into a dog-whistle word for a con-man. Or con-woman, whatever.
Re:Sexism! (Score:5, Informative)
More likely it's the fact that Silicon Valley is a liberal/SJW stronghold, where investors will happily throw money at any company with a female CEO.
As we say in California, what are smoking and where can I get some?
http://valleywag.gawker.com/silicon-valley-named-13th-best-conservative-city-in-ame-1458838034 [gawker.com]
Re:Sexism! (Score:4, Insightful)
More likely it's the fact that Silicon Valley is a liberal/SJW stronghold, where investors will happily throw money at any company with a female CEO.
As we say in California, what are smoking and where can I get some?
http://valleywag.gawker.com/silicon-valley-named-13th-best-conservative-city-in-ame-1458838034 [gawker.com]
GAWKER?!?!?!?!
Yeah, that's a trustworthy source.
Jesus H. Fucking Christ, you scraped right through the bottom of the barrel.
Re: (Score:2)
Jesus H. Fucking Christ, you scraped right through the bottom of the barrel.
This is Slashdot. You must be new around here.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Mod me down if you wish but I gotta say...All slashdotters seem to do these days is hate, she's actually trying to do something to help the world.
For example, here's an image of her developing an estimation mechanism for calculating the girth of penises, a sorely needed tool that she had a hand in developing for the porn industry:
https://www.epo.org/learning-events/european-inventor/finalists/2015/holmes/HolmesGallery1.jpg?lenya.module=svg&height=371&width=556
So the real question is how many slashdo
Re:Sexism! (Score:5, Insightful)
I have no common cause with the Libertarian neanderthals around here that clearly despise and fear women, but in this case, Theranos looks like little more than a scam. But I wouldn't like that to the CEO being a female, since there are no lack of male-run scam outfits who are briefly market darlings before it's revealed that the company's core technology is a load of unmitigated bullshit.
Re:Sexism! (Score:4, Insightful)
I would however suggest that you have a common cause with some group, due to your use of a several highly derogatory terms for people who apparently do not agree with you, but hey.
More to the point, I think a major reason people are giving the responses they are to this long slow train wreck of Theranos is how Ms Holmes was held up to be such a glowing example of the truth and light behind women in business by certain groups. It has become quite apparently that this particular train wreck mostly comes down to her belief that hype and contacts has a billion dollar market value, and others supporting her in this. It is quite clear looking back at the hype machine that a good quantity of that has come from 'And look, she is a woman!', so that is a factor, one that she was quite happy to play.
The takeaway here should really be 'step carefully before you raise someone to sainthood for your cause'. This is of course a common mistake, especially these days (by many many different types of groups of course).
The interesting part comes next - Do the people who truly believe in their cause try and shout down any detraction of her as being sexist, or do they quietly admit there is some egg-on-face here and that she was not the saint she was held up to be. Time will tell.
Re: (Score:2)
What's it like being a fucking idiot? I'm just curious. Because your attempt at an analogy looks more like a fucking retard trying to string words together in some bizarre facsimile of a rejoinder.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, sort off.
From what I have been reading, it looks like they rolled out their processes too quickly and promised too much. A buggy beta release of the latest FPS will cause the wroth of fan boys. But that is o.k. because the fan boys knew they were downloading a buggy beta release. Medical testing is a different ball of wax.
That being said, we know the lab has been able to do some pretty nifty things in terms of amount of work that could be done with a drop of blood. So there has to be something there.
Re: (Score:2)
We do? I have never seen credible evidence to that effect. We've seen plenty of marketing blurbs echoed in various publications but actual, verifiable data, not so much. The FDA complaint, in part, also makes mention of the lack of hard data to their micro sample claims.
This seems like a case of some early promising research not quite panning out and one hell of a lot of money being fronted in the meanwhile.
Re: (Score:2)
Here is one article that should not be behind a pay wall. : http://www.economist.com/news/... [economist.com]
If I have time I will try to dig up more. I don't think we are that far off from each other. I think their tech is better than "early promising research" even if it is not up to production quality.
Re: (Score:2)
Theranos has never provided any evidence to substantiate their claims. They haven't allowed anyone to replicate their results or see how the process supposedly works.
This has been a long time coming and I am glad this fraud is being exposed.
If their process is so grand why have they been using standard testing procedures at their labs rather than their own?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
There's a difference between "value" and "price". The "value" of gold remains nearly constant due to comparatively little change in demand and supply. It's the "price" of gold, when measured in a non-gold currency like the US Dollar, which varies. That variance is due to the "value" of the USD fluctuating due to its demand, but mostly its supply, being far more volatile and not being fixed like gold's is. That's why gold is often referred to as the ultimate store of "value"; its "value" doesn't change much, even if the nominal "price" of it, when measured in non-gold currencies, fluctuates wildly.
Gold is mostly used to make jewelry. And so the demand varies greatly with economic stability. Gold has no magic stability.
Re:Did the value exist at all if it disappeared? (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It's a meaningless coincidence. Silver prices fluctuate wildly, much more than the price of gas. It's mostly driven by speculation, although in the long run precious metals are just about the worst investment one can make.
Re: (Score:2)
Why? Her value disn't disappear. It was just cut to 10%. Effectively, they decimated her.
I just wish I was only worth 450 Million.
Re: Did the value exist at all if it disappeared? (Score:2)
Re:More bullshit (Score:4, Funny)
The original article was essentially bullshit, using people who worked at Theranos for 2 weeks 5 years ago as "internal sources", and debunking claims that Theranos never made. What they did was like posting a story saying that the Linux kernel doesn't "truly" prevent computers from being infected by viruses (a claim nobody ever made) and that the GNU didn't it grant it a GPLv3 license.
I don't know if this total incompetence or if there's a hidden agenda, or maybe it is in fact a case of blatant sexism, but the coverage of Theranos by the Wall Street journal is awful and careless. And the other big media gobbled this up without thinking twice about it.
There was a video interview of Holmes by some grinning moron from the WSJ posted on Slashdot a while ago. Anyone watching that video could see that this whole story is essentially sensationalistic reporting with no basis in reality. But who cares about facts, it's much easier to call that girl a crook and move on to the next scandal.
I actually cancelled my Audible subscription to the WSJ after watching that interview and doing my own research into this story. Who knows what proportion of their stories are full of bullshit like this one. They remind me of that guy from the movie Shattered Glass.
Hi, Liz. Why did you make up this "lucm" name?
Re: (Score:2)
this kind of comment is the modern day equivalent of joining a witch hunt. You use Slashdot buttons instead of a pitch fork, but the spirit and enthusiasm for expedient "justice" is the same. And anyone who gets in your way has to be in cahoots with the witch, right? Zero chance that maybe you're just plain wrong.
Dude, chill. I've seen your history, you're obviously not Liz because you actually comment intelligently on tech stuff.
It was a joke.
Re: (Score:3)
Worst thing is, I don't like her, and part of me can't help but feel vindicated that her own "I'm the Steve Jobs of biotech" persona is backfiring, big time. I was truly disgusted by her attitude during interviews prior to the WSJ article, she reminded me of Marissa Mayer.
I used to work for an investment bank that makes shitloads of money (like billions and billions, year over year) but is never in the news, unlike the competition which hold press conferences and goes on TV shows, often bragging about retur
Re:More bullshit (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah total bullshit.
After all, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services haven't proposed pulling Theranos's license (and hence qualification to do tests that can be reimbursed by Medicare and Medicaid), and haven't proposed banning the Theranos founders from running a lab for two years. Oh, wait, they did. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04... [nytimes.com]
After all, the company didn't just throw out all the results done on their machines in 2014 and 2015. Oh, wait, they have. http://www.wsj.com/articles/th... [wsj.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Did you read the articles? I don't know why I even bother with this because people are not looking for what this is all about, they're just out for blood like with that fucking gorilla that got killed.
The first article you post has nothing to do with Theranos using an unproven technology. It's essentially an internal letter (not an actual decision) citing issues with lab procedures for a specific incident. None of the R&D stuff at Theranos is related to Medicare coverage.
The second one is just a follow-
Re: (Score:3)
Did you read the articles? I don't know why I even bother with this because people are not looking for what this is all about, they're just out for blood like with that fucking gorilla that got killed.
The first article you post has nothing to do with Theranos using an unproven technology. It's essentially an internal letter (not an actual decision) citing issues with lab procedures for a specific incident. None of the R&D stuff at Theranos is related to Medicare coverage.
The second one is just a follow-up from the same bullshit WSJ article that keeps bashing the old prototype (that Edison machine) for things Theranos never claimed it did. It doesn,t bring up new facts at all.
I did read the articles. How you could honestly think that it's not a big deal if a company whose core purpose is doing blood tests has admitted that the tests they've done aren't reliable, and is facing being barred from doing work for the largest customer for blood test services in the country, then I really don't know what to tell you.
Theranos claimed that their Edison machine (the core of their business) accurately performs blood tests with less blood and at lower cost than competing devices. That's t
Re: (Score:2)
Theranos claimed that their Edison machine (the core of their business) accurately performs blood tests with less blood and at lower cost than competing devices. That's turning out not to be true, at least on the accuracy front.
Accuracy: that's the key point. The WSJ make it look like Theranos is using that technology to do all their tests, and that's simply not true. Even on the limited number of tests designed to work with this new method, they stopped using that prototype a while ago.
The big point of the WSJ is that no outside lab has reviewed the secret test procedure. They have compared results (and they come "within spitting distance" as described in the article) but the external labs were not allowed to see how those tests
Re: (Score:2)
And just when would that be? Because the FDA reports that they were using Edison devices in June 2015 [wsj.com], and those limited number of tests were the ones whos results were invalidated for all of 2014 and 2015 [biospace.com].
So please, provide a source for when they "stopped using that prototype." Because I'm thinking they stopped when CMS told them to in 2016, and Theranos went into deperate survival mo
Re:More bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
The original article was essentially bullshit
If true, then Theranos could quickly debunk their BS by publicly demonstrating their technology in front of credible experts. Please explain why they haven't done that.
Re: (Score:2)
Because you can't prove a fucking negative. They NEVER claimed what the article say
Re: (Score:3)
They never claimed that the lab tests they conducted on their own machines (that they've now thrown out and told doctors to disregard) were accurate?
Re: (Score:2)
If only they recorded TEDMED talks and wrote articles concerning them [newyorker.com] prior to the WSJ article.
Or was the New Yorker conspiring with the WSJ 10 months beforehand, with both of them drugging Holmes into publicly stating gems like:
Re: (Score:2)
But that's not what is being disputed! Are you unaware that Theranos is a private lab that does all kinds of tests, and this whole finger prick thing is taken out of context and spinned as if that's actual core business?
Look at their website:
https://www.theranos.com/test-... [theranos.com]
They are researching ways to get more tests per blood sample, and they invented procedures and equipment for that. The "detect cancer from a drop of blood" is not what they do on a daily basis, it's part of their R&D program. But the
Re: (Score:3)
Oh, but it is what is being disputed. Nobody valued Theranos at $9 billion dollars because they were copying Labcorp's business model [wikipedia.org]. Walgreens did not enter into a partnership with Theranos because Theranos would provide a phebotomist on site to draw multiple 5mL samples and ship them to
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
They never claimed that it's ready. They've said over and over that the prototype was flawed and no longer considered, that they were working on new avenues.
These people are truly working to improve lab testing (which is their actual business), it's not a startup that does nothing but try to invent a new thing. They do millions of regular tests, for less money than the competition, and they should be praised for that, not bashed because some of their R&D programs are not yet viable.
Re: (Score:2)
Never made? [tedmed.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Can you explain how you link is relevant? Exact quote and how it constitutes a rebuttal of my point?
Re: (Score:2)
I'm sorry, but you need actually specify your point first - what part of "debunking claims that Theranos never made" concerns a claim that Theranos never made, exact quote and how the WSJ article was incorrect?
That TEDMED talk is chock full of claims. Appears pretty relevant to the rest of us.
Re: (Score:2)
The original article was essentially bullshit ...
Based on the WSJ's coverage, Theranos retracted previous tests results and the FDA threatened to shut them down. I don't claim to know the details of the Theranos technology, but those two facts are enough to be very suspicious of the company.
Re: (Score:3)
They're actually relevant to the story here!
Please, no Forbes links. I tried to read a Forbes article, and they insisted that I whitelist their site. So I did, and the very first page was filled with blinking and flashing ads. Bad behavior should not be rewarded, so no links to Forbes.
Re: (Score:2)
Through nose, wine is. Yeeeee...eessss.