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Theranos To Shut Down Its Blood-Testing Facilities, Shrink Workforce By 40% (wsj.com)
tripleevenfall quotes a report from The Wall Street Journal: Theranos Inc. said it will shut down its blood-testing facilities and shrink its workforce by more than 40% (Warning: may be paywalled; alternate source). The company said it had 790 full-time employees as of August 1. The moves mark a dramatic retreat by the Palo Alto, Calif., company and founder Elizabeth Holmes from their core strategy of offering a long menu of low-price blood tests directly to consumers. Those ambitions already were endangered by crippling regulatory sanctions that followed revelations by The Wall Street Journal of shortcomings in Theranos's technology and operations. Theranos later voided all results from its proprietary device for 2014 and 2015, though the company said it wasn't aware of any patient harm resulting form its tests. Ms. Holmes said in a statement: "We will return our undivided attention to our miniLab platform. Our ultimate goal is to commercialize miniaturized, automated laboratories capable of small-volume sample testing, with an emphasis on vulnerable patient populations, including oncology, pediatrics, and intensive care."
with an emphasis on vulnerable patient populations
With an emphasis on easy to scam patient populations?
Ms. Holmes said in a statement: "We will return our undivided attention to our miniLab platform. Our ultimate goal is to commercialize miniaturized, automated laboratories capable of small-volume sample testing, with an emphasis on vulnerable patient populations, including oncology, pediatrics, and intensive care."
What the fuck is Holmes still CEO? http://www.zerohedge.com/news/... http://www.vanityfair.com/news...
What the fuck is wrong with investors? Well like you and me we have no say what we "invest" in. Instead banks and insurance fund managers decide for us. It's not their money. They don't care. You probably have some of your savings indirectly invested in Teranos and don't even know it, and even if you do too much work to withdraw it and transfer it to an equally incompetent fund across the street. So this shit keeps happening.
Theranos later voided all results from its proprietary device for 2014 and 2015, though the company said it wasn't aware of any patient harm resulting form its tests.
They're just about inviting lawsuits with that gem. I hadn't thought about the patient harm aspect until I read that quote, only the fraud aspect. Once people realize that their misdiagnosis stemming from a false test result is what landed them in the hospital or prevented treatment of a disease, Theranos won't even need a clean up crew.
Ms. Holmes said in a statement: "We will return our undivided attention to our miniLab platform.
Who is "we?" I thought the government banned her from the industry after the fraud was revealed.
I drove by their office a few weeks ago. All the employees were out on the deck at lunch. They were staring around, mindlessly. Not much hope for that company.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
had less than 800 employees? This is why the .com bubble isn't bursting this time. The valuations are all paper. Nothing's really being lost and the "losses" become massive tax breaks for the "investors". This'll get somebody (probably several somebodies) out of paying taxes for the next 20 years.
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I loved being able to go to Walgreens, walk into the Theranos booth, and get a $10 B12 test without a prescription. Let me do all kinds of analysis that the standard physicians approach didn't.
But, with weekly B12 readings over the space of two months, there was 1 of the 8 readings that was obviously wrong. As an engineer, I'm used to noisy data so was still able to find the data useful.
Last month, went to Theranos (to one of their blood testing centers, as Walgreens had shut them down by then) and had another done. Another obviously, completely incorrect reading, confirmed by a doctor-ordered test at another lab.
So, even though I love the control they gave me (I could order any of a hundred tests on my own without having to convince my doctor to order it, or my insurance company to pay for it), I think it's best that they go away. Too much of modern medicine is conditioned on the results of a single, unverified test - the assumption is that the lab doesn't have an error rate. At least in my apocryphal case, Theranos grossly failed.
I'll go back to the fantasy land where the other, more traditional labs (that want to charge me $150 for the same B12 test) always have correct readings...
And the worms ate into his brain.
All the checks I have ever received from class action lawsuits, by not opting "out", resulted in checks for less than a dollar. (or a coupon or something of similar trivial worth...)
And, I rarely "opt in" to an invitation, since I rarely feel like I was wronged (like "did you buy such-and-such a stock in 2003?"). The most lucrative "opt-in" was for a car company who overcharged on lease return "damage", and I thought "yeah, they did charge a lot for that door ding". I got $400-ish.
The last check out-of-the-blue, was from AT&T Mobile, for something like "they charged too much tax"; I got a check the other day for $0.02. (Of course, I have long since switched to another carrier, for half the price, and everyone in my family has made use of the free international roaming feature),
2 Cents? Really? Thank you, lawyers. I am sure you made more than 2 cents. To be fair, I got twice as much as my father-in-law. He got $0.01. The paper industry, the USPS, and many others got more than 2 cents to create and deliver my check. (Don't worry, I recycle paper... even thought that might cost more than it's worth...)
BTW: I am NOT going to cash the check, it goes in the collection of other checks that are too retarded for words.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
But you have to admit, Elizabeth can do no wrong.
Disrupt us, disruptor!
what happens when...
Our ultimate goal is to commercialize miniaturized, automated laboratories capable of small-volume sample testing, with an emphasis on vulnerable patient populations, including oncology, pediatrics, and intensive care.
As opposed to, say, actually doing the science and testing to prove your gadget actually works.
Nah, you'd rather just make money. Snake oil still sells...
AC
Baby face Ponzi schemer Holmes goes from the Fuck Of The Century to just a drop out Fuck Up.
Fighting the incumbent healthcare system which is one of the few remaining industries that cannot be outsourced to China nor imported for $1.99 including shipping.
The players will of course fight tooth and nail to keep their oversized profits.
Historical events, I realize, is based on the fight for labor free income with as few uncertainties as possible. Taxation is the key in this. All wars are based on a few guys becoming tax collectors for the rest of us.
power = taxation
Honestly, there's no reason jail-time should be off the table. This was a conscious act of fraud and deception (and later, cover-up) regarding vital tests on sick people. There's absolutely no question that it led to misdiagnoses and harm. Given the numbers of patients involved, it likely led to more than one death.
She was a con artist, by every definition of the word.
How is it even possible that jail time hasn't been openly discussed yet?
Posting just to bring back some perspective. I run the IT in quite a few labs and my wife is a lab inspector for an unnamed accrediting agency. Theranos surely is very bad (more than you know), but if you think your lab test results from your doctor are reliable, you are most likely incorrect. We joke about how labs should get a grade and hang it in the window, like restaurants do in some states. An A for only getting a 90 out of 100, a B for getting 80 out of 100, and an F for royally Fucked up lab. And yes, that restaurant that had cockroaches still got an A as it was only one violation. If you want to know any specific lab result, like your white cell count, you are often better off flipping a coin or going to a veterinarian.
Theranos To Shut Down Its Blood-Testing Facilities, Shrink Workforce By 40%
So the blood test thing didn't work out, but they've got that revolutionary employee shrinking technology to fall back on!
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
I did cash in my Nutella isn't healthy for you class action settlement check because I was out of Nutella.
I'm sure they worked more than you to make it. Opt out and file a claim for yourself if you're so insulted - then you can keep it all for yourself.
At least you got a check. I've been rewarded in three class-action suits I knew little about. Two amounted to nothing other than all fees being gobbled up by the legal outfit, and the other was a voucher to buy something from the company with the 40 cents or whatever pittance it was. I also had a $100 pre-paid card from amex for unknown reasons (overcharging on car insurance I think), but when I went to use it in Target we discovered it had expired.
I'm happy for Theranos, I think they made the right decision.
What they were trying to do with juggling a mainstream lab business and a biotech startup doesn't work. It's as if Uber had tried to run cab fleets to fund their car service startup; one way or another, priorities shift, ideas and problems of each side of the business leak in the other, and it becomes tempting to "leverage" the mainstream to beta test the disruptive stuff. Boh divisions become a liability for the other.
Theranos sucked at their lab business. They had people cut corners in QA, and that just can't happen in this field. This probably wouldn t have happened if senior management hadn't had the oher side of the business (the cool stuff) eating much of their attention. They also sucked at PR, and once the WSJ article (which was ill-informed and biased) got out, they were done. And while I'm not a business expert, I think they suck at marketing; they went out too soon, too loud, and made too many claims.
Now things are different. Now they can focus on their biotech, they can build things in their secret labs and release them when they're ready (or good enough) like a normal startup. I think they're onto something, and without all the noise and the media bullshit and the witch hunts and the misinformed twitter mobs they can focus on making cool stuff. I sincerely wish them good luck, and for one I'm walking away from this story with a few lessons learned, about startups and also about the herd behavior of media organizations. I also cancelled my complimentary WSJ subscription from Audible.
lucm, indeed.
so does this mean he's not going to be in the gardians of the galaxy sequel?
Quoting a not so popular TV show:
It wasn't giving you control, you were just feeding your own hypochondria.
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Despite being banned from medical testing, Holmes is still listed on Harvard Medical School Board of Fellows (https://hms.harvard.edu/about-hms/board-fellows)
Oops, we have to pivot our scam.
The point of a class action suit isn't to make everyone whole, it's to punish the company. The actual plaintiffs in a class action - the individuals who file the suit, travel for court appearances, have to rigorously prove damages, etc. - receive a large portion of the settlement. As a class member, you get "something" (even 0.01) out of what's left, at no cost or effort on your behalf, and often with no more proof than filling out a web form. The company ends up paying out millions of dollars, which is hopefully an incentive for them not to repeat their behavior.
If you'd rather get more, you're free to opt out of the class, hire your own lawyer, file your own lawsuit, travel at your expense to the defendant's jurisdiction to provide deposition and testimony... We can't all do that.
I'm sure they worked more than you to make it.
This may surprise you, "DRJlaw", but the primary goal of the U.S. jurisprudence system is not (should not be) to reward lawyers who "worked for it".