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back to article Big Pharma's trying to kill us, says man with literally millions to lose

Despite having lost its biggest customer, being forced to invalidate thousands of test results, being placed under investigation by the US government for fraud, facing sanctions, having had a testing facility shut down, and having had its CEO's worth cut from $4.5bn to $0, "nothing's gone wrong with Theranos." At least that's …

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  1. SirWired 1

    His conspiracy theory makes no sense

    "He also cited mysterious forces in "the world of medical insurance" and "the people in government who are going to be very much affected by a really cheap, really effective, wonderful solution."

    Errr... why on earth would insurance want Theranos shut down? If anything else, this would give them leverage to extract cheaper prices out of the incumbent providers, even if they had no interest in buying Theranos tests themselves. And if, in fact, Theranos COULD deliver cheaper tests, well, insurance companies are all about saving money on medical costs (leaves more room for profit.)

    And "people in government"? What dog does the FDA have in that fight? If he has some evidence of links between the FDA and incumbent testing companies, he'd do well to present actual evidence instead of vague conspiracy theories.

    11 0 Reply
    1. Throatwarbler Mangrove Silver badge
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      Holmes

      Re: His conspiracy theory makes no sense

      Making it different from all the others how?

      14 0 Reply
      1. MrDamage Silver badge
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        Re: His conspiracy theory makes no sense

        He's rich. So he has a goldfoil hat, not just a tinfoil one.

        16 0 Reply
    2. joed
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      Re: His conspiracy theory makes no sense

      Not to defend Theranos but insurers don't benefit just because they "extract cheaper prices out of the incumbent providers". They take the cut and the higher the prices the better (especially once the legislation is in place to force everyone into this for profit system).

      1 2 Reply
      1. Anonymous Coward
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        Anonymous Coward

        Re: His conspiracy theory makes no sense

        If they can get hold of something that greatly decreases their costs, and they can still sell it at you at a good price, they can increase their gains enormously.

        I believe that if Theranos technology worked, some "big pharma" would have already bough that company for many $$$$ making the investors very rich. If they didn't, IMHO it's because they knew it wasn't working.

        It's not like Uber competitors - what taxi company could buy Uber?

        2 0 Reply
    3. Anonymous Coward
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      Anonymous Coward

      Re: His conspiracy theory makes no sense

      Presumably if Theranos provided 200 easy medical tests, the majority of which are not done regularly, then it could provide 200 new insurance liabilities per patient. I could see that not being popular with insurance companies.

      But otherwise, it seems to be a crock.

      0 0 Reply
    4. Eddy Ito
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      Re: His conspiracy theory makes no sense

      To be fair there it's a known fact that the FDA often intervenes on behalf of large players to shut out much cheaper alternatives. With opioids, they ban the less harmful generic and refuse to ban drugs that are known to be dangerous.

      Let's not forget their folly into hammering the craft cheese makers or the sin of raw milk.

      0 0 Reply
  2. Me19713

    So he drank the Koolaid too. Good, I hope it was a batch made by Jim Jones...

    0 0 Reply
    1. Mark 85
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      Nothing to do with the Kool-Aid methinks. Everything to do with losing his investment. Money, to a VC, is stronger than wine, women, and/or Kool-Aid. The guy is a wanker. He should have just shut-up and written his investment off on his taxes.

      7 0 Reply
      1. mark 177
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        Holmes

        Tough to write it off when he is probably still in the black - just not 30000% in the black as before.

        8 0 Reply
  3. Jeffrey Nonken

    Seems legit!

    0 0 Reply
  4. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    FAIL

    good looking blond x psycopathic levels of self confidence x gullible investors --> trouble.

    If that sounds superficial would this have gone anywhere if proposed by some 5'4" 200lb male undergrad instead? I rather doubt it.

    Instead she drops out and starts a company.

    Turns out engineering stuff is harder than writing code, or learning to write code for that matter. Hence a decade later still no product, just a service.

    The idea is clever (multiple tests using nanolitre sized blood samples) but implementing stuff like this is hard. Blood is just nasty stuff to handle, starting with it being a mix of multiple liquids and solids.

    The loop hole in the law has stopped close examination of their hardware but personally if I were an investor or a medical care provider I would not touch them with a barge pole.

    2 0 Reply

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