Other Blood Companies Are Still Pissed About Theranos (slate.com) 88
What is was like competing with -- and dealing with the wreckage of -- the most infamous startup in the world. From a report: Theranos' collapse was as public as it gets for a Silicon Valley unicorn, beginning in 2015 with a widely read series of articles by former Wall Street Journal reporter John Carreyrou, who revealed that Theranos' technology was far less effective than advertised. The debacle went on to inspire the bestselling book Bad Blood by Carreyrou, an HBO documentary, and a forthcoming Hulu series starring Amanda Seyfried. This week, Holmes' highly anticipated trial begins in earnest. Jurors were sworn in last Thursday, and opening statements will begin on Wednesday. Prosecutors have charged Holmes with multiple counts of fraud and conspiracy related to the ascent and operations of Theranos, though she maintains her innocence. Once famous for a supposedly innovative approach to blood testing, now infamous for allegedly faking it, the names Theranos and Elizabeth Holmes aren't fading away anytime soon.
All of this has had a ripple effect for other companies that, like Theranos, were trying to make blood drawing and diagnostics easier for consumers. I spoke to five such companies recently about how they have dealt with unwelcome comparisons to Theranos, which has bedeviled the sector ever since Carreyrou's first piece on the subject. One company I reached out to expressed that it was hesitant to even appear in an article about Theranos. Even before Theranos imploded, its outsize presence was felt by other companies in the blood testing industry, for better and worse. "In the beginning, when Theranos was on its up slope, people were asking how we were ever going to compete with a company like Theranos when they've raised a billion dollars," said Daniel Levner, co-founder of Sight Diagnostics, a biotech company that sells a device that can conduct a blood count analysis from a finger prick.
Yet when Carreyrou's pieces began appearing in the Journal, comparisons to Theranos became a curse for its peers. "In pretty much every conversation we had for a year, Theranos would come up," said John Lewis, founder and CEO of Nanostics, a biotech company that sells a device that can use a very small amount of blood to diagnose and predict diseases. "Most people recognized that Theranos was mostly just bad founders, but it certainly was on everybody's mind." Lewis recounts that his company, which had only existed for a year and a half at the time, was in a pitch competition right as the Theranos scandal was coming to light. The very first question they got at the event was how the Nanostics product compared to Theranos'. From there, Nanostics took pains to distinguish itself from Theranos, down to the smallest details. For instance, the company in its promotional materials tried to stay away from Theranos' famous selling point of diagnosing diseases from a single drop of blood. "Our initial plan was to go out saying that we can detect disease signatures with a single drop of blood, but that was literally just when Theranos was going down for stating that they could do that when they couldn't," Lewis recalled. "So in our texts we said, 'two drops of blood.'"
All of this has had a ripple effect for other companies that, like Theranos, were trying to make blood drawing and diagnostics easier for consumers. I spoke to five such companies recently about how they have dealt with unwelcome comparisons to Theranos, which has bedeviled the sector ever since Carreyrou's first piece on the subject. One company I reached out to expressed that it was hesitant to even appear in an article about Theranos. Even before Theranos imploded, its outsize presence was felt by other companies in the blood testing industry, for better and worse. "In the beginning, when Theranos was on its up slope, people were asking how we were ever going to compete with a company like Theranos when they've raised a billion dollars," said Daniel Levner, co-founder of Sight Diagnostics, a biotech company that sells a device that can conduct a blood count analysis from a finger prick.
Yet when Carreyrou's pieces began appearing in the Journal, comparisons to Theranos became a curse for its peers. "In pretty much every conversation we had for a year, Theranos would come up," said John Lewis, founder and CEO of Nanostics, a biotech company that sells a device that can use a very small amount of blood to diagnose and predict diseases. "Most people recognized that Theranos was mostly just bad founders, but it certainly was on everybody's mind." Lewis recounts that his company, which had only existed for a year and a half at the time, was in a pitch competition right as the Theranos scandal was coming to light. The very first question they got at the event was how the Nanostics product compared to Theranos'. From there, Nanostics took pains to distinguish itself from Theranos, down to the smallest details. For instance, the company in its promotional materials tried to stay away from Theranos' famous selling point of diagnosing diseases from a single drop of blood. "Our initial plan was to go out saying that we can detect disease signatures with a single drop of blood, but that was literally just when Theranos was going down for stating that they could do that when they couldn't," Lewis recalled. "So in our texts we said, 'two drops of blood.'"
Fake it until you don't make it (Score:3)
I'm surprised she isn't using a defense based on "We could have developed the technologies we were promising, if only you EVIL venture capitalists would have given us a few billion more dollars. It's not MY fault that you pulled the plug too fast. Short sighted profit seeking is NOT MY FAULT. I'm innocent as the driven snow!"
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Cart before the horse. Working implementation, however small, then the big bucks. Just like Fusion and Thorium reactors.
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The problem with Kickstarter is the lack of accountability. Unless it's changed, the Kickstarter "business model" is to take money off the top with no guarantee of anything. I think the CSB (Charity Share Brokerage) idea would be better because it would focus on recovering the costs, but with clear and considered accountability. The CSB would EARN the money by actually helping with the project management (including accountability and project assessment). Lack of project management is the main reason most pr
Re: Fake it until you don't make it (Score:5, Interesting)
There were no good ideas there - not fantasies. Genetic analysis from a drop of blood is already a thing. What Theranos proposed was equivalent to designing a faster than light spaceship, in crayons, leaving a big empty space where the engine would be, labelling it 'faster than light engine goes here'.
The only way I could even imagine Theranos products working is if they also happened to develop matter replication technology that'd create the quantities of blood needed from a drop. There was literally nothing of value.
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Ironically, one thing that Elizabeth Holmes has bragged about is doing almost exactly that as a young person - but it was a time machine [businessinsider.com] not an FTL ship.
Re: Fake it until you don't make it (Score:2)
That is hilarious. I didn't know that.
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What Theranos proposed was equivalent to designing a faster than light spaceship, in crayons, leaving a big empty space where the engine would be, labelling it 'faster than light engine goes here'.
Wish I had mod points, this has to be the best one-sentence summary of Theranos I've seen.
Re: Fake it until you don't make it (Score:2)
Cheers!
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Too bad she didn't consider:
(4) Don't get caught!
But what's the easiest thing to make? (Score:3)
P.S. I still hate needles, so I would prefer the German approach. Just do my business and let the smart-ass toilet do the testing business. At least I think the Germans are leading in those technologies, but maybe the Japanese or Chinese will "flank" 'em with a better approach. But my point is that needles are pointed and invasive, so noninvasive German toilet tanks would be better.
P.P.S. There's a WW II joke in there somewhere. I think. Maybe? You can't find it either?
P.P.P.S. But I wasn't joking about the
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I thought Gates was pushing the idea of the diagnostic toilet. Of course, auto-wired to the ad companies so they can instantly target you for whatever drug they think will "fix" you. 'Cause I want my toilet to stop working when the internet is down.
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Citation? Last I heard the Germans were still leading (the way down the smart toilet?).
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I may have mixed up two toilet stories in my head. Google's providing me no links between Gates and the "smart" toilets. Maybe I finally drank enough to merge some synapses?
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Gates wants to reinvent the toilet so it works in places where water is at a premium/not sensible to use.
Here's the well-developed waterless toilet which works in the "developing" world [sciencedirect.com], no Bill Gates needed. And if he actually cared about this stuff he'd know about it already, and put his effort someplace useful. Like, say, undoing the damage he did while running Microsoft.
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Well now I feel like I'm supposed to investigate to see what the Germans are up to in the field. Can I substitute the research results from Toto's book? I think the final number was 43 degrees as the optimum angle...
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NAK
Re: Fake it until you don't make it (Score:4, Insightful)
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I'm not denying she's been a very naughty girl.
(And see my other comment about the vampire and Frankenstein girls?)
That Doesn't work (Score:3)
And frustrates me to see small government types thinking they can win against that. Government is like a box of loaded rifles. You are the pick one up and defend yourself or you do what the person who picked the rifles up
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I don't think your position makes sense in the sordid world of VCs. Either than or you are using a different definition of unicorn, which seems to lead back to the very naughty girl again...
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Sadly appropriate analogy.
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Steve was also a slime-bag, he just got away with it.
Re:Hahah! (Score:4, Insightful)
Steve was also a slime-bag, he just got away with it.
Steve was a slime-bag but at least his company produced actually working products. Theranos was 100% fraud from day one.
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The best fraudsters are 90% honest to hide the hellish 10%.
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Re: Hahah! (Score:2)
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Correction, a "slimehole"
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Jobs was a slimebag but the shit he was trying to create was technologically feasible and within a few years' reach at most.
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Abductive Junction (Score:2, Interesting)
The fraud trial of Elizabeth Holmes begins this week, and it promises to be an enjoyable bit of theater for those interested in the workings of the Cloud People. Holmes founded a company called Theranos when she was just 19-years-old. She had dropped out of Stanford and promised to deliver miracle drug testing equipment. She attracted the support of all the beautiful people, who saw her as the living example of everything the Cloud People believed about the world.
In reality, the company had nothing to offer
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One thing's for sure, the chances she'll ever see any hard time are slim and none.
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One thing's for sure, the chances she'll ever see any hard time are slim and none.
Well, of course. She's rich, white and blond.
No, that comment isn't "racist". It's accurate, and there is a difference.
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Racist and accurate aren't necessarily mutually exclusive. In fact, they're more often than not Siamese Twins.
How exactly are statistical facts, considered "racist" any more than the number 173?
Humans create the "racism" around numbers. The math, doesn't give a shit. A gun sitting in a locked safe is not a "murder weapon" until it's put in the hands of a psychopath who was hell-bent on ending someone's life with it. It's nothing more than a benign tool otherwise, no matter how bad delusional politicians want to warp your idea of a tool sitting in a locked safe.
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A benign tool that has absolutely no purpose *other* than for killing people.
...says the ignorant human who refuses to believe that the concept of self-defense actually exists, resulting in millions of innocent human lives being saved by guns.
Not to mention the fact that humans have hunted with weapons in order to eat and survive, for centuries.
I suppose food is no longer considered a life-saving necessity to you, and is now nothing more than a weaponized product that does nothing but cause obesity, right?
Re:Abductive Junction (Score:5, Insightful)
Reductio absurdum.
A handgun is not a hammer. Trying to equate the two via 'tool' illustrates your being a tool for others.
Speaking of tools, you'd be hard pressed to kill someone with a screwdriver at 10 yards, or a jack-plane for that matter.
I'm not against people owning firearms for sports or self defense...
Actually yes you are, because you refuse to recognize a firearm as a tool, which makes you the ignorant tool.
Ask any member of Military Special Forces what they consider a firearm on the battlefield. It's not merely a tool for the job, but it's a life saving tool, and much like the carpenter with the hammer, a tool they would NOT go to work without.
And a hammer in the hands of a violent psychopath hell-bent on harming others, is just as deadly as any gun. That "tool", becomes a murder weapon.
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And a hammer in the hands of a violent psychopath hell-bent on harming others, is just as deadly as any gun.
Yes, guns and hammers are both tools. One is a tool for killing people, and one is a tool for hammering nails. You can use a hammer to kill someone, but then you can use almost anything to kill someone, if you do it with enough enthusiasm. That doesn't mean a hammer is just as deadly as a gun. When a tool is particularly useful for killing people, we call it deadly, or a weapon.
It's not merely a to
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And a hammer in the hands of a violent psychopath hell-bent on harming others, is just as deadly as any gun.
Yes, guns and hammers are both tools. One is a tool for killing people, and one is a tool for hammering nails. You can use a hammer to kill someone, but then you can use almost anything to kill someone, if you do it with enough enthusiasm. That doesn't mean a hammer is just as deadly as a gun. When a tool is particularly useful for killing people, we call it deadly, or a weapon.
When someone is charged with "assault with a deadly weapon", you might notice that the deadly weapon in a lot of those cases sits in the kitchen drawer. Or is legally sold to children at a sporting goods store. Or a auto tool shop. Or the lawn and gardening section at Walmart. When any tool is used to kill someone, we call it a deadly weapon. Doesn't matter if it was nothing more than a baseball bat, golf club, chefs knife or tire iron to you before, and it certainly doesn't matter how "useful" the too
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a hammer in the hands of a violent psychopath hell-bent on harming others, is just as deadly as any gun.
Everything else you said was reasonable, but not this. If this were true, then people would carry concealed hammers for self-defense, and commandos would attack their targets with tactical hammers.
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a hammer in the hands of a violent psychopath hell-bent on harming others, is just as deadly as any gun.
Everything else you said was reasonable, but not this. If this were true, then people would carry concealed hammers for self-defense, and commandos would attack their targets with tactical hammers.
Knives kill three times as many people as shotguns do in the US. And yet, we don't restrict the sale of knives to approved individuals, or perform background checks prior to sale, or force knife owners to store that weapon in an approved safe at home away from minors. Is it reasonable to label a knife a mere kitchen tool given how statistically deadly they are compared to an obvious firearm that is tightly controlled and regulated?
65% of all gun deaths in America are sadly due to suicide, not murdering ps
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How exactly are statistical facts, considered "racist" any more than the number 173?
When presented disingenuously, numbers can lie. [wikipedia.org]
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Racist and accurate aren't necessarily mutually exclusive.
Nope. 10000% wrong. The truth is not racist. Facts are not racist.
Yes they are, according to every liberal that doesn't agree with your truths or facts, no matter how accurate they may be.
And yes, there is a point in making that statement no matter how stupid it might sound to some, because it holds incredible weight in society today. Yes, you CAN be dead right and 100% accurate, and STILL be labeled a "racist" and attacked for it by Mass Ignorance.
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Never examine your own data and assumptions. Assume that, because you don't think you're a racist, you have no biases and are a perfect conduit of facts and data.
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It doesn't help when racists are deliberately blind to their own biases and selection of data.
No it doesn't, but even that was the old version of racism that was easily identified by obvious bias and data filtering. Today, feelings are prioritized over facts, so it no longer matters if you present the most unbiased, neutral, blatantly factual statistic ever; if a weak mind doesn't like what you're saying and it hurts their feelings, they'll call you every name in the book, including "racist".
And the worst part about that, is finding a society that accepts that nonsense.
Never examine your own data and assumptions. Assume that, because you don't think you're a racist, you have no biases and are a perfect conduit of facts and data.
Intelligent people, still fi
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She will do less time than Jordan Belfort.
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the chances she'll ever see any hard time are slim and none.
That is how it should be.
Prisons are for violent people who need to be physically separated from civilized society.
For non-violent offenders like Elizabeth, there are always better alternatives. For instance, she could wear an ankle tracker and spend 60 hours per week cleaning bedpans in nursing homes.
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Mod parent something. But what?
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Insightfully funny?
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the chances she'll ever see any hard time are slim and none.
That is how it should be.
Prisons are for violent people who need to be physically separated from civilized society.
For non-violent offenders like Elizabeth, there are always better alternatives. For instance, she could wear an ankle tracker and spend 60 hours per week cleaning bedpans in nursing homes.
People were reliant on this blood testing for life-saving measures, and people have deduced that the probability that deaths occurred from the 3 million+ tests done by Theranos, is high.
I'm not sure what you call "violent people", but when someone knowingly commits medical fraud that results in the deaths of humans...well there's a special place for those kind of people, and it sure as FUCK isn't the local Hollywood Country Club for kinda-felons.
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She's actually now married to an heir of some sort, living in a nice big house. Which means she may have a lot of resources for a legal defense (until the clueless husband figures out she's a major liability). But there's now certainly a lot of money to go after, a punitive judgement will have teeth and she can't just claim to be bankrupt and poor.
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I'm not sure what you call "violent people"
If Elizabeth Holmes lived in your neighborhood, would you be afraid to let your kids play outside?
Of course not.
Her past is relevant to her culpability and the severity of her punishment. But the type of punishment should only depend on her likely future behavior. The chance of her starting another medical device company is exactly zero.
There is a famous saying in criminology: "We build prisons for people we are afraid of, then we fill them up with people we are mad at."
We need to get away from the belie
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I'm not sure what you call "violent people"
If Elizabeth Holmes lived in your neighborhood, would you be afraid to let your kids play outside?
Of course not.
And that is one hell of an assumption. You have no idea how a formerly "stable" person will ultimately react when they are facing career ruin and the possibility of serious criminal charges. We've seen plenty of completely uncharacteristic violent reactions coming from was-such-a-nice.
Her past is relevant to her culpability and the severity of her punishment. But the type of punishment should only depend on her likely future behavior. The chance of her starting another medical device company is exactly zero.
Another assumption. You're telling me she's going to be deemed a flight risk, passport revoked, all private transport assets seized, and restricted to living in the US where "exactly zero" regulations are specifically limit
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Prisons are for violent people who need to be physically separated from civilized society.
For non-violent offenders like Elizabeth, there are always better alternatives. For instance, she could wear an ankle tracker and spend 60 hours per week cleaning bedpans in nursing homes.
How about a good spanking?
Nonviolent, low breakout risk (Score:2)
It would be a waste of money to dedicate a high-security bed to her. Minimum security camps are the right choice for people like her. If you're vindictive, they're plenty miserable. Imagine plumbing so bad people are told not to drink the water, hostile staff, and terrifyingly inadequate medical systems.
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It would be a waste of money to dedicate a high-security bed to her. Minimum security camps are the right choice for people like her. If you're vindictive, they're plenty miserable. Imagine plumbing so bad people are told not to drink the water, hostile staff, and terrifyingly inadequate medical systems.
And why would you call this, a bad thing for her? She should feel right at home with that shit.
Would be hilarious if she fell ill in prison, and they marched her up to the infirmary and said "don't worry...we're just going to take a small sample of your blood with this new medical tester we got on sale.."
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I would prefer minimal but adequate conditions and community service.
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Re:Abductive Junction (Score:5, Insightful)
A curious article. My thoughts:
1. I think Holmes' gender is largely irrelevant. Yes, she is an unconventionally attractive woman, and that may have helped her get noticed. But the people she hoodwinked never stop thinking about what's going on with their money. She had to deliver a believable business model in order to get funding.
2. Holmes may have fashioned her image after Steve Jobs, but the similarity ends there. Whatever you think of Jobs, the fact is that his company consistently delivered the goods. Perhaps both had the temerity to step into uncharted territory, but only Jobs knew how to steer toward success.
3. Abductive reasoning is just another name for a Bayesian prior. Absent other data, it is the best support for a tentative conclusion. As new data becomes available, you adjust your reasoning (again, in a Bayesian sense.) Hopefully the trial will uncover what happened with this step. My guess is that Holmes and her posse hid or obfuscated the data.
4. Playing the 'female victim' card at trial will not work for Holmes. (See 1.) I confess that's my own abductive reasoning at work. Let's see what happens.
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She had to deliver a believable business model in order to get funding.
But she didn't do that. The whole point of the above narrative, whatever it might have gotten right or wrong (and it did get this right) is that her funding was based on bullshit. It wasn't believable to someone who knew what they were investing in... or more to the point, they weren't, because it wasn't believable.
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Well, being noticed is not nothing in the VC world.
But also, would a man be able to use the same defense in a trial? (Particularly if the abusive partner was a woman and not another man??)
Short answer: yes, of course he can.
Long answer: yes, but whether it works as a defense depends on whether the evidence convinces a judge/jury.
Look, Ramesh Balwani may very well have played Svengali to Holmes' Trilby. She can certainly present that defense. I have doubts it will work, because I have doubts that this is what happened. She certainly seems to be her own woman, able to assert herself in the presence of others, regardless of their gender. But I'm prepared to be convinced otherwise where her busi
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The fraud trial of Elizabeth Holmes begins this week, and it promises to be an enjoyable bit of theater for those interested in the workings of the Cloud People.
I'm not entirely sure who the "Cloud People" are supposed to be. Oligarchs? Cultural elites? Progressives?
In reality, the company had nothing to offer other than the promise to fulfill those prophesies the Cloud People cherished. Holmes adopted the Steve Jobs black turtleneck and spoke in a weird deep voice. Like all grifters, she was short on specifics, but long on inspirational flattery. This got some of the most famous men in the world to support her company, giving it an aura of authenticity.
They didn't support her because of the turtleneck and deep voice, they supported her because she was incredibly well connected. Her dad was a VP at Enron, her childhood friend's dad was Tim Draper.
In many respects, Holmes is the poster child for the new religion. The reimagined gender role for women is just women doing the things men normally do. You see this in movies where the normal male lead is replaced by a strong diverse female who does all the same things as a male lead, even the personality. There is really nothing new about the new gender roles. The new ideal female is nothing more than a fraud against nature, a fraud that is eventually undone by observable reality.
Wait... so you're now arguing (I'm assuming you're the author of the blog post, or at least a big fan) that female entrepreneurs are a "fraud against nature"?
Holmes and her business partner, another unicorn of the Progressive imagination named Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani,
How did a 37 year old dating an 18 year old become
Blood companies (Score:2)
I'm siding with the werewolves on this.
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I've never understood how the werewolves got involved.
How about siding with the Frankenstein Girl? It's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] with 5.7 stars https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1... [imdb.com] at IMDB.
(It's also my best worst joke when the nurse comes for my blood. But I've yet to meet a nurse who will admit to seeing or even knowing about it.)
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I've never understood how the werewolves got involved.
How about siding with the Frankenstein Girl? It's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] with 5.7 stars https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1... [imdb.com] at IMDB.
(It's also my best worst joke when the nurse comes for my blood. But I've yet to meet a nurse who will admit to seeing or even knowing about it.)
I think we need the vampire take on all of this. They are blood experts after all
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Unfortunately, it's the vampire that's on trial.
pets.com (Score:2)
I thought pets.com was the most infamous startup in the world. Is it time for a new champion?
I'm still pissed (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm someone who has a major needle phobia as a result of a childhood trauma, so I was really hopeful about the promise the company made. Fortunately I never actually used any "services" offered by Theranos.
Sadly, even established players in the field aren't exactly immune. Through a quirk of fate I wound up working for a large company that makes blood testing machines and was there during the time when the business unit president decided that products would be shipped on a specific date regardless of if they were ready or not. Engineers were pressured to cut corners and multiple products flopped hard as a result. I remember one time, we were literally still processing the necessary changes when they started the launch party down the hall... not that they bothered to invite any of us. And the reason they decided on that day to release the product? Because a customer threatened to cancel a large order if they didn't ship it by a specific date. That was one of the products that landed with all the grace of a lead balloon and the would-be flagship product was quickly discontinued and never to be spoken of again. I'm sure the luckless product manager was also pushed out. They would also routinely sell pilot products, which hadn't cleared the FDA, to customers in order to meet promised shipping dates made by the sales team.
Theranos was just the culmination of all the different unethical things that routinely go on in other established companies under a single roof.
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Don't think it's the same company based on what I can find about where those roads all line up, but regardless sounds like it was well deserved whether it was the same company or a different one.
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The thing about Theranos is the tech companies and investors loved the company and the story, specifically the female founder angle (her investors were all tech-focused at the time), the media loved the story, but the biotech and medical community ridiculed her. The tech community was so used to disrupting old ways of doing things that they saw the push back from the medical and biotech community akin to holding on to old
Unicorn? (Score:2)