Quote:
Originally Posted by Nyah
I kind of went down the rabbit hole on Theranos and Elizabeth Holmes. She was the Silicon Valley entrepreneur who managed to create a multi-billion dollar health technology company. It centered around alleged technology that would give people the ability to run basically all blood tests at home with only a tiny amount of blood. But the technology never actually existed, and she's (along with her business partner Ramesh Balwani) now been indicted by a grand jury for wire-fraud. From Wikipedia:
HBO did a documentary about this (it premiered yesterday), and I'll be watching it as soon as I've caught up on a couple other ones. It's so fascinating how she was able to pull this off and manipulate people all the way up to the President (Obama). The lists of Theranos' top end investors is staggering.
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Holy hell.
So I finally got through all of this and it never ceases to amaze me how people, even seemingly intelligent, competent and powerful people can buy into crap like this.
I like to try and pinpoint one or two really well done segments or interviews that hammer the point home and for me it was these:
The female Professor who specialized in Medical Businesses who tells her:
"Thats not how medical testing works and thats not how antibiotics work."
Shes not trying to be a dreamer's buzzkill or anything, shes just brigning to bear decades of incredible experience combined with a basic understanding of fundamental principles.
Your tiny little crapbox cant do that because it cant hold enough...well, anything, because they dont work how you think they work.
But she wont listen so the Prof refers her to a colleague who then quits his tenured position to work for her. Unreal.
And the tech. I cant remember his name, but he was basically saying:
"The box isnt big enough to be able to perform all the tests you want it to and you dont have enough blood to do all the tests, so...can we make the box bigger and have more blood?"
At which point its just become a conventional lab-setting blood testing machine and further, she ignores him entirely to get into a discussion about what they're going to name the cloud server that holds the as-yet non-existent medical data from their as-yet impossible tests from their as-yet completely useless hunk of junk.
And then the legal bullying. That really made my blood boil.
The super-lawyer was basically putting his name and reputation on the line (in exchange for Theranos stock no less) to make sure that the people who left when they realized that this was all one huge hoax wouldnt say anything until they ended up picking on the wrong kid.
I have no tolerance for that crap. If a lawyer is using his position to bully people for his own gain they should Dis-Bar that clown immediately.
What I really dont understand is how anyone in their right mind found that woman charming enough to invest millions of dollars with. Shes a dime a dozen con-artist who drank her own koolaid.
That being said, America is locking away people for decades for minor stuff but this woman and her BS adversely affect the lives and health of thousands and she gets sued.
They need tougher laws on nonsense like this.