Theranos Announces Expansion of Board of Directors, New Organizational Structure | Hacker News Reader

Theranos Announces Expansion of Board of Directors, New Organizational Structure

theranos.com

52 pointsminimaxir57 comments

The tone of the press release is very strange. There's no acknowledgement of how much trouble the company is in, no acknowledgment of the loss of confidence on the part of their key distribution partner (Walgreens), no acknowledgement of the fact that they need to be more open and transparent, no acknowledgment that the CEO is under investigation and might be banned from the industry, and no hint of contrition for the missteps that took them to this point. Sunny Balwani has "retired" with a glowing testimonial from the board.

Admitting you have a problem is the first step in fixing the problem. Theranos have yet to admit that they have a problem. I find it astonishing that, despite their regulatory challenges, they haven't found someone with a background at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to join their Board.

If Theranos were a public company, I suspect Holmes would have been ousted by now. At the very least, she should step back and appoint an interim CEO (who has experience in this sector) until the ban question is resolved. Refusing to do so lends credence to the accusation that she is incompetent.

Having worked in many large corporations (and seeking to get out), admitting mistakes and problems can not only harm your PR, it can also open you to liability.

Also, given that the CEO of the company seems to emulate Jobs and Jobs never apologized, it's reasonable not to expect one.

What makes you think the CEO tries to emulate Steve Jobs? It's not like she puts on a black turtle...

oh.

> ..Jobs never apologised..

https://web.archive.org/web/20070908223628/http://www.apple....

Fair enough, I was thinking about Apple Maps.

This is one of the biggest "the emperor has no clothes" stories of Silicon Valley and healthcare startups . When are they going to stop trying to pivot or make people think things have changed and just close the company ?

Never - Holmes has complete control of the company[0].

0: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/25/business/theranoss-fate-re...

They're already acting like HP!

apt, considering their HQs are on adjacent blocks.

Based on the current structure of the company, when the money runs out or the CEO is arrested. Maybe it'll take both.

Theranos is now under a criminal investigation by federal officers from the Department of Justice. This is not going to end well for Holmes.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/19/business/theranos-sec-just...

This is USA. She's worth multiple billions of dollars. Money talks. She'll buy her way out.

Sorry for sounding so cynical. But it's just facts.

That's not cynical at all. Rich people don't go to jail in the US unless they really, REALLY screw up, and even then it's not a guarantee if they have the right friends. Citation: the banking crash in 2008.

Unless you are rich and commit a crime so horrendous you are Jared Fogle it's pretty much guaranteed that the wheels of commerce shall just keep spinning.

Jared committed a poor person crime. Committing a rich person crime is totally different. Just as Don Blakenship if Massey Energy. $250,000 fine and 12 months in prison for violating workplace safety laws that resulted in the deaths of 29 miners.

Just out of curiosity, who specifically should've gone to jail in 2008, and for what?

who: Anyone who profited from defrauding the us tax payers. There is a very long list. given the proper time and budget from, say, the department of justice; we'd probably have it. however the doj did nothing twice, and so I doubt they'll be the ones to whom we should entrust such long list making.

why: billions of dollars stolen from the world economy to make people who were already wealthy; more wealthy. All at the expense of hundreds of millions who have a lower quality of life because of it. on this you'll just have to trust me or research on your own.

There are several movies and documentaries which address it in depth on Netflix/HBO/Amazon.

if they broke the law during that time then yes, otherwise no.

the last part about "you just have to trust me" is pretty funny - there are several movies and documentaries on Netflix/HBO/Amazon (and youtube!) about how jet fuel can't melt steel beams. or you just have to trust me.

I would argue the bankers who packaged sub-prime mortgages as securities, knowingly stocking bullshit investments in large enough groups where they looked ok, and fudging the numbers to do it in most cases. In my mind there's no difference between that and for example, selling a lemon car and should have a similar outcome.

Err, Enron? Both Lay and Skilling were sentenced to years in prison.

Counter-example:

Jon "I simply do not know where the money is" Corzine.

Why this man walks free is beyond me.

[1] http://www.wsj.com/articles/corzine-cftc-duel-over-mf-global...

Well, the investors funded Theranos likely have (collectively) at least an order of magnitude more wealth than Holmes, so if they decide it's time for the axe to drop, I don't exactly see how she'll be able to 'buy her way out'. Which isn't to say it's likely she'll face criminal charges or anything like that, your cynicism is correct in that regard, but her reputation and finances are very much on the line and her billions (which aren't exactly liquid) won't be able to do much for her on that front.

She and her investors are family friends. Given that context I find strong and harsh maneuvers unlikely.

Her initial investor, yes, but I don't think they're responsible for Theranos's entire ten billion valuation.

It's actually worse than that. She'll probably be appointed CEO of Yahoo! or run for elected office on the basis of her business acumen. (Looking at Carly Fiorina.)

It's depressing how much wealth and notoriety alone are valid qualifications in America now, regardless of how they've been obtained. It feels like the one true key to success is abject shamelessness after so many years of misplaced incentives.

Are you drawing a parallel between Elizabeth Holmes and Marissa Mayer? I don't see any, other than that they are both women business leaders.

Probably referring to Meg Whitman[1] not Marissa Mayer.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meg_Whitman

No, I was referring to Marissa Mayer's imminent successor. ;)

how much money does she ACTUALLY have though?

my understanding is that the company was valued at 9 billion, they never actually had that money. And most of what was invested went to the company, not her, right?

worth billions of dollars..on paper. I think that's critical. My guess is that we will find out many years later, after the company has gone bust, that she was pulling millions of dollars out and stashing it away.

That should be in quotes: "worth" billions of imaginary dollars. Until this company goes public or is bought or she's bought out she isn't worth nearly that much.

This whole thing looks like a way to scam money off of defense contracts. I doubt if there is any tech in there worth something for a company to buy. At that point any leverage she had with money evaporates.

Just suits, no highly-qualified scientists. I'm sensing this is a precursor to some litigation or investigation.

They did hire a highly-qualified scientist: Ian Gibbons.

> Rochelle Gibbons, whose biochemist husband, Ian, was hired by Holmes in 2005, confessed to the reporter that her husband “told me nothing was working.” Ian Gibbons committed suicide in May 2013.

Source: http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/10/theranos-founder-eliz...

That is so dark I can only hope for Mrs. Holmes sake that the suicide was unrelated.

I couldn't live with myself if somebody else committed suicide because of my lies.

The saying about rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic comes to mind.

Yeah, it seems their only hope might be to construct another ship out of those deck chairs. If you read that announcement the mandate of the company gets even more general and vague.

I'm a bit curious since I haven't had the time to read up on this whole case. From what I understand, they have used fraudulent tests and pushing guesswork as scientific results? Yes?

But I'm also a bit curious as to the idea itself - could a healthcare-company actually provide this service at the said price with the right staff and technology, or is it simply an overly optimistic setup?

In theory lab on chip testing may reduce costs greatly, yes.

The harder(or maybe impossible) part is collecting clean samples from the fingertip. But maybe theranos will pivot to collect blood via veins, at least for now ?

That of course will reduce their valuation greatly(because people hate vein-puncture, so no frequent blood testing scenarios), but the cheap price could be very valuable to third world countries.

But again, that's just theory.

Umm.. How much do you think a blood test costs in India?

http://m.upto75.com/Thyrocare/m/6693/Sale_Offer.html is a set of 32 tests that costs roughly 14$ . and this is the most expensive company there is.

The only tech that could make this better is fingertip testing.

You can get something similar for around $50 in the US also by directly going to the labs.

Romania: set of basic tests for equivalent of $20. In Britain it's free if your doctor orders it else it seems to be much pricier.

Incidentally I noticed that https://www.medichecks.com/ offer " Finger-prick - comprehensive entry-level health screen" analysis for $142. Someone should investigate!

You couldn't probably get complex antibody based tests for such prices.

And i've read research about labs-on-chip(theranos like tech) with a price of much less than a cent, per test and it should apply to antibodies.

It isn't the cleanliness of samples from the fingertip that is the issue, it's the consistency of the samples. The volume of blood that you get from a finger prick is just too small to get consistent results for the majority of tests.

Not with traditional markers, for example many wbc assays require 100+ cells, which is unlikely in a small drop of blood.

There are around 5 billion red blood cells per ml of blood, and 4 to 11 million white blood cells per ml.

Typically blood smears contain a much smaller number (100s).

We're talking multiple drops of blood from the finger. An average drop is around 50 microliters. There's absolutely no way you end up with just hundreds of cells.

Except that's that's what I see when I make a buffy coated slide. There are even protocols when you get too few cells, see https://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.austincc.edu/mlt/hem...

See Theranos and the Blood-Testing Delusion[0] for why it isn't feasible.

0: http://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-04-27/theranos-a...

That's a pretty bad article, mixing the question of accurately measuring blood components, with the question of interpretation.

Did they also announce actual viable technology?

Oh Snap! I knew I forgot something in the action plan!

Re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic...

At first I was very pro-Theranos but their behavior, particularly the CEO, has given me great concern. I'm sad to say aside from the media coverage, I'm starting to think this was all a fishing expedition wrapped in a fraudulent pitch of actual science and technology. I'm also seriously irked that the tech media didn't probe as critically as they should have in the beginning.

I find it discouraging that everyone is looking at Theranos. It smells dead and it is dead. Can't we just leave it alone and untouched, please?

Sorry, you can't found a $9 billion company on wishes and promises and then simply get left alone.

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