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Comment by erentz | Hacker News Reader

> think the most disappointing thing about this whole saga is that (in theory) the Theranos technology was supposed to be a major healthcare game changer. It could have revolutionized testing, and would surely have saved countless lives.

This reads like such a weird statement. It never existed. It could’ve never have revolutionized testing because it was entirely imagined and not based on reality.

It’s like watching Star Trek thinking tricorders are real then being disappointed when told they’re a fiction.

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So, I’m one of Theranos’ biggest critic, since I’ve had a weird fascination with the company since someone on HN pointed out the bizarreness of its BoD back in 2013.

I think if Theranos hadn’t gone all-in on its fraud it still could have had an impact. One area was that it was actually pushing to change laws (I know it did this in Arizona) to give individual control over blood testing instead of requiring people to go through doctors and corporations. Another area was price transparency. Much like the Surgery Center of Oklahoma (https://surgerycenterok.com), it was listing all the prices for its tests right there on its website. These 2 things alone would be a major advancement in the US. Forget the mini blood tubes.

The law change for direct access to lab ordering and results is really independent of Theranos. HHS changes rules in 2014 to allow patient access [0] that goes back almost 20 years.

The price listing was pretty cool though.

[0] http://www.labtestingmatters.org/direct-access-to-test-resul...

It’s also not clear that it’s a good thing; false positives lead to serious negative consequences which is why tests aren’t ordered in the first place. It’s why you don’t get a colonoscopy at 25: chance_of_false_positive * harm_of_false_positive > chance_of_detection * treatment_success until much later in life. You as an individual are not qualified to make that aggregate decision.

I thought the individual having control (and choosing to use Theranos) was a bad thing, no?

When you're buying one blood test you won't be able to tell what it missed. If you're a medical practitioner, ordering hundreds of blood tests per month (or something) you can afford to duplicate the test when you change testing provider and realise that they aren't doing a very good job!

Except that most practitioners are bound to use a single lab and then run as many tests as they have to do cover regulations and insurance. Then to boot you have no idea what they'll cost until you get the bill later.

> This reads like such a weird statement. It never existed. It could’ve never have revolutionized testing because it was entirely imagined and not based on reality.

A whole lot of things we have today were inspired by Star Trek and didn't exist... until they were made to exist. The fault in Theranos was that they sought to make things exist by innovation on a time table, and when the time table didn't work, covered it with fraud to make the deadline.

Honestly, fuck Elizabeth Holmes and her weird ass advisors. There was so much potential here that was squandered for the sake of her ego and paranoia.

If some company was founded on tricorder technology and convinced a lot of people it was real, then it turned out it was a scam and tricorders aren’t real, isn’t it reasonable to be disappointed?

I think it's the wording that's being commented on. Maybe it's just semantics. I think the word 'disappointed' implies that there was an honest effort that didn't end up panning out (say, if the company ran out of money, or misunderstood product/market fit and fizzled, or got out-competed). I am not sure what a more appropriate phrasing would be for a fantastical idea that never existed in any form and never could have.

The statement should be: if the investor-money went to an honest and capable blood-testing company instead, it could have revolutionized healthcare.

oh stop it. disappointment is when reality does not meet expectations. that is exactly the case. stop criticizing perfectly valid, cogent thoughts.

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