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Comment by causality0 | Hacker News Reader

What's the takeaway from this other than "killing people by giving phony medical test results is just fine, but don't you dare anger the wealthy"?

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That proving some things in court is easier than other things and by reducing down nuanced legal systems to "rich bad" doesn't help the situation any.

Despite this being true, it is important that people are prosecuted for the "all" the wrongs they did and not just the "easy" ones. It isn't much of a justice system if you can get away with "hard to prosecute" crimes.

As a counterpoint, IMO it's important that people are only prosecuted when there is sufficient evidence for a likely and safe conviction (otherwise at best we will drag everyone through expensive court battles which don't lead anywhere, and at worst we will end up with unsafe convictions).

Especially when things are hard to prosecute exactly because rich people don't care about them.

This is how false conviction happens, so no. This is not the precedent we want to set.

IIRC the notorious gangster Al Capone was done on tax evasion, not on his main murder-heavy business.

I think Capone did not have any witnesses for his murder-heavy business. Here there were plenty.

It seems a legal issue was something that RICO fixed in 1970.

It was hard to pin down the mob boss to particular murder. They could get the lower level hitmen, sure, but tying it to the main boss was difficult. Recordings were not really a thing back then. Those that did talk were killed.

Rudy Giuliani (yes that Rudy Giuliani) had the first successful prosecution under RICO in the 1980's.

You can't intimidate a lack of tax payments for clearly possessed wealth. Unlike witnesses and accomplices.

I think the same approach is now used by German authorities against the (mostly Lebanese) "big family gangs" (Grossfamilien), that have also proven to be very capable of intimidating or killing witnesses, but cannot hide their acquired wealth.

It's heartbreaking when people are able to play the justice system. It's not necessarily about these exact people, but the fact that the system we all put our hopes and trust in, can be played.

Sometimes having your heart broken is simply caused by naivete.

Sure. Your statement can stand on its own. It's so broadly framed. I'm not sure where you want to go with that here specifically. If you want to 'accuse' me of naivety, I can assure you I try not to be. But I'm still (and I don't want to give that up) involved and care about the justice system. So it makes me sad to see it fail. But that's not being naive. Maybe 'heart-broken' was too strong of a word in this context. idk.

They may be wrong about the generalized conclusion but “some things are harder to prove” is hardly a strong argument against their claim in this specific instance.

And just throwing the word “nuance” into a comment doesn’t a counter-argument make.

As an american resident, I feel less safe being healed in USA after yesterday's judgement. Healthcare should not be just business. Food additives, sugar and the obesity crisis, a list of 1,300 chemicals used in cosmetics, the Vioxx scandal, the opioids crisis and more generally the drug situation, the cost of healthcare, tanking life expectancy... The list is long on why "healthcare is just business" is not working.

If healthcare a business, they should be allowed to operate one. Deregulate, eliminate licensing for healthcare professionals. Eliminate FDA, DEA, medical board, etc. Fuck needing a prescription for antibiotics when I can take a strep test at home. I'm totally good with making healthcare a business so I can finally have accessible affordable healthcare and just straight up import drugs from India or whatever for 1/100th the cost.

Course if government wants to keep their crusty paws in it and decides it actually isn't just a business, they should take some cues from countries with much lower GDP overhead. The half-assed system we have is the worst of both worlds.

I bet ill-health and disease really helps to increase the GDP… Perversely.

Maybe "pragmatic prosecutors made pragmatic decisions instead of satisfying random internet commenters looking for perfect justice."

Strawman. He's not advocating perfect justice. He raises awareness to something that I also found gut wrenching when reading the article: investors (super rich) mattered, commoners did not.

Calling that "pragmatic prosecutors made pragmatic decisions"... Well. You do you.

You're making the assumption that Holmes wronged "commoners" with malicious intent. As far as anyone can tell, this is just an allegation. So either:

1. you have incredible insight into the inner workings of the company. 2. you're joining an online pitchforking mob.

As much as I rejoice seeing a Silicon Valley poster child be exposed as a phony and a fraud, I would be very careful before jumping to conclusions and asserting with high confidence that the court verdict is flawed.

> You're making the assumption that Holmes wronged "commoners" with malicious intent.

Nope. I take from the text that prosecutors-and-or-law-itself defend the interests of super rich better than the interests/well-being of commoners.

> I would be very careful before jumping to conclusions and asserting with high confidence that the court verdict is flawed.

Good for you. I'm not saying it is flawed, neither am I passing judgement on who's guilty... I'm saying it seems the whole system is favoring the some over others.

Maybe that still means there is larger issue in the system anyway?

Did you know they only ever got Al Capone on tax evasion? Would you draw a similar conclusion in that case, or maybe did the effort put into pinning Capone on tax evasion have more to do with how he was running a murderous criminal organization for many years?

Isn’t Al Capone’s tax evasion conviction usually mentioned as a bit of a joke? I don’t see how anyone can cite it as an example of the system working perfectly fine.

Ignoring for a moment that this was in a very different era, to me, there are only two possible conclusions from this:

(a) The conviction was legitimate. This means that if only he had been a bit more thorough about laundering his money, he’d have gotten away with organized murder.

(b) The conviction was ultimately politically motivated, because it became a public embarrassment that he couldn’t be convicted of anything. But if the state really wants to get rid of someone, a prosecutor will find a way, so they did.

And I seriously don’t know which possibility is more frightening.

Montesquieu: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_is_the_enemy_of_good

(b) is far more terrifying. I'd rather 1000 murderers get away than a single case of a prosecutor have that kind of discretionary power to fuck over essentially anyone just for selective enforcement. The law should be applied equally.

You think the state imprisoning a crime boss is frightening?

>Did you know they only ever got Al Capone on tax evasion? Would you draw a similar conclusion in that case

Yeah. Gangster?

Police doesn't care or is on the payroll.

The IRS however will get you -- it will only let the very rich off.

The cynic in me says that this is a master class in stakeholder management imo.

It is crucial to understand what is the cost of doing business vs what will sink the ship.

The only takeaway is that the burden is on the prosecutors to prove that she defrauded the patients..and they failed to meet the burden.

Did she kill anybody? I wasn't aware that a hospital full of children died because Theranos was doing different lab tests than they said they were.

I really just can't find myself caring about some millionaires scamming some billionaires. VCs get robbed like this all the time. Especially the ones with more money than brains. And I'm also not going to lose any sleep if she gets 5 years instead of 100. This has been kind of a fun news story to follow the last few years but really I think most of the outrage here is because the particular demographic of this website doesn't really like women like this.

You should read bad blood. There are interviews with people who had disorders and theranos blood tests gave false negatives thanks to that, delaying treatment for a long while.

I don’t know about everyone but it’s reallllly hard to find sympathy for somebody who plays fast and loose with peoples health like this. She wasn’t an arms manufacturer but I don’t really see the sympathy angle here (especially considering how much institutional support she had throughout the controversy)

Oh, the dude's book. Maybe the jury should have read the dude's book. Then they wouldn't have acquitted her of all the charges related to end-user patients. Maybe because all of that was quite overblown anyway.

It's ok that people got duped then with what they knew.

But you seem to want to still be duped now, as if Theranos still represents some noble promise...

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