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Comment by bb101 | Hacker News Reader

I do feel sorry for her in a way. She was riding a treadmill of expectations. Started off slowly, probably thinking "yeah, we can do this" and by the time the treadmill was moving at light speed, it was too late to get off.

Even TED has removed her talk from YouTube. What responsibility do the media bear when their shallow hype turns out to be false and damaging to all parties?

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Nah you shouldn't feel bad for her, if you read into it she was constantly lying from the very beginning. As for media responsibility, I don't know how responsible they really are here for the actual fraud. While Holmes sent their stories of her to investors, she also had fake documents and other lies that made the bulk of her pitch (ie the military work).

> She was riding a treadmill of expectations. Started off slowly, probably thinking "yeah, we can do this" and by the time the treadmill was moving at light speed, it was too late to get off.

She absolutely was not. It was completely obvious to anyone with any knowledge of the subject that what she was doing was fraudulent.

I have no knowledge of the subject.

I do, however, have a strong allergic reaction to motivational speeches from wide-eyed people with enormous grins. Well, from anyone; but the wide eyes and the permanent grin (and the embarrassing grooving-along to MC Hammer) would have driven me away from that firm in an instant.

I'm amazed that anyone fell for her.

IIUC she'd fire anyone who'd challenge the hype or raise issues in the company. Not sure why you'd feel bad for her.

> riding a treadmill of expectations

... which she started up herself. Read about the Stanford prof who saw through her before she even started the Theranos journey.

Stanford Prof. Phyllis Gardner

Mercury News: "She saw through Elizabeth Holmes. Now Stanford professor is star in Theranos saga."

https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/06/03/she-saw-through-eliza...

I think its wrong they removed her talk. It should be there, mistakes should be shown too.

> Even TED has removed her talk from YouTube.

Why? I would add a disclaimer that they don't endorse it and maybe a link to the ruling but at this point it's an historical document.

They care more about their brand than preserving history.

Her story arc is much like Bernie Madoff's. He, too, only really hurt wealthy investors. But did anyone feel bad for him?

Only hurt wealthy investors? What about people who received incorrect testing results, like the woman who was given a false-positive HIV result and the woman who was incorrectly told that she was miscarrying?

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/09/theranos-results... https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/11/theranos-gave-wo...

They certainly got a scare, but it's hard to see that they were harmed.

Generally, when one gets a scary result from a test, another test is done to confirm.

The false negatives would have been a better example.

True. But when I've gotten negative test results, I'm well aware that they aren't a guarantee of anything.

I felt bad for his family.

Please actually read the case files and evidence presented by the state, your characterization of her is incorrect. The jury's verdict confirms that.

I feel bad for her too. She messed up, and probably did it intentionally too. That's messed up, but how much physical harm did people suffer? 60 years of prison time's worth? Near as I can tell a bunch of investors lost some money. Are they on the street now, begging for dinner? Kinda doubt it. Maybe there's a more fitting punishment.

It's pretty fitting, given how large the reward for pulling the fraud off was.

There are, of course, a lot of people walking free who have done far worse things. (The Sacklers, for instance, should all be subject to a combination of prison and utter financial ruin. If the world were just, most of them should be living on the street, right now. Instead, they are making quaint arguments about how a third of their drug wealth is fair recompense, and how their plundered offshore billions should be protected from bankruptcy.)

> but how much physical harm did people suffer

Is physical harm the only harm that matters?

> Are they on the street now, begging for dinner?

That's not how justice works.

Why is it justice to dole out physical harm (prison) for actions that didn't cause physical harm? America has one of the highest incarceration rates in the world (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_United_States_in...).

I'm not interested in the incarceration rates in the US (the legal and social system is so messed up it's difficult to find a starting point - Europe is not different either for the record), the discussion is about what is a valid justice course of action.

Some crimes need physical intervention in order to protect society. It's just reality. For example, a thief that breaches private property needs to be punished, because not only did he steal, but he also caused a loss peace in society, which affects everyone.

I think the harm was caused by using the investors and prestige of the company to build the consumer confidence into passing faulty testing on to patients and some patients testified to receiving pretty devastating false positives and results. Their customer service was directed to minimize their potential failure rates until one of the later lab directors voided a lot of the faulty test results after discovering how bad it actually was. While I believe she was mainly convicted of defrauding investors, it's not like her actions happened in a bubble. They operated for like 10 years like that.

That's the problem I have though. The people who were really hurt, will they get any restitution from this? Somehow I doubt it, but the investors will walk away feeling vindicated.

Her lawyers pressure resulted in Ian Gibbons suicide [0], they provided false medical results that could have missed crucial health results, the provided false medical results that could have caused high levels of stress and worry, etc...

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Gibbons_(biochemist)

That would be a separate case I would think, and not one that Gibbons' relatives would be likely to win.

When I read this comment, the comment directly above it talked about people receiving incorrect test results and included links to relevant articles. I think its safe to say that some of Theranos' users did suffer non-financial harm.

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