Theranos’s invention never would have worked. Here’s why. | Theranos Trial Ep. 2
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- Опубликовано: 29 дек 2021
- Episode 1: Defrauding investors: $945M lost, who's to blame? • Defrauding investors: ...
Episode 3: The creation of Elizabeth Holmes and the fall of Theranos • The creation of Elizab...
Elizabeth Holmes has been found guilty of four out of 11 federal charges relating to wire fraud, deceiving investors by making unsubstantiated claims about her revolutionary Edison machine. But that machine never would have worked - at least not in the way Holmes intended. Still, other promising companies are continuing to make progress with blood diagnostics that can do more with smaller volumes of blood,. Here’s what’s really possible.
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Watch Episode 3: The creation of Elizabeth Holmes and the fall of Theranos ruclips.net/video/-MwRzcFFAl8/видео.html
For me her technology would probably worked if she's no fraud and focus to improve or finished her technology rather marketing a prototype product and lots lies
Can I get a patent of time machine?
I know how it'll look and I can hide the tech under trade secrects.
Maybe you can answer. I have a question. Ok so the mini lab had wireless capability. Was it capable of receiving a short diagnostic report? Was just curious. It was reported that the people going to Theranos left after their blood was drawn to visit with Elizabeth and then would go back to see the results. I do understand about the use of a computer but the machine itself made me wonder due to having to fool investors. These were people not aware that the machine didn't actually work properly but were sincerely convinced that the machine did work.
What I mean here is that the machine turned out to be one big lie so was it capable of receiving a file? I read in the book that it had a display screen. That question really drives me nuts because of wonder if it could or not.
Her invention actually worked. She invented a revolutionary new method of fraudulence.
I can’t help but read flatulence
I dunno. It seems like she just used the enron method, but then pretended it was a more streamlined and efficient form of fraud. 😉
Fraudanos
@@RatedFforFUGlenda
BRAAAAAAAAPPPP
@@Thehouseoffail Her father actually worked for Enron. Not quite a big shot, but still an executive.
The really amazing thing, to me, is that anyone gave her money. I've worked for multiple startups over my career. Not a single time has any investor agreed any amount of money without deeply understanding the technology, limitations, and testing results (usually 3rd party). I feel like these investors must have just taken her word for everything, without actually asking to see the inside of the machines. That's insane.
Ask your millionaire lobbyist parents to introduce you to their friends in the same way she did.
How many investors have actually tried the products they're investing in? I'm in a startup incubator and none of my mentors even try startups' products.
@@DJVARAO Nailed it. Plus, Holmes is a talented con artist. She cultivated a persuasive cult of personality
herd mentality, lack of rational, critical analysis
There's more to it that meets the eye and the lawsuit won't disclose.
She claimed harassment and sexual misconduct to protect herself. She always knew what she was doing.
Theranos is a product of a culture where extreme confidence and wild risk taking is far more important than actual, existing work, research or progress.
Where everyone wants to be the person who funds the next HUGE thing.
@@zuglymonster exactly
@Robert Lee, Countertenor lol, that's exactly what my wife said when I walked in the room while she was watching "The Inventor" documentary and I asked her what she was watching.
It was over-reliance on and blind faith in, the private market vs. actual government-funded research with significant oversight.
@@redadamearth yeah, it is in part the american culture of "government does thing = communism"
"Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth, sooner or later that debt is paid."
- Valery Legasov
Unfortunately the debt is often paid by people other than the ones who told the lie.
“A lie told often enough becomes the truth”
Vladimir Lenin
@@chrisconsorte7893 actually Goebbels famously said that
Wrong!
Sun Tzu said that!
Chernobyl 😂😂
Imagine if that funding went into legit research...
People w/ obscene wealth don’t always want to change or improve the world. They usually just want to grow their money as fast/ easy as possible.
I think that was her real crime, diverting money away from real research. I could care less about billionaire investors, they just want to make more money to add to a pile they couldn't spend in an entire lifetime anyway. Not to mention, a lot of what they lost ends up being a tax write off at the end of the year.
It was from private investors
@@moviesjean23 Thanks captain obvious. Whatever would we do without you?
Betsy DeVos never cared about the betterment of humanity anyway. It was inevitable that she would find an Elizabeth Holmes to take away her money.
One of the major problems with Theranos was ignorant investors, who don’t understand science.
Lol nah they just want to live in fantasy. One of the grandson came to explain how they cheat his test and he still choose to ignore it. U dun neeed science to know when someone took ur blood to other machine to realise that the machiine on display is not working.
They were Rupert Murdoch, Betsy DeVos family, the Koch brothers, the Walmart heirs, etc. They thought they were getting the inside track, the way they normally made money. Not by good judgment or good knowledge.
They dont get enough hemoglobin in tiny drop of blood.
I think they hoped it was going to be the next Amazon/Apple/Microsoft and they were getting in early. If you're rich and invest in lots of start-ups then maybe 1% (but probably less) do turn into something.
Nope, clueless investors have always been there. A few big ones would've dropped some money without thinking, but it would've died out eventually once experts got wind of it.
It was the media's fault. They jumped on reporting this "amazing" tech, who didn't fact-check this and ignored the experts.
I see it everywhere. The WaterSeer. Solar Roadways. Even Musk's Hyperloop (heck, most, if not all of his "inventions").
More clicks, right?
What's funny is that her Stanford professors told her the same thing, but she just ignored them lmao
All her stupid investors ignored her Stanford professors too.
And raised almost 1B on the way...
She thought she was the protagonist of a movie and the physical laws of reality would warp to give her a happy ending.
Funny how when multiple medical expert is say it's not possible people still believe a 19 year old dropped out
They thought this was another IT company.
In their defense they were shown no real evidence it actually worked... wait.
You mean 'still believe a pretty and charming 19 year old " . I reckon some of the investors were thinking with their little heads, not their big heads.
@@andersonomo597 It's just a reminder that having money =/= being smart.
Not really. If you went back 30 years and showed tech executives a modern iPhone, they would say that it isn't possible. And we know that there are some blood tests that can be run on a single drop of blood right now, so maybe Theranos just came up with a new sensor or spectrometer that could analyze blood without damaging it when doing multiple tests. Maybe there is a high resolution imaging sensor and microscope that just looks for infections or problems with computer imaging analysis?
Then you get into the other side of the conspiracy, any "medical expert" wants to keep things the same and make lots of money from the expensive lab tests and investments in those companies.
I worked in a laboratory and each test is so widely different. Hematology required tubes with certain acids, some tests needed to be frozen, some tests needed to be incubated like quantiferums, some needed to be centrifuged so we could separate the serum. Antigens require multiple tubes of serum. Each test requires specific requirements besides the most basic ones that you would get in a Complete Metabolic Panel, which usually includes a Corvac(serum) and EDTA sample.
We did have a large Roche machine that did hundreds of tests on a conveyer belt, but we also had rows of lab technicians monitoring and manually running tests it rejected. It was huge (took up half of our 2nd floor lab) and cost a million dollar while having a turn around of 24 hours.
Arghh l love working in a lab but ever since l graduated l haven’t landed a job yet 😭😭
@@TerryKay. how was the experience of lab work for you? And what did you work as if you don't mind me asking?
Right then and there should’ve had plenty of scientists from all over the world doubting and exposing her year one. Why very few even Didi also baffles me.
But she didnt know anything about that, she knows as much science as my dog does.
I think the only real way to achieve this technology might be with blood cloning of.some sort, however then you'd only be duplicating that particular sample so really I don't think there's any method to achieve all these tests without a standard level of blood samples sadly
The fraud conviction shows everything wrong with Theranos. That more emphasis is being placed on the money Theranos scammed rather than the people who were harmed, died, and suckered by the technology to the detriment of their health, illustrates just how criminal the entire industry is.
Unfortunately, those where the prosecution’s best chances of actually getting her, because of the justice system, and capitalism, and all that as you say, instead of the human cost…
@@johannassburg, when I read the book, it wasn't just the best chance (as there are more/easier laws to prove guilt with financial stuff) but also where the pressure was coming from. Lots of big investors who were very concerned... about their money.
Monetary fraud are easily proven since it had paperwork trails and actual definitive numbers. Human cost, immaterial damage, not so much.
@@dimasakbar7668, I already addressed this point, but I'll repeat, it wasn't just about the ease of a case. The pressure for the prosecution was coming from those defrauded.
No one cares enough about the other stuff to make those cases nor have the litigation frameworks to allow easier prosecution.
Exactly. It seems to me that endangaring people's health (and possibly lives) is a much bigger crime than defrauding a few rich dudes, but in reality it's the other way around. No one cares about regular ppl.
In econ we call this the market of lemons: when ppl know there’s lemons (theranos) and can’t tell if something is a lemon or not, they treat everything as a lemon, don’t invest and the world suffers as a result.
Holmes didn’t just commit fraud, she held back the world decades from accomplishing something like this.
Not only that but also she turned women's leadership and independence in business decades back !!
@@fatmamohammad5505 I think there’s greater issues underlying women in business and leadership roles in modern society, but Elizabeth definitely altered the perception for the worse.
@@fatmamohammad5505 This part is really sad. But let me say to Jared.... The fingertip drop of blood has limited uses. It's more "polluted" than a regular draw. (Or so reporting tells me.) So she started with a premise that many blood science people agree is wrong. Or a bad place to start.
@@tommyswain3762 My snarky side wanted to post, "But most of those women aren't 19 yo college dropouts." As John Carreyrou pointed out in Bad Blood... Sure, Mark Zucker learned to code in his dad's basement during his teen years, and he created an empire. That's coding. That's software. It can be self-taught. It's not someone saying they have the medical knowledge to create massive medical breakthrough. That's entirely different.
…or don’t invest in companies without having experts agree the product works? they got greedy & wanted dibs. the lemons principle is based on information asymmetry, not a lack of it.
You know what’s so funny about this? She was so stuck on the idea of a single drop of blood, that no other solution was acceptable. I will be honest, I would happy if the test was instant, even if they needed two full vials of blood.
That's an interesting point. If she had just made one improvement, one test, like the glucose test, that would have been great. Why she had to turn it into this "hundreds of test, one fingerprick, instant, and done on a machine the size of a desktop printer."
Why couldn't she have improved one simple test or made them faster or something. If she could have improved just one aspect of blood testing that would have been a win.
She is so stupid.
Good point
Because creating working technology was never her goal. She wants more money, quickly. She doesn't want to make something for the people
Don't really understand why she went from 1 million to 1 so quick. If she ex found out a way to use less than two full vials that would have been very revolutionary but nooooo let's use one drop of blood from your finger to test out diseases that you need vein blood for.
Exactly. Being able to do a battery of tests with quick results in a pharm setting would make it so many more people could and would have an annual blood analysis. It's ridiculous they didn't change their vision as it became clear what wouldn't be possible. It is ridiculous they didn't come up with something marketable with the level of money and expertise involved and I do think it was primarily EH and SB poor leadership and unwillingness to listen to their scientists.
When I watched on 60 Minutes, first, as an oncology RN I was blown away. Why? Because this technology could be the end of countless blood draws that my patients have to endure each day considering that most have low Hgb to begin with. But then again I thought, my lab rejects any blood tubes with less than 3 ml. Either my lab is very inefficient or this technology is just too good to be true.
They reject it because if there is not enough blood the blood to anticoagulant ratio is off, which can impact results. That and the instruments require certain sample volumes.
To me, it sounds like your lab is inefficient. Your lab has a problem with 3 ml? Please, get a new lab. How can you trust someone who can't do anything with 3 ml? Had Theranos been given more time we would have had a medical breakthrough, but sadly we will never know. Holmes is a true visionary.
@@beckydoesit9331 Vision does not produce results. She was far, far away from any substantial evidence of her product working. When she was cornered, she lied to cover it up and committed fraud instead of coming forward. One drop of blood is not realistic for many tests regardless. Try getting a count for platelets in a single drop of blood.
@@beckydoesit9331 Depends on the test-- some tests, 3ml is too little, some it'snot. I'm a medical lab scientist. There are scientific limits. Very, very few people in the medical industry, doctors included, actually understand the science and reality of what goes on in the lab. That's why she got away with it.
The lab isn’t inefficient. It’s the person sending the inadequate specimens in the first place.
The fact that so many "smart people" fell for her BS give me absolutely no faith in "expert" investors. Probably most of the entire stock market is a house of cards
Idk how accurate it is, but the documentary on her on Hulu shows how manipulative and charismatic she was
the stock market is a house of cards
I used to think her investors were incredibly stupid, but she went to very extreme measures to deceive people. She said she was working 18+ hours a day and I think the majority of that time was spent managing her hundreds of lies and deceptions and keeping the scam going. Also to have a really big score in investing requires you to go in early, if you wait until the company is proven everyone will be trying to jump in. Tim Draper really screwed things up by giving her the first investment because he’s one of the most famous investors in Silicon Valley and everyone followed his lead. But he only did that because she was a family friend. Of course they should have done more research before investing that much money, but there wasn’t much to research because Theranos kept everything secret. So they had to either have faith or not invest at all. And as far as they knew her technology was approved by Pfizer and was already being used by the military, and the military has extremely strict standards and go through extensive testing processes. And the media was going crazy over her and Walgreens made a deal with her, it definitely seemed completely legit at that point. If it was anything besides blood testing, people could have used common sense to see that something was off, but really only people in the blood testing business know anything about it. If she said she built a new computer or car that was 100x cheaper and more efficient than anything on the market, anyone could smell BS.
Most startups are fraud, Uber and doordash aren’t even profitable lol
Wolf of Wallstreet is a documentary now.
I did not do it, but if I went around and asked my fellow medical students whether such technology was possible - most of them would say no. Blood tests are incredibly complicated and require more material than just some drops from your finger.
Depend.
Blood sugar, uric acid n cholesterol. You could get a quick result with just several drop of blood. That being said, expect inaccuracy.
Yes they are, but this generation beleve more in a screen machine that tge science to made it work, so its easy to scam it
Not to mention venous blood composition is much different than a capillary draw
There are some tests that works decent enough. But to take 100s of tests from one drop? It would just not be enough material to go around.
@@goingslowlynowhere Not even to mention that some require clood components to be separated. First thing I thought as inexperienced pharmacy tech was how will they put that tiny bit of blood in a centrifuge??
I’ve heard a lot of compelling arguments about why the company probably would have failed even if the technology worked perfectly. And people in the medical community thought it was a terrible idea well before they were exposed as frauds
It was the classical solution looking for a problem.
every major upcoming company with innovative idea was probably faced with skepticism like this
First its not a terrible idea. Its great idea. Problem is that the idea defy physics. Example small sample of blood will never be able to detect zika virus and anyway it would be better to detect it through sinus sample. But Elizabeth did not have brain to figure out what is reality what is fantasy and she does not have the flexibility of doing things the easy way. Basically she is not engineers .
Until Surgisphere entered, then even people in the medical community, including WHO and especially TheLancet editorial boards, failed to see the fabricated data Surgisphere propped up.
@@hirnfaser7245 This one defied physics. It's like saying "I'm building a spaceship that travels faster than light". It's just not possible.
The headline at 4:05 "Other Blood Companies are Still Pissed about Theranos" could also be said today about Augmented Reality startups and Magic Leap. Magic Leap sucked most of the VC money out of the market then left a dumpster fire.
I'll be completely honest, I heard the name of Magic Leap for the first time today.
@@wasir3703 - We AR nerds are all very familiar.
We would have _Rainbows End-_ style AR by now if it were merely an issue of electronics and optics, but there's a stubborn, squishy bio-issue to contend with -- comprising eyeballs, optic nerves, the visual cortex, etc.
The headline shows furthermore that anglophone media struggle to create compelling headlines without tumbling into vulgarity. Couldn't this message be conveyed in a better way? Coming from a non-anglophone person.
Yeah wtf happened with magic leap anyway
@@mapakern3979 - You mean "pissed"? The American sense of the word isn't considered particularly vulgar these days.
The whole Theranos board should be on trial.
Not really. They were also duped, just as the investors were.
@@cozinsky Yeah sacrifice 1 to save many.
Salute to bonding of board members.
@@cozinsky if you watch the documentary some key board members knew exactly what was going on. there's a reason they were threatening everyone with litigation if they spoke out about the company. they had a lot to hide.
@@cozinsky it's their job to validate what CEO and managers are doing. And they failed
As an MD who has read the book and articles on this story, I feel she did have some good ideas but they are simply not workable at this point in time. Medicine has come very far in the past 50-100 years and perhaps it will be possible to replicate a blood sample or change the way we test for different elements/chemistry in another 50 years. She probably could have been somewhat successful if she scaled back her ideas to realistic goals and realized her limitations as well as became more educated in her chosen field. Unfortunately, her ego and greed got the best of her and she forged ahead even though she hurt many people (most importantly the patients who relied on her test results). I wonder if she ever would have stopped herself or if it would always be a race to the end and the inevitable crash.
Anyone can have some good ideas, but are those feasible at this point? How many people have had the idea of a time travel machine? That is a great idea, but is it feasible? No? In regards to blood testing, honestly I think it would be much more revolutionary and innovative to have some sort of "nano robot" injectable into your blood stream that can continuously your blood and provide alerts in real time if any changes or illnesses are detected. That way you just need the nano robots injected once but never had blood drawn and you would always have real time results, without leaving your house. or anywhere you are.
It's about time people realized the Silicone Valley approach works great with software, but not so great with real world problems.
Very often, people become overconfident if they had a lot of success in one specific field and overestimate their ability to accurately judge what is going on in other, unrelated fields.
...Software solves real world problems.
@@someoneyouprobablyknowandl9964 Software solves information processing and information management problems. Many problems are not related to information.
@@someoneyouprobablyknowandl9964 No, they help solve real world problems.
@@jukio02 sigh, that's nitpicking. There are millions of things which just CANNOT be done without software, even with humans in charge. And also, not gaining exposure for creators, not earning enough money and not having access to education are all real world problems software helps solve directly.
So yeah, if you care about semantics, go ahead. I don't. Just because one CEO came out rotten doesn't mean we all need to go full boomer on technology.
They didn't do a great job of explaining one of the key reasons this technology was physically impossible. For many tests, there just aren't enough molecules in a drop of blood to test. There is so little blood there just isn't enough information there even if you detect every single molecule. It's like taking an opinion survey of three people, it doesn't matter how well you ask or record the questions, three people will never be representative of any population.
That's a great analogy
So what if it was 10 drops of blood? Or even a vial of blood for a certain batch of extra tests?
I would like to see some company actually make the machine or group all of the existing lab machines (regardless of if it fills an entire floor), along with the necessary blood amount to complete the tests successfully.
1:55
@@ryancappo This is already in use in every ordinary hospital
A key issue is also that every potential disease will not show up in every drop of blood. The titer may be much larger. So the first step is to discover the titer required for each disease tested. Theranos simply assumed that every disease they wanted to test for WOULD be in every drop.
All the warning signs were there and yet investors were lining up. I have no sympathy for their greed either.
It's not greedy to make a good investment. They genuinely thought it was a good invention. Even Silicon Valley investors are fallible
@@joenichols3901 Part of making an investment is due diligence. Checks and balances. I have no problem with investors taking a risk and making a profit but make at least some effort.
@@TheAppleLoadout checks and balances are a concept that us used for politics not business lol. And the investors assumed the other, extremely well known, investors before them had done the due diligence. That was clearly a mistake. She started this domino process by being the girlfriend of the first investor
@@joenichols3901 you do see how that leads to the conclusion that they didn’t care about efficacy or due diligence and instead saw it as a “safe investment” because the other big boys invested? And therefore was less about what was really being invested-into and more about the clout, the media exposure, and the idea it would lead to an explosive company growth.
Professional investors do not blindly follow the herd of other investors. Theranos investors were very, very sloppy. At least this time they were.
That’s the sad thing…..there are companies out there that have legit ideas to further blood-testing, and she just screwed that field up for a long time. No investors are going to go near any new technological advancements in that realm for years.
From what I read was that there were a lot of Silicon Valley VC's that passed on them because Theranos wouldn't let the VC's do a proper due diligence on their stuff. It was nuts.
Great video, thanks 😊
I hadn't considered the large ripple effect on other companies that were researching similar solutions/technology.
Not just companies; even academics would have found it more difficult to secure grants working on similar problems
Why did I read the title as, "Thanos failed - here’s what’s really possible"! 😂🤣
i thought I was the only one,
@@xsais I thought they found a way to replicate what Thanos did and do it better LMAO
+1
Because there's a dark side to you that I hope you will never comprehend 🤣just joking, be cool
He could not live with his own failure.
I want to hear her say it.
"Luke, I am your father" 😂
You mean “Nooooo, I… am your father !!
One of the biggest misquotes of all time…
@@shanet5604 Mandela effect
This would have been easy to test. Have Theranos run their tests on say 5 to 20 people and then independently check those results with conventional tests.
This should have been done. That is standard practice in labs to compare instruments and to complete proficiency testing to make sure your tests are accurate. I’m sure they realized that their instrumentation was faulty when they failed those tests.
Part of the problem was that Theranos would send the samples they received out to real testers and then submit the results as their own.
@@oliviastratton2169 Which is fraudulent and constitutes medical malpractice. gg wp Elizabeth Holmes
@@halfbakedproductions7887 Yes? I didn't say otherwise?
@@oliviastratton2169 You would need to have both machines work side by side, the theranos one and the commercially available one and then compare the results.
Moral of the story : why didn't we see this as fraud sooner? Seems like based off these Verge videos it was pretty obvious from the start that from a scientific standpoint it made 0 sense.
Investors aren't scientists tho and clearly most of them didn't have scientists advising them.
@@MRLONG758 Totally fair point - I'm just still surprised again based off how these Verge videos are telling the narrative that no scientific publication wiped the floor with Theranos when they first announced their company & "confirmed" prospects.
@@MRLONG758 I would make calls to real scientists first. Didn't they not have friends as doctors? lol
Elon musk is the biggest fraudster today yet nobody is taking him down, why would an investor ruin a multi billion dollar company when he can profit from it
@@piotrtchaikovski6674 He has definitely deceived people & delayed many things - but he's also brought many technologies & products to the market over the years at least, compared to Holmes.
The way it's supposed to work:
Inventor-"Hey, I have a magical machine that can do impossible things cheaper and better than anyone else!"
Investors-"Citation needed."
A good first step would be for a company to _not_ be basically a cargo cult operation.
"Cargo Cult"? How do you compare Theranos to these South Pacific religious activities?
@@JohnSmith-eo5sp this has nothing to do with the south Pacific. Let's focus on Theranos
@@JohnSmith-eo5sp - The copying of superficialities associated with successful startups or corporations, without any underlying comprehension or substance. Wearing a black turtleneck all the time does not make you Steve Jobs, etc, any more than building runways in the jungle causes cargo delivery.
@@DJcyberslash - It does in that I called Theranos a "cargo cult." See: college freshman anthropology textbooks.
One point that I come back to, time and again, is that Silicon Valley unicorns don't go public. They aren't held up to the scrutiny of a public company. So... things happen, right?
She didn´t even finished an undergraduate program. That in science is called incompetence.
But in Silicon Valley that is considered a successful CEO.
@@AgentGG1967 Well, money hoarders in general. In Scientific companies is almost impossible to ignore the scientific background of a CEO.
Well she was competent in other things
@@tabeabussmann Like bullshitting investors?
@@DJVARAO shes genius
The ACTUAL reason the invention never would have worked: The Theranos machine would have to keep some reagents cold, others at room temperature, and others warm or hot. Creating and accurately maintaining all those various temperatures in one little box: forget about it.
There are PLC temperature controllers and thermoelectric plates that could be made pretty small. Vacuum insulated containers would help too.
That's not a big deal in the slightest. PCR machines do that quite easily. That's one of the most minor issues at play here. The much larger issue is that some tests require irreversible reactions with reagents, and many other tests destroy the sample. In order to accomplish what they want, they need to be able to clone the exact blood sample, which is impossible currently. Not to mention that a larger blood sample is needed to get an accurate view of the molecules and blood cells in the sample.
Reminds me of when Elon Musk showed his Tesla in a strip of tunnel, cities around the country (like Chicago) ditched their current engineering partners and signed up. It left real experts in the field flummoxed and empty handed.
You can't compare EV yo medical fields.
Or when he pumped up the "Autonomous Tesla Taxi", or the semi, or the rooftop solar tiles. The guy's Holmes x10.
@@nevarran as bad as Elon is he has a track record of delivering. Holmos is a complete different beast. She claimed everything was ready while Tesla is know for their delays to get the tech they promised working
@@plus0 He has a track record of delivering parts of the vision that excite people, while leaving major pieces unsolved. They have no track record of refinement and details. I bought FSD 4 years ago and its still vaporware. Where'd my money go? Lol
Holme's real crime is she didn't deliver _just enough pieces_ to stay alive. This is what Elon knew how to do or he'd be joining her.
Back in high school we went to the university hospital and learned about the many different blood testing machines and also got to see the huge lab with tiny conveyor belts dedicated to blood testing. The idea that a startup with no medical qualifications to speak of could singlehandedly fit all of those tests into one small device and investors actually bought it is insane.
Fun fact: when I was in middle school, I didn't believe my teacher that you need a whole syringe of blood for testing, either.
Still dont believe it. Why do you need so much actually?
@@andik70 Like the video said, blood varies extremely in concentration of white blood cells, haemoglobin, etc. etc. from drop to drop. In order to get a holistic view of blood composition, you need a larger sample size. It's like statistics.
@andik70 House M.D.: If I go to the ocean and scoop out a cup but don't catch a fish, does that mean there aren't any fish in the ocean?
With how I once had 8 vials of blood taken at one time, I have a very hard time believing you could get all the information gleamed from those vials from a single drop.
And 8 vials is nothing unfortunately. I had a patient that they needed over 20 tubes of blood plus two sets of blood cultures just to figure out a mystery illness the patient suffered from. When I say they used every drop, I mean it
Yeah I remember getting my blood drawn for allergy tests and the nurse had to sit me down and tell me “you may need to call someone to take you home if you get lightheaded when you lose blood” and I was like oh!!!! Okay then and sure enough it was like 4 vials. they had to give me graham crackers lmao but more importantly I’ve never ever heard of testing an amount of blood that small???like maybe it’s because im from a medical family but it’s insane
Unfortunately people in the comments below always fail to see the heavy amounts of political backing Theranos had back then...
What political backing?
@@monkiram Feminism.
Why is taxpayer money being spent to prosecute someone for "deceiving investors" when these greed-driven investors could very easily have protected themselves simply by asking hard questions and not taking no for an answer?
Greed driven investors??? Should start up companies ask for money from the Salvation Army instead???
AGREED. Their conversations should look like this:
Elizabeth Holmes: I have an amazing idea for a revolutionary blood testing that would require only a drop of blood.
Investors: sounds great! What are your qualifications?
E: 0.
I: do you have a working prototype, or anything that suggest that idea is even remotely possible?
E: no.
I: good luck and goodbye!
This might sound a bit "meta", but when you are pursuing such a disruptive career, knowing your invention will never materialize, you share a great deal of reponsibility hurting actual inventors in this sector with more realistic ideas. She has left a lot of soiled earth here and might even have turned the clock back on this issue. I highly doubt her twisted brain will ever be usefull to society. Gurl needs some serious counseling.
Counselling??? She needs to be locked in a jail for the rest of her life!
I will forever be dumbfounded at the fact that supposedly brilliant man who are the top of Silicon Valley, experts in their area fell for this scam. As an investor I would ask the opinion of medical professionals before giving my money to someone just because they look the part.
Most of them invested no more than 1% of their net worth, and they end up suing her and recovering part of that money, in the end they end of losing probably 0.2% of their net worth, so if you had a net worth of 500k it would be like losing 1K in a bad investment. For them this wasnt a big loss or deal.
Let us not forget that this young lady's father was one of the architects of the enron scandal, how could anyone believe she could be anything other than a thief and a grifter like her dad.
Thank you for this snippet. It actually answers several question that all the documentaries I’ve seen never addressed. One thing I’d like to know is: did these machines EVER work for ANY test at any point? Seems like there must have been at least some initial stone to stand on.
No more than 10 of the tests out of the 200+ ever worked. But those tests already work with a drop of blood, so she didnt do anything innovative in that regard.
I always found this whole thing so interesting. Bad Blood is honestly one of the best books I’ve ever read, it dives so deep into the whole thing.
The problem now is that if anyone does come up with a viable solution to what Holmes fraudulently claimed, it will be met with scepticism
There are similar things out there, like Genalyte. Except their machine is like 10x or more bigger (fridge sized) and it needs way more blood to run less than half the tests. Because what she envisioned is just not possible in this universe.
Well, it depends, you cant go from the current technology to what she envisioned in one single step, this type of scientific and technological advancements require multiple iterations. In IT we didnt go from the mainframe to the iPhone in one single iteration, we had to go through multiple iterations that included gigantic desktops with big floppy disks, to smaller desktops to gigantic laptops to smaller laptops to regular phones to mobile devices. Anyone smart enough would try to achieve this through multiple iterations over the next several decades.
Holmes knew just enough about hematology to sell her idea to leaches. She didn’t want to talk to investors who wanted to see peer reviewed studies and probability analysis. She sold it to other scoundrels who thought they were getting inside information and getting in at the bottom. Then the first scoundrels sold it to others by giving them the impression they were getting inside information. All they had to say was you can’t even see the machine because it’s locked up in a lab. It’s a corporate secret. But it’s a technology breakthrough. Before the first drop of blood was taken, you can bet some body fluids were exchanged.
Everyone still seems to be missing the key issue. There are lots of arguments about how many tests that can be done, questions of the single drop of blood being feasible, etc. We don't need to talk about any of that. Holmes said, "I have a machine, the Edison, that can do that." So, we test it's accuracy. This is incredibly easy. Every lab in the U.S. tests the accuracy of every test they run every day. You take a sample of a known value, you can buy these samples from any laboratory supply for any common test, you run it on your instrument and see how close the number comes to the expected value. You know the accuracy of existing machines, it' all published. If it isn't that accurate, it doesn't work. That's it, we don't need to argue about technology -- it gives the wrong answer so you can't use it until you fix it so that it does. Consistently.
Apparently because of the hype, they kept going. Any one of the thousands of labs in the U.S. that did that would be shut down by the inspectors.
Someday someone may come up with technology that will run hundreds of tests on a single drop of blood. I don't know whether it's technically feasible or not. But if someone comes up with one, I know how to make sure it really works. Really every laboratory technician does: Run QC and pay attention to the results.
Just watched hours about this whole debacle and this was the article I was looking for. The whole case comes down to what is in the black edison box and if it works or why it does not or when it might. This video attacks that head on, without getting too technical. All the others were about personalities and human emotion... Thanks.
Great video. Thanks for sharing!
“Pie in the sky” is a great way to put it. I don’t know much about phlebotomy, but I’ve had blood drawn for pretty routine things and they take a significant amount of blood in each vial. I don’t know how much blood is truly needed for the testing, but it’s definitely a lot more than one drop for all the tests.
For a single, common test (like a hemoglobin) you can sometimes get by with half a milliliter. The lab will always prefer a nearly full tube, particularly because multiple tests can be run on one tube. Your average phlebotomy tube holds between 3 and 6 milliliters.
For me, like a regular guy with health problems, and knowing some history - its even amazing that we can do the things we can do right now in blood testing. People should start seeing the modern medicine as the gift it is.
The fact that she was able to food senators and presidents along with these giant companies sends chills down my spine.
& the fact that she doesn't even recognize what she has done, played with people's lives. Is walking free living with her boyfriend.
That's pure evil.
Not anymore.
She needs to be locked away for a while, she needs to learn her lesson.
I can't believe that she is free until her sentence in Sept. Steal $100 from a bank and go to jail right now, steal 100 million or more from investors and you are free for the next 9 months.
A 5 minute convo with any competent Doctor or blood specialist would debunk everything of Theranos.
and yet many investors put in millions and millions of dollars - only because she was young and blond
@@lauralangham9657 No, one thing she did was carefully avoid any investor with real knowledge of medicine and biology.
Ian Gibbons was their chief scientist. He was a renowned scientist, with more that 60 US patents to his credit, including patents related to blood testing methods. And he believed in what Theranos was trying to achieve. Even when he realized that Holmes was lying, he kept working to achieve it, believing it was possible. Just like the other scientists at Theranos.
So, I don't believe that a 5 minute convo with a doctor would debunk everything of Theranos. It's easy to say that the fraud was obvious, years after all the media massively informed the entire world about it. What's less easy is to say something when it's the right time, when investors are putting tons of money into the company, when Holmes is praised by all the media.
I was literally in grad school working on a masters degree following earning my B.S in Biology when this technology was first advertised. NOBODY in the university thought this was possible for one simple fact that is brought up in this video. The ENTIRE reason so much blood is taken for blood testing, is because the sample has to be separated into several other “containers” as certain chemicals are used for many of more than 100 various tests. And those chemicals change based on the test. So if you have a tiny amount of blood. Such as a nano container, currently, there is no technology that exists that would eliminate the need to use the various chemicals for the tests that need them. So simply put. It’s impossible to do. And will be until somehow someone can figure out a way to do chemistry without reagents. Which basically means, be able to put up a house without having to use building materials, such as wood or concrete etc.
She deserves more than 20 years.
Ehhhhhh, she didn't kill anyone........ directly at least.
She will get around 3.
why, for taking a bunch of rich people for a ride? they'll get over it
It's like the "free energy machine" of medicine.
Sometimes knowledge is more important then imagination
The concept is ground-breaking to almost noble. But anyone who has even dabble a bit in medical sciences could see right through it, the process requires a certain reagent and concentrations and most of all an adequate volume. Id like to see someone else try it in the future, we are just limited to the technology of our time.
I would think something like this will be possible in 40-60 years, it requires some significant scientific advancements.
It really doesn't matter that the concept is "ground breaking". Only the implementation matters. Words are cheap
This is the video I needed to see. Since this has happened, I’ve been wondering if it actually could happen if perfected.
Great vid!!
Skepticism is a good thing. It lives at the very core of science.
Should healthcare startups be more regulated from the start? If yes, how so?
There is already a fairly exhaustive FDA framework which is enforced.
If there's one area that doesn't lack for regulation, it's healthcare tech. There's _plenty_ as is ... and I suspect in 20 years or so, the US will have fallen considerably behind several other countries in regenerative medicine technologies, because of the extreme conservatism.
No
This was a great video outlining the issues with the device but it didn't really explain the technicalities of why such a device isn't possible.. Great video regardless but I ended up with more questions than answers.
The thing is, Medicine cannot be treated like an Apple Product or a breakthrough software. It simply should not embrace the Silicon Valley ideals of innovation.
Everyone in Silicon Valley wants to be ahead of everyone trying to be the next Steve Jobs. I mean this is great if you’re dealing with techs, just not with medicine.
She had all those employees. What did they actually do all day, especially those involved in the science?
They were trying to figure out how this could eventually work.
She is found not guilty for playing with patients lives. WOW.
Imagine if this china....just saying....or russia.
The law might not catch her...but justice would be served...
She wasn’t charged with endangering patients’ lives, she was charged with defrauding them. She was found not guilty, presumably because it would have been harder to prove than the charge of defrauding investors. The government may have decided not to charge her with endangering patients for the same reason. But it leaves the impression that the justice system values profit more than public health.
She's certainly guilty of fraud but there's no indication that any patient was ever in danger. They were actually running tests, just mostly in the traditional way. They just lied and said they did it with their magical machine.
I like this touhou mix, good work as always abner
Hi The Verge, How do I subscribe to Nicole Wetsman at the Verge? Great coverage and explanations! :)
I will be very very surprised if Elizabeth Holmes just simply walked away later after everything she has done.
Unless the judge decides to make an example of her she will walk. From reports the jury was very sympathetic to her. She was found mot guilty of patient fraud charges. She's got a new baby.
@@redmed10 yeah, Ive been told, she is "fine" right now because the baby
@@edokid
She's already walked. Sentencing not due until September 2022. Some people just live a charmed life. Text me back next year and we'll see who was right.
The Theranos story reminds me of the Hitler diary scandal. So many people said it worked without actually verifying it for themselves. I hope it really put a black mark on the people who blindly stood with Holmes even as the walls were crumbling around them because their partly to blame also for helping to recruit other investors.
I'm glade the whistle blowers and people who said this wouldn't work are vindicated.
Ha! That is a great, great story. The hitler diaries fraud
Good work
As a lab tech, this is so wild to me. I still can't believe she got as far as she did. Yes, some tests can be done with a finger stick, but a LOT of them can't. Blood cells more commonly lyse, concentrations aren't as accurate, and there's a much higher likelihood of contamination. No, we don't always need an entire tube of blood, but in the case that we need it, it's better to collect a full tube or two than to have you get your blood drawn a second time. Not to mention the different reagents and requirements for running different tests. She should've listened to the people who actually knew what they were talking about when they said there was no way it could work how she wanted it to.
I wonder how Elizabeth Holmes feels about the repercussions of her lie? Her disservice to the actual scientific researchers alone should send her to prison for a very long time. To think how one human can cause all this damage. She needs a very long time out to think about what she has done.
This assumes she has a conscience - I want to see the data on that.
People have called her a sociopath. So for all we know, the damage she has caused doesn’t register in her brain
@@BunnyFlowers you are probably right. It’s too bad we can’t figure out from birth who is predisposed this way. It would sure spare humanity.
As a biomedical engineering student I think it was a bad idea making this device
As liar (me) I made an invisible machine, that can test blood pressure & its worths Zillions.
Its a good...idea. Kinda like star trek.
But perhaps show result first? Some random test and controlled test?
@@eleethtahgra7182 It baffles me that none of the investors looked at results or data. I mean did the scientist working for her forged results? Weren’t e there test run? Another thing is did FDA not approve or review anything? The clinical trials that diagnostics companies have to run and prove, did they even exist? I mean, how did a product get marketed and show any clinical trial data? Clearly nothing worked should be pretty obvious
@@Nymeria0 the power of smooth talking and being charismatic
I would love to see and hear the reply Holmes gave to Dr Stephen Master. Does anyone have a link?
Holmes essentially offered the medical equivalent of a perpetual motion machine and some of the smartest person people in history believed her.
They make you think they're the smartest but honestly they aren't because they mostly rely on insider trading and have zero knowledge when it comes to doing their proper due diligence before investing.
She targeted non medical Industry people cuz they have no clues.
The world is going crazy. Theranos, Nicola Motors and now this Rivian bs. The government printed so much cash goddamn.
Most of those rich freaks are super ignorant and stupid. The current economy and society rewards steping on heads, not being smart
Perhaps they arent thinking with their brain.
The confusing thing to me is how this ever became as big as it did. I remember this from the other end, as it was starting, and she always seemed bat-shyte crazy. She needs to be lock up, but in a padded cell more than behind bars.
I'm friends with a physician, and while the Theranos machine was being promoted, he once said to me that in his mind they were either absolute geniuses or complete frauds. He, too, said that certain blood tests simply required an amount of blood far greater than just a few drops, with all the technology that was known at the time anyway. And I have to thank him, because in the end it dissuaded me from buying Theranos stock.
My dads a doctor he never believed it either for exactly the same reason.
This is so sad :( Companies that were researching realistic advancements didn’t get funded
Makes me wanna watch the docuseries about her now.
How the hell did she get funding for this? She’s isn’t even a medical professional?!
Her parents had good connections, she convinced a notable staff from Stanford to vouch for her “ genius”, and she made sure to have absolutely no scientists on her board of directors only very ignorant old men.
She also had a hypnotic, unblinking gaze capable of mesmerizing otherwise logical people.
Years and years of having the myth of the college dropout that started a tech company, launched an app, and be hailed a world-changing genius on the level of Da Vinci shoved down our throats by popular media have primed investors to think that "visionary" and "disruptive" youngsters with little to no actual training can easily solve complex problems.
Skepticism should never be an afterthought when you're investing boatloads of money. It amazes me to see just how naive wealthy people can be when they are outside of their field of knowledge
I really don’t get how she got away with this idea. If you know the basics of clinical chemistry and biochemistry you would have an idea that it is simply impossible to get reliable results from a single blood drop. You don’t need to be a professor to understand that. I’m just a dentist and had basic biochemistry and clinical chemistry at Uni, but would have had a big question mark and lots of doubt such a machine could exist at the current scientific state….if this idea was presented to me..
I want to buy a Edison for collection item. Looks awesome low-key part of history even though it doesn't work.
Handling hard sensitive science like medicine, nuclear or flight like an entertainment device or online service app is always a bad idea
Laboratory diagnostics is an industry that is heavily regulated by the FDA. Diagnostic instruments must pass intense scrutiny for accuracy and precision before it can be approved for patient use. In the case of Theranos Holmes was able to circumvent the normal scrutiny that every other device maker has to undergo by exploiting a loophole in oversight which allowed her devices to fly under the radar of the regulatory process. Steps have now been taken to close that loophole so it should not be repeated by another charlatan.
In a nutshell, she envisioned already existing handheld waived/POCT device for separate tests and put it altogether as one miracle midscale machine. This holds true for some immunoassay devices which would only need 10uL of blood per test.
move fast, break thing is still a good idea for health startups. but it might need to not move as fast as other startups, requiring more auditing and proof of what is being said
I am surprised there is not an institution in US checking medical devices producers and technologies for safety and efficacy. For anybody who worked with medical equipment and understands analytics (validation, reproducibility, robustness of results, accuracy,specificacy) it is clear it cannot work. As European I am everytime shocked that just anybody can sell anything to the public in US and there are no governmental controls to protect citizens. Obviously the average man is not an expert on every topic so there is usually a safety commission of independent experts that has the knowledge to evaluate those results.
There is, it’s call the FDA. Medical devices need their approval before it can be used by the public. Medicine is highly regulated in the US and Theranos outright avoided the FDA or used loopholes to get around them.
@@PungiFungi highly regulated and being able to avoid FDA approval contradict each other. I am aware FDA is reponsible for medicines and health inspections, was not sure for the medical devices that legally fall in another category than medicines. It is both a loophole in the health system and a fraud.
@@dasblondesauerkraut5869 The FDA only approved one test towards the end (I believe for a form of hepatitis) for use on Theranos devices. Theranos "avoided approval" by not using Theranos devices and using already FDA approved devices by legitimate manufacturers in their labs. They didn't tell their investors, partners, and consumers that they were in fact NOT using Theranos technology for bloodwork results; but the FDA knew they weren't because they weren't approved to. Now, why the FDA didn't rat them out is a different question.
There are two agencies in the US that regulate medical devices for efficacy and safety: the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which regulates devices that are sold and used by patients (e.g. implants), and the Center for Medicare Services (CMS), which regulates devices that are sold and used by healthcare providers (e.g. lab testing equipment). The problem was that Theranos exploited a loophole in the regulations for what are called lab-designed tests, as in lab tests that are developed by a research lab for their own use only and not to be sold to patients or healthcare providers. Those tests are not regulated by either the FDA or CMS.
This is what happens when people confuse "vision" with reality. I can envision all kinds of things that it would be wonderful to have, but there are usually reasons why we don't already have them, reasons that are based in basic chemistry and physics and engineering. Investors who can't see past the vision and judge the practicality of radical new ideas should just expect to lose their money.
It seems that it’s similar to the problem of “publish or perish” model in academia. Instead of repeating studies and making improvements to old testing models to make sure we get accurate results, one study will be promoted and will make headlines because it is outside the norm, conflates correlation with causation, was purposely skewed to grab attention or favor the conclusions the corporation funding it wanted, etc. and the public and other entities who aren’t familiar/don’t have access to the rest of the literature on a subject or forget/don’t recognize that more testing needs to be done to confirm something as being likely the believe the sensational thing.
I get my blood drawn every year for my medication and would love to have it done on only one drop. However, that’s science fiction at this point in time, and I acknowledge it.
It’s one thing to admit you are developing technology. It’s one thing to lie about it to investors when it *hasn’t* been done.
I love these videos!!!! Yassssss The Verge you SLAYYYYYY
Theoretically the goal of being able to perform a complete blood test with just a drop of blood is a worthwhile dream, but it would need some very significant leaps in the actual testing methodologies for blood tests to achieve, i.e. something more advanced and less brute-force than traditional centrifuge or chemical reaction tests, to the point of crossing into science fiction. That's not something I see scientists and engineers with funding being able to do within the next few decades, let alone some tech startup that didn't even have a single medical practitioner on their roster starting out.
This is unfortunately the problem with trusting people on charisma alone without looking at their supposed credentials nor more strictly scrutinizing evidence.
Genalyte has the maverick machine that can do like 100 tests on a drop of blood, so it’s not too far off as technology advances. I think one day it might be possible, but not in my lifetime.
I used to donate blood plasma. This included a hemoglobin test, with a drop taken from the finger tip. They changed it to the ear lap for some reason, and back to the finger. I don't know why these extremely painful areas, maybe because there's steady blood flow? I can imagine that hemoglobin levels differ between different blood vessels slightly.
Thank you! So tired of this "She girlbossed too close to the sun" narrative that pretends that it would have worked if she was given more time.
she probably needed 50-100 years!
An important distinction to be made here is that Holmes was only held liable for damages to *investors*, not to the very real harm that was done the patients by way of misdiagnosis.
While I applaud her being held accountable, this case also brings into stark relief the reality that the Justice system is structured to protect and benefit the monies elite first and foremost, often at the expense of the People.
"There might not be a high enough concentration of what you're trying to measure in a single drop of blood". Bzzt. The concentration isn't dependent upon volume. It's the absolute amount of what you're trying to measure that's dependent upon the volume of blood collected.