Why was Sunny found guilty of patient fraud, where Elizabeth wasn't? Likely because:
> At Balwani’s trial, his lawyers said that Holmes was in charge of the company. But prosecutors pointed to a text message from Balwani to Holmes — which read “I am responsible for everything at Theranos” — as evidence that he also played a role. [1]
> The panel also heard from a laboratory director, regulator and patient who didn’t testify against Holmes. That testimony was aimed at underscoring his familiarity with the failed blood tests. [2]
> “Balwani ran the lab for a time and was just as involved as Holmes in management,” said Andrey Spektor, a criminal defense lawyer not involved in the case. “To some extent, the government had a stronger case against him.” [2]
The jury seemed to believe that he was more hands-on with the laboratory work.
I don't know that it's scapegoating if you actually did it.
To be super clear, I'm not an Elizabeth Holmes fan. Not at all. But unless we have a specific reason to believe that Sunny Balwani had a less fair trial than she did, why shouldn't he also be in trouble?
Until Holmes is sentenced in a couple of months, I think it's premature to say she got away with anything.
Having read a lot about the whole Theranos matter I feel like Sunny really made some bad life decisions:
Imagine being in his shoes: It's the early 2000s. You're in China learning Mandarain, you're in your late 30s, you made $40 million selling your shares of your company in July 2000 shortly before it failed in the dot.com bust and you meet this 18 year old who you eventually have a romantic relationship with[3]. They did admit a romantic relationship in court documents, so this isn't making stuff up. Life's big decisions confront you, and what do you end up doing? Let's see how it worked out. All this is on the Wikipedia page for Sunny[1]:
Fails:
- Divorce wife.
- Loan $13 million, no interest to Theranos. [2]
- Become COO of biotech company even though you have no formal background in biotech.
- Waste many years of your life in fraudulent company.
- Be convicted of fraud, disgraced, and possibly spend years in prison.
- She throws you under the bus and testifies that her bad behavior at Theranos was largely the result of your abuse sexual and otherwise. Jury doesn't believe it, but her accusation is still out there.
- Have no kids, never remarry. Holmes gets married and has a kid as she was awaiting her criminal trial.
Wins:
+ Have romantic relationship with beautiful lady in her 20s.
Anyway, there's some big life decisions here that, IMHO, Sunny made very poorly.
[3]"Holmes and Balwani met for the first time in 2002. The pair initially met in Beijing, China, while on a language immersion program with Stanford University. Holmes was an 18-year-old high school senior at the time, whereas Balwani was a married, 37-year-old university student completing his MBA at the University of California, Berkeley. All in all, the pair had a 19 year age difference" https://stylecaster.com/elizabeth-holmes-sunny-balwani/
Adjusting that attitude, or at least never saying that bit out loud, may win you more friends.
Other than that, with hindsight, yes, it can all be painted as a series of bad decisions - however I'm sure at the time every decision that got him to where he is now made perfect sense, and was at least a good decision given the information available to him then.
I read Bad Blood, and have tracked stories about the key players, but we don't really know what each player's exit strategy actually was.
Hers seems to have been to eventually produce the tech she claimed her company already had. He may have bought into that dream, or planned to cut and run at some point (or both at different times).
> Adjusting that attitude, or at least never saying that bit out loud, may win you more friends.
Having a spine and saying what you believe is what wins you friends. Self-censoring being afraid that someone on the internet will get triggered will NOT win you friends.
Edit: For what’s worth I don’t agree with them that having no kids is a fail.
Being a "no filter" type in real life works for few, but there's a very fine line before people just see you as an unbearable asshole - if you're the type that needs to be vocal on unsolicited opinions.
And in this case, it would be the difference between saying
"I wonder why [person] didn't remarry or get kids - but that's really none of my business."
and
"People that don't get married or have kids are losers."
So obviously it also depends on how one frames their questions and opinions.
Billions of people in this world would agree unreservedly with the sentiment in question. Only a very specific class of people would have a negative reaction to this.
If you don't want to "hang with that crowd" then there's nothing to worry about here w.r.t filter.
I wouldn't read too much into this - this sentiment is quite frequent here by some more vocal members, and HN is very far from being representative of general population (which is very good in this regard, since mankind would be over in 2-3 generations).
I have personally a very different opinion - smart handy balanced successful (in life, pursuit of happiness, usefulness to society) people should have more kids/kids more frequently as they do, of course if they are able to do so physically, emotionally and overall mentally. Why - this world desperately needs more of such people, and instead gets explosion of poor uneducated farmers or basic factory workers.
Quiet average (or under-average) majority never changes much, they listen to what they should think, what is right, cool etc. Decision processes based mostly on emotions, which is always flawed long-term (and mass media abuse this to no end). We as mankind are clearly heading to self-destruction if we continue this trajectory long enough (longer than doomsayers preach but not absurdly long).
Also majority of childless older folks I've met are in one of these categories: 1) physically impossible, didn't want to go through adoption bureaucratic hell; 2) would be OK with kids but didn't meet the right partner during say age 20-45; 3) didn't want them earlier and when decision changed they realized it was too late (I know quite a few guys in this bracket too). Those that made this decision consciously at early age and stand by it till death without regrets are really small minority.
Even those fearing overpopulation are helping shrink it a bit if they have 2 kids max (equilibrium is somewhere around 2.1 IIRC). There are other points but I don't want to end up with article on this topic. Suffice to say, in my view, life is a (short) game that shouldn't be played on easy difficulty (=no kids) to get most out of it.
If that makes me some arrogant a-hole for stating that, because I ruffled some underlying feathers of somebody online is of no concern to me. Being people-pleaser is a shitty life from all possible angles.
Adjusting your attitude to stop telling people to adjust their attitude might actually result in a much healthier atmosphere, not the woke madness we see now.
> however I'm sure at the time every decision that got him to where he is now made perfect sense,
Let's not forget that at a certain moment of time Theranos was valued at $9 billion (according to my web searches), and that was just before almost anyone and his brother was at the helm of a unicorn. At that exact moment I'm pretty sure he had felt he had taken almost all the correct decisions.
You can have plenty of friends while believing that not having any kids is a fail, 70% of married couples have kids. Also, most reasonable people don't alienate friends over differing beliefs.
Wouldn't alienate me. I have religious friends who call my atheism a "fail". Doesn't both me one bit. Being confident in your believes gives you the ability to weather criticism. Likewise I routinely an upfront with religious friends that I think they believe in made up things, and are wasting their time. It's just a fact that I think that, and it's honest. Again, shouldn't bother well-adjusted religious people. They kinda know that 100% of the earth's population doesn't believe the same things as they do. You kinda get that going in to it.
People should be more open to welcoming differing opinions. No one should have to self-censor their own opinions.
It might alienate some atypically sensitive people, but as someone who has no children, I don't feel particularly alienated by it; and I don't think most people who have no kids take particular offense to it either.
I read it in the context of giving your life to a woman and her company who then marries someone else and has kids. But yeah in hindsight the inclusion of that is not in the best taste, he could be childless for many reasons, none of which should be of public concern.
How am I atypically sensitive if I don’t want to have anything to do with a person who thinks my beliefs and choices are a failure? That sounds like a recipe for disaster. Instead, I choose to be friends with people who accept me as I am.
ETA: Though I wouldn’t want them to not express it, the opposite.
Because most people aren’t so offended by it that they choose to avoid people with such opinions altogether (I’m not talking about not wanting to be friends, but rather, being offended). Such sensitivity is atypical by definition. It’s not intended to be an insult, merely an observation.
Besides, how does it possibly help you (or anyone else) to get emotionally wounded by some random stranger on the Internet's insensitive comments? Most people older than their 20s have figured this out already and are living more productive lives.
Some people use the word failure in a way which – whether by denotation or just connotation – includes an aspect of culpability, blame, fault. If that's your understanding of failure, using it to speak of people in that situation does seem particularly insensitive. On the other hand, maybe other people have a different understanding of the word, in which the element of culpability/blame/fault is either missing, or at least, less emphasised–these people may struggle to understand what others are so upset about, especially if they aren't aware of that difference in the understanding of the word.
If they tried to have kids and were not able to then they failed. There is no "understanding" of the word where that's not true.
And people get upset or offended by anything, it's really not useful trying to shut down discussion by claiming you shouldn't say or think something because allegedly some hypothetical people might get upset.
> If they tried to have kids and were not able to then they failed. There is no "understanding" of the word where that's not true.
"They failed" does have some connotation of culpability though, doesn't it? I mean, the phrase certainly is sometimes used in situations where nobody would understand it as implying any blame; but, on the other hand, there are many other cases in which it is used in a blaming way, and those other cases contribute to its connotations.
> And people get upset or offended by anything, it's really not useful trying to shut down discussion by claiming you shouldn't say or think something because allegedly some hypothetical people might get upset.
I'm not trying to shut down anything. I'm just attempting to produce an explanation of why some people, rightly or wrongly, actually are upset (which is rather apparent from other comments on this post.)
> "They failed" does have some connotation of culpability though, doesn't it? I mean, the phrase certainly is sometimes used in situations where nobody would understand it as implying any blame; but, on the other hand, there are many other cases in which it is used in a blaming way, and those other cases contribute to its connotations.
It usually does have some, yes. For example if you are infertile through some fault of your reproductive system, then that is to blame for your inability to have children.
> I'm not trying to shut down anything. I'm just attempting to produce an explanation of why some people, rightly or wrongly, actually are upset (which is rather apparent from other comments on this post.)
I think they're just vicariously upset. Either way I wasn't wondering about them. Just correcting a misconception about the use of a word.
The genes would see it as a failure, but they don't really have feelings or motivations, so I'm not sure it makes sense to anthropomorphise them. If we do, it's easy to not take offense, you just have a charitable interpretation and move on with your day.
Most reasonable people don't alienate friends over different beliefs, but most people also have some sense of discretion when judging the lives of their friends.
I think I would have issues with a friend who judged me as having failed, or worse, a failure for what I consider personal and subjective life choices.
>Most reasonable people don't alienate friends over different beliefs,
like the different belief that not having kids is a fail? Or can you alienate friends over beliefs you disagree with, but not ones you do?
I mean I do not have any kids, but I know many people that believe one of goals of life is to have children, and I am intelligent enough to understand that procreation is evolution's goal
Thus I do not get offended or alienate people from my life if they say me not having kids is a failure
There is a difference between believing something to be a personal truth and a universal truth.
I don't know if it would irreconcilable, but I think I would have an issue if someone tried to openly judge me and think me a lesser person based on their personal truths.
Well that is getting close to an ongoing trend I see in wider society. I do not need anyone else to approve of my life style. If someone told me a lifestyle choice I made was to them a "failure". I would seek to understand why, evaluate if their logic has any application to my life and if not simply shrug and disgard thier opinion. If I instead it did have value I would see if I wanted to make a change
The fact the people judge other people actions based on their worldview is just a fact of life. Seeking that external validation of ones life choices to me shows insecurities in those choices.
In order have a pluralist society we have to be a to allow people to "think less of us" while still engaging, talking, and transacting with them. If we instead simply reject everyone that does not share our worldview then that is a monoculture, and most likely and dystopian society as well
I think you have a very good point with respect to general society and an overly expressed need for validation.
However, we are talking about friends, not strangers. Surely there is some point when the opinions of others should matter.
Would you want a friend, or worse, a spouse that considered you to be a failure, fool, or generally inferior person?
In my belief, healthy and meaningful personal relationships are based on mutual respect. This includes accepting the fact that other people may have different life goals and objectives.
This doesn't need to be absolute, but depending on the magnitude and frequency it can certainly be a irreconcilable difference.
I guess that depends on the context, I do not want a people around me that will just agree with everything I say and do, and in the context here we are talking about a life choice I made (in this case not having children) as a failure... not that I am "failure, fool, or generally inferior person" I think those are different things.
lets change the context to something less divisive, say i was an Alcoholic and my Alcoholism was destroying my life would my "friend" be a friend if they continued to supply me with Whiskey and Beer or would they be a "friend" is they took me to task, told me as I fool, and a failure?
I think that is a good point. Context and intent matter.
Sometimes being a good friend means disagreement.
That said, there is productive and unproductive disagreement. Similarly, there is also transient and permanent disagreement.
There is also the matter of perspective. In the case of the alcoholic friend, there is a difference between viewing it as something that is preventing them from achieving their own goals versus your own personal code. I think the former is a much more compassionate view (and perhaps more productive).
I think this is an interesting example because most people would agree that destroying your life with Alcoholism is a bad thing, so we both share the same bias.
What if you had an alcoholic friend who judged you for not regularly drinking to excess? How does that change the logic in the example?
Considering friends failures seems a bit more than differences. But I'd assume that's more a thing of quickly writing an HN comment than anything else.
You can't succeed without first doing a lot of failing. I didn't say my friends were losers. Losers quit when they fail. Winners get up, learn, and try again. I like to hang out with winners.
I think if you surveyed a decent amount if people who are 70+ years old with no children, you'd find out if this is a fail or not... I think you can predict the answer.
Responding to the responses: a summary, for the historical record.
Some people noted the key thing here - Sunny's decisions earned him more wealth (if ephemerally) and fame (ditto) than most of us will ever obtain. The balance of good to poor decisions leans heavily to the poor end of the spectrum to my eyes, but it's unlikely he would have agreed during most of the period.
Several people seemed more upset that my response to someone describing a man whose actions may have lead to the deaths of others, certainly amplifying poor health outcomes for many [0] that relied in good faith on the fraudulent & false results coming out of the company, his lack of children was a failure worth noting. Especially in contrast to his ex-partner who, between arrest and trial, had hurried to spawn -- more cynical observers may conclude that fits a well-described sociopathic profile. In any case, comparing highly questionable characters like these two reminds me of the old adage about arguing over the tallest dwarf.
Without irony I was told that:
o having a spine and saying what you believe is preferable - but given I said what I believe ...
o I should adjust my attitude - because telling people to adjust their attitude is wrong.
Several people observed that they themselves weren't personally offended -- good for you chaps! -- but sadly extrapolated that to conclude that anyone who disagreed on the no-kids == failure assessment was therefore wrong, via some breathtaking inductive logic.
Unsurprisingly, someone who thinks PHP is 'the best' struggled to cogently describe their position, but did allude to being too smart to be offended by any claims of being a failure (I guess php guys develop a thick skin) and then proceeded to react to increasingly bad-faith interpretrations of my initial en passant suggestion.
That’s an unusual way to summarize Sunny’s life in the context of this ruling. Judging his personal choices as wins/fails while he is being sentenced for a massive financial and medical fraud.
Who cares if he divorced and never remarried?
Did CEO of Enron fail in life because he divorced his first wife?
The surprising thing to me on there was that despite the bad loans to Theranos (money that is worth $0 now), they still estimate his net worth to be $85 million as of 2022, so way up from even the $40 million he started with in the early 2000s. I guess that despite the Theranos shenanigans, most of it was parked safely.
I’ve heard that many times and never seen it. Among people I know who’ve had payouts in that range the response is typically, “Well that wasn’t so hard. Maybe I’ll try to do it again.”
I know one guy who started working at Amazon in 1998, got gradually promoted to VP over the years, and never spent much of his money. His net worth must be easily $40 million, perhaps much more - given what their stock price has done over the years.
I'll never understand why he's still working there. The work environment (both physical and mental) at Amazon makes Microsoft look like a luxury resort in comparison.
2 were founders or co-founders and 1 is a college friend who was smart and worked hard, but also was right place, right time in the private equity world.
(Me - I’m just a regular schmo but I probably trend old for HN)
The secret about rich people. Extremely few have liquidity. Mostly because their financial managers are smarter than that.
I was briefly the owner of a really nice Ferrari. Never ever saw it myself. Sold some land to a guy, he was rich but no liquidity, sold me the car way under value, I sold it relatively easily with a little more time and effort than guy was willing to put in.
I think I remember reading in more recent comics that Scrooge McDuck's money vault isn't to store his wealth (which is instead invested), but rather coins that were important, like attached to particular memories
His number one bad decision was to be a greedy liar and all around asshole (judging from the book “Bad blood” ). I don’t think he deserves any sympathy. He and Holmes didn’t just make one bad decision but lied and abused people for years. True psychopaths without any humanity.
The tragic correlation is probably that on both ends of the U, parenting is probably not great on average due to the sheer time demand of being poor/very wealthy.
It's an interesting lens through which to look at society. After all, how many of the current issues could be considered a result of a parenting crisis?
Elon Musk is an example of this, I guess, with his 10 kids.
I would like to see that curve though, if it really exists.
It could come down to "having kids is expensive" (definitely in the US), so either (1) you start out rich enough that it doesn't matter, (2) you only have a few kids a middle class wealth, or (3) you have many kids and accept having less money.
I mean - beautiful lady in her twenties? Might have all been worth it in his value system. Not for me, though - she's got those overly attached girlfriend crazy eyes.
I see what you're implying, but Balwani's also been covered very extensively, including his trial.
He's featured prominently in all the most public Theranos material including the book Bad Blood and the series The Dropout. If he doesn't get as much play as Holmes it's not by much — they are both very much front and center. If you hadn't heard much about him (or the fact that he'd very much be on trial the same as Holmes), I'd very much recommend going to the source material — Carreyrou's book, which an easy 300-pager that reads like a thriller
In terms of media, try a custom Google search with a time range that excludes today's sentencing date [1] and you will find thousands of articles written about his trial before now. And beyond that, most of the articles about Holmes' trial end up talking about Balwani in the body because shifting the blame to him was her most central defensive strategy (and vice versa on Balwani's side).
She was the face of the company, mostly because she wanted to be and everyone around her told her she was brilliant and beautiful. She herself wanted to be the next Jobs.
Balwani didn't. He wanted success, and he wanted Elizabeth.
Just watched the Dropout. It's funny that Murdoch was a major investor in Theranos, the WSJ exposed their fraud, and a subsidiary of 20th century Fox produces a TV show about the whole thing.
I feel like it's worth pointing out, particularly because I imagine many people dislike Murdoch here, that when the Wall St. Journal was investigating Theranos the company attempted to get him to quash the reporting.
He told them to pound sand and said he had every faith in the Journal's internal processes to not publish anything they couldn't prove.
Really increases the WSJ's credibility in my mind.
The WSJ maintains very solid separation between their news division (almost always solid and rigorous, with decent fact checking, their audience of investors wants good info) and their editorial division (intensely ideological and willing to completely disregard basic facts). So it's important when evaluating a WSJ article to know which part of the publication it came from.
WSJ broke the theranos story, I’m not sure what relevance any of these other ambiguous papers you’re vaguely referring to have to do with the current thread.
I don’t have a dog in this hunt. Most of what I know about Theranos comes from HN and from watching “The Dropout”.
That said, it’s my understanding (and apparently the jury’s, too), that Balwani oversaw the day-to-day operation of the labs. It’s plausible that Holmes was insulated from some of the worst screwups and lies. In any case, while both of them were convicted of defrauding investors, Balwani was also convicted of defrauding patients, where Holmes was found not guilty on similar charges).
Given that the CEO and COO were both found guilty of some crimes, and the COO was also found guilty of additional crimes, I wouldn’t be completely shocked if the COO got a heavier sentence. If that says anything about our society, it’s that it’s bad to commit more than one crime at a time.
Doesn't the buck stop with the CEO ? or are we going to look the other way because she is playing the "Pregnant Woman Victim" card and the "Brown Man bad" card. I hope she gets the same sentence as he did. But you never know. She took all the glory and limelight as the CEO and now it is time to suffer the consequences of the fraud as well.
Plausible deniability is a thing. The CEO isn't going to be responsible if, say, some low-level employee is doing insider trading. Obviously not the case here, but it is still possible that Elizabeth Holmes and Balwani are both guilty of different things, and the latter incriminated himself more in the process.
She said that he was an abusive partner at home, and abusive to her at work.
The latter makes no sense, because if so, why didn't she fire him before they moved in together. You don't abuse/harass your boss and expect to get away with it.
Balwani wasnt just any employee. He was a significant debtor(investor?) to the company and could blackmail Holmes for her role in the fraud. Not saying Holmes is innocent or powerless, but it is not entirely fair to suggest she can fire him any time as he does have significant power over her.
Oh absolutely. I was careful to word things the way I did - because I get that with intimate partner violence (I believe he was "only" accused of being mentally and emotionally abusive, not physically). And it would have become an order of magnitude more difficult when cohabiting.
But if they're not living with you, and at the time, your employee, I think the "why did you not fire this person" question is pretty valid - given that she had zero hesitation in firing multitudes of people very close to her for even slightly rocking the boat.
>Maybe something, maybe nothing. There are many differences between the two defendants and their court proceedings. CEO vs. COO is just one of them.
Yes, one of them is a blonde woman. The other a brown man. To quote the great philosopher Patrice O'neal: How long do you think the coast guard will look for you if you went missing? https://youtu.be/kYKJ2z7mecQ?t=77
Whilst bodily autonomy is of course a thing, one has to wonder at the mindset - she was already at trial, and knew she was facing a 20 year sentence, doesn't seem like the right time to try for a family.
Given her other behavior, more than one person has thought that it wasn't the most coincidental that she got pregnant with a due date within two months of the trial calendar date for sentencing. (Though I will say, even there, that'd be pretty good planning -and- luck to time it that well).
>I'll just sit here and be quiet, just in case they do... suspect me. They're probably watching me. Well, let them. Let them see what kind of a person I am. I'm not even going to swat that fly. I hope they are watching... they'll see. They'll see and they'll know, and they'll say, "Why, she wouldn't even harm a fly..."
It really isn't rocket science.
Speaking as a dad of two. It took a few months each time, but we got there. We really had to be actively trying wrt the time of the month etc, so to me this speaks volumes.
On the other hand I had unprotected sex with my girlfriend once on holiday and she got pregnant. So, you know, you can get lucky or have bad luck, and probably depends on the involved people's fertility as well.
From what the trial has uncovered, it does seem like he had a powerful hold on her, when she was young and impressionable. Does that absolve her of guilt? Absolutely not. But its hard to see how any of this would be possible without Balwani.
I don’t think it would make much difference either way if they were not involved in fraud. Its when you start to break laws that these things begin to matter.
Would you please stop posting unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments? You've been doing it repeatedly, unfortunately, and we ban that sort of account. It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for.
This is the platonic case of a woman hiding behind sexism.
There is no better way to describe the legal system in this case because it is the most deplorable sociopath using the most vulnerable to escape punishment for their crimes. She is literally using medieval law's pleading the belly to escape punishment.
Anyone who cares about the plight of women would be demanding she be fed to the lions.
The concept of “fake it til you make it” gets roasted a lot in relation to Theranos, but the media has it wrong, IMHO. That phrase doesn’t mean lie about your manual (or whatever - commercial analyzer) process until you figure out how to do the thing you are trying to get to. It means to OPENLY fake it, with the understanding by everyone involved that the “fake” process on the path towards the vision. It’s OPENLY FAKE IT til you make it, not LIE til you make it! If they had been open about the stepping stone use of third party analyzers (and other similar behavior), none of this would have happened. They might not have made it - they were running out of $ - but at least they wouldn’t be going to jail!
No. The definition of “lie” is to deceive. But I mean openly to their advisors and investors. Not to their competition. But I do thinks it’s possible to openly fake something. Consider when Penn and Teller do those “open” magic tricks. The surface effect is no less amazing because you can see how it’s done - in fact it’s more so, at least to me. Maybe it’s good to see it once the closed way, but then opening up the box just ices the cake!
Are ANY of Theranos claims true? I mean is there any substantial science or tech that came out of the company even if it wasn't what they promised?
edit:just saw this great comment about this. Apparently the technology exists to do what they were claiming, just not in the minuscule amounts that they claimed they could use.
If what has been publicized about the couple and their company is true. This is a relief to the entrepreneurial community.
Startups are built on trust & dreams. It is important that predatory or fraud-like behavior with investors be dealt with so it does not harm the ones who are actually trying to accomplish something.
I remember I was very excited about leaving Microsoft for Theranos when they were on the rise (before WSJ publications). I thought it would be a great opportunity to apply my expertise (machine learning) to their application.
But then I researched them and saw war criminal (Kissinger) on their board and total lack of people with domain/business expertise in the area. I decided not to join.
Always do your research on potential startups before jumping on board.
Easy to say in hindsight, but every company has random influential people (some a lot worse than Kissinger) on the board, and a lot of them turn out very successful.
Might have worked out in their case, sure, but it is still very much confirmation bias. People who decided not to join hot startups like Google and Facebook because they didn't agree with the list of investors or the board composition aren't exactly going to be posting about it here.
At the time, that must’ve seemed like an offer from heaven. I’m most disappointed that their amazing promise was basically a lie. It’d be a dream come true to get paid to work on a real project as world-changing as a legitimate Theranos would’ve been.
It's interesting to think of a world where their approach was scientifically possible and they faked it until they actually made it. We'd still be talking about how scrappy and brilliant she is, and all this other stuff would be treated as minor details.
As someone with a bioinformatics degree and who worked in industry doing liquid biopsy for cancer diagnostics for half a decade, much of what they claimed they could do is possible- just, not with the technology of Theranos' day, and not with the volumes of blood they claimed to be able to use.
Example: for a decade now it's been possible to take a standard blood draw from a stage 4 cancer patient, sequence all DNA circulating in the plasma, distinguish the cancer DNA from non-cancer, and use the cancer sequences to inform treatment. In 2022, this is readily available to most stage 4 American cancer patients.
The obvious logical future extension of this, is draw blood from any person, and see if they have any stage of cancer. This is something that is being actively worked on, and is currently in the experimental/cutting edge state; expect to see it become somewhat common/affordable in perhaps another 4 years.
Theranos claimed to be able to do the above, a decade ago, and with an order of magnitude less biological input material than current technology requires. One reason they garnered so much attention, is that people generally familiar with the field knew that much of what they claimed, were things that were possible but were 15-30 years out based on the trajectory of technology at the time. So it was plausible that a genuine breakthrough had occurred that massively accelerated that timeline.
The mindset around tests that you just suggested, and clearly Holmes had, is based on a serious misconception about statistics and testing. Every test has false positives and false negatives. A lot of tests are very bad in this regard, with things like 25% false negative rates on one test and 50% false positive rates on another. When you administer those tests to someone who is a likely candidate for a disease, and combine them with a few other tests, you get useful information. If you just scattershot the tests to everyone, you are going to get a lot of mis-diagnoses.
COVID has de-sensitized us to the idea of over-testing for the hell of it (in the case of COVID, this is because society is okay with a few false positives being told to quarantine and the test had the sensitivity turned way up so that false negatives were nearly impossible), but it is still a really good way to get really bad information. It is the real-life version of "p-hacking" that occurs in some academic settings. For a test to be useful, you need a hypothesis before you administer a test.
I think you read a lot into what was a very simplified description of what these tests may look like in the future. It will be a handful of years before Stage 1 blood tests are performed on anyone in a non-experimental fashion, and probably over a decade before being used at any sort of scale.
Currently, for many people with some sort of mild long-term condition, their doctors will order bloodwork every year or every other year, building up a history for that patient so that when there's suddenly a deviation, it can be noticed.
This will be similar. Once the tests are cheap and ubiquitous enough, checking for mutations at sites associated with cancer to see if someone may be developing cancer, will be equivalent to how currently we check for bilirubin levels to see if someone may be suffering from liver disease.
And it will be dealt with similarly- with follow-ups, additional tests that are more sensitive/specific, and examination of possible problem sites. We haven't flooded hospitals with false diagnoses of liver or kidney diseases that are detected by traditional bloodwork.
> That is a problem readily solved by serial testing. False positive rate is reduced exponentially by the number of tests.
This depends. There are two ways a test might deliver the wrong result:
(A) It should have delivered the right result, but somewhere along the line something happened the wrong way.
(B) The test correctly assessed the instrumental variable, but -- in this subject -- the instrumental variable did not reflect the variable of interest in the manner that it usually does.
That is, many medical tests are not actually testing for the outcome we care about. They're testing for something that is usually related to the outcome we care about, because we don't know how to test for the real thing, or we do know how but the reliable test is far more invasive, or some such. There is a very accessible example of this kind of thing right now - you can take a sample from someone and test for the presence of covid. Or you can test for the presence of covid antibodies. Those variables are related, but different, and we care about the presence of the virus a lot more than we care about the presence of antibodies.
If the test is failing in way (B), retests will not reduce the false positive rate, because it's actually a true positive that is being misinterpreted. Retesting will only solve failures of type (A). For type (B), you'd have to apply a different kind of test, and that might not be worth it if the first test is unreliable enough. Imagine an unreliable test where the reliable followup requires a bone marrow sample.
Serial testing only solves the problem if the tests are independent. With complicated medical tests, they often are not independent - for example, you can have a genetic factor that makes you reliably test positive for certain cancers. Note that COVID tests were generally independent (although not completely).
If you want to flood hospitals with false positives that sounds like a good hypothesis. Then the people who actually do have cancer will not be taken seriously.
Here's an example: Suppose you test for a cancer that is very common, and 1 in 10000 people have it. Also, suppose you have a very accurate test with a 5% false positive rate and a 5% false negative rate, and those false positives are sticky. If you 10000 people the test every week, 501 of them will reliably report positive. Every one of them will then report to the hospital with the cancer. Now the hospital has to deal with finding the one true positive before injecting people with literal poison to get rid of that cancer (chemotherapy).
Since the hypothesis is "some people get cancer," you will find all of them! And you will find a shit load more of them who do not.
Compare that to today, when your doctor says "you have a small lump in your body, let's test you for cancer" - that 5% false positive rate will mean very few false positives, so a positive cancer test means that you are ready for invasive treatment.
Data is not information. You need information to make decisions. "Serial testing" only gets you data. That's why we only do it with "informational" tests like the Chem 20 and the CBC.
He clearly is a war criminal, but most of the US elite doesnt act like it. I'm sure he gets invite to every weekly cocktail party in between NYC <> DC still.
"Once you’ve been to Cambodia, you’ll never stop wanting to beat Henry Kissinger to death with your bare hands. You will never again be able to open a newspaper and read about that treacherous, prevaricating, murderous scumbag sitting down for a nice chat with Charlie Rose or attending some black-tie affair for a new glossy magazine without choking. Witness what Henry did in Cambodia – the fruits of his genius for statesmanship – and you will never understand why he’s not sitting in the dock at The Hague next to Milošević." - Anthony Bourdain
It's not "virtue signaling" when you're actually walking the walk. The person you're replying to didn't want to work for Kissinger et al, so they turned down what looked like a good job.
It absolutely is when (a) bragging on the internet about it, and (b) accepting another job which is equally evil. Probably even moreso when still living in the US, which has taken advantage of Kissinger's aggressive geopolitical strategies (and part of the reason why the US is such a wealthy and dominant superpower). But no one wants to have serious conversations, they just want the upvote for the moral points of not joining Theranos while joining Apple (yawn).
One can virtue signal while being virtuous. It is not synonymous with hypocrisy. Virtue signalling refers to the act of expressing opinions or actions with the primary intent of demonstrating that you are a moral and righteous individual.
If a scam involving high-up US[1] people (Kissinger was on the board) wants to involve you, here's a table for what will happen depending on your intended role:
Front person who talks directly with the higher-ups (Holmes): You'll get dragged through the media, but the high-ups won't let you get ruined lest everyone else see it and refuse to work with them next time they're looking for someone.
Axe-man who does the front person's dirty work (Balwani): You'll get thrown under the bus, because after working as the axe man for a few years, you've absorbed all the direct personal anger and discarding you means getting rid of part of the anger.
Peon (Theranos employees): You'll be hounded on the basis of your boss's guilty paranoia even if you want to comply and take home a paycheck, and when it all comes down you'll be out a few years of your life with nothing to show for it. Of course, this is no worse an end than what awaits employees at cultlike startups with bad management, except for the fact that you might unwittingly become a directly culpable axe-man bit by bit without noticing what you're becoming inseparable from.
[1] If the high-ups aren't enmeshed within the governing body you're beholden to, they can't protect you even if you're an equal co-conspirator or a front person they might need another one of in the future, and this ranking doesn't apply.
Holmes definitely didn't get away with anything.. she's not going to be sentenced until September but you can calculate her expected sentence yourself..
Just looking at the first charge of 4. She was convicted of conspiracy to commit wire fraud: Base offense: 7, but the enhancements get huge in a hurry. I don't know how much they're going to pin on her, but call it $150M? That's a 26 point enhancement.
So can go down the chart to row 33 and see what a first time offender should be sentenced to: 135–168 months in Federal prison. In her best case, she's sentenced to 11 years and can get out with good behavior after 9.5. Worst case she's sentenced to 14 years and can get out in 12.
Safe to say she'll be in Federal prison for a decade. I don't have a strong opinion on what's "appropriate" for financial fraud, she'll be paying a ton of restitution as well, but 10 years behind bars is no joke.
The judge has discretion to sentence a defendant to whatever they feel is justified, even outside the sentencing guidelines--they are just guidelines after all. Of course, you can appeal on the grounds that the sentence was clearly unreasonable.
I read Carreyou’s book and it was rather clear that Sunny and Elizabeth were the masterminds of this fraud. Do you have any evidence to suggest otherwise?
She recently married a wealthy hotel heir (and is having a child with them). Her assets may be protected, but she will live a wealthy lifestyle for the rest of her life.
Your account has been using HN primarily for political/ideological battle and flamewar. That's the at which we ban accounts, so I've banned the account.
If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
I don't really have an opinion but was curious. Official stats from 2018 [1] tell me the average sentencing for sexual abuse was 191 months (15 years, 11 months).
Her sentencing is 25.6% longer than the U.S. mean for sexual abuse in 2018. I'm not familiar with the standard deviation for this stat (it could be a 3 sigma event for all I know).
I still don't have an opinion, but it's a good stat to know.
I'm definitely not suggesting her crime was average, rather I was curious to understand how her sentence fits into the statistical distribution of sexual abuse sentences. Because I had no idea whether 20 is crazy high, bang average, crazy low.
Unfortunately, without having the standard deviation of the distribution, it's difficult to draw strong conclusions from these data points. All we can really say is that she received a 25.6%-higher-than-average sentence.
25.6% above the mean could be an "industrial scale" number of standard deviations above the mean, we have no idea.
Knowing HN, I hope it's only a matter of time before someone computes it for us!
Her family was actually somewhat well connected, her great-great-grandfather was the founder of Fleischmann Yeast Company and her father was a VP at Enron and held executive positions in the federal government. She attended an elite prep school and grew up friends with Tim Draper's daughter, which is how Tim Draper became her first investor.
..the accuracy of the book and TV show is questionable, I would have a lot of questions for the funders of this scam and the company board (mostly recruited to the company by the now deceased George Shultz).
Richard Kovacevich, former Wells Fargo & Co. CEO
Jim Mattis, former head of U.S. Central Command who later became Defense Secretary
Gary Roughead, U.S. Navy officer
Sam Nunn, former U.S. Senator
Henry Kissinger, former Secretary of State
William Perry, former Defense Secretary
Theranos paid each board member $150,000 a year & 500,000 shares in the company. Mr. Kissinger was paid another $500,000 a year as a consulting salary.
These are not stupid people. Where was their due dilligence?
> ..the accuracy of the book and TV show is questionable
Leaving aside the TV show for a moment - most of the book Bad Blood was "overflow" and further detail from the same person who wrote the WSJ pieces, that were extensively fact checked (I realize that doesn't make them infallible) before going to press, especially after the first piece, because Theranos fought back hard.
'Theranos fought back hard' etc - who knows what went on and what spin was printed to protect the powerful when the canoe started capsizing. There were rumors and concerns well before the WSJ 'discovered' irregularities ...from former employees, doctors, blood experts etc...
going away for a loooooong time. The sentencing will probably probably amount to a life sentence at medium security prison. so much for the popular belief that America is soft on white collar crime. hardly.
> so much for the popular belief that America is soft on white collar crime.
If you are correct about the punishment, how does a single trial outcome support your claim? What about the endless fraud on Wall Street, for example? Around 2008, for example?
Don't know what the initial sentence will be, but Federal prison is tough. There is no parole, and the max you can shave off a sentence is 54 days per year. If the sentence is 10, 20 years or more, prepare to be shocked, because he ain't getting out in 4.
> At Balwani’s trial, his lawyers said that Holmes was in charge of the company. But prosecutors pointed to a text message from Balwani to Holmes — which read “I am responsible for everything at Theranos” — as evidence that he also played a role. [1]
> The panel also heard from a laboratory director, regulator and patient who didn’t testify against Holmes. That testimony was aimed at underscoring his familiarity with the failed blood tests. [2]
> “Balwani ran the lab for a time and was just as involved as Holmes in management,” said Andrey Spektor, a criminal defense lawyer not involved in the case. “To some extent, the government had a stronger case against him.” [2]
The jury seemed to believe that he was more hands-on with the laboratory work.
[1] https://www.theverge.com/2022/7/7/23198848/sunny-balwani-gui...
[2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-07-07/theranos-...