{"id":7579,"date":"2017-01-07T11:29:05","date_gmt":"2017-01-07T17:29:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=7579"},"modified":"2017-01-07T11:29:05","modified_gmt":"2017-01-07T17:29:05","slug":"another-unmoored-from-reality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2017\/01\/07\/another-unmoored-from-reality\/","title":{"rendered":"Another Unmoored From Reality?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Quartz<\/strong><\/em> reports on the\u00a0turbulence<\/a> of biotech company Theranos<\/em><\/strong>:<\/p>\n

In 2015, Stanford Business School published a fawning interview<\/a> with Elizabeth Holmes, founder and CEO of Theranos, the now-discredited biotech company that claimed to have invented cheap, effective, and revolutionary blood-testing technology.<\/p>\n

In the interview, Holmes said her road to success \u201cwasn\u2019t weighted by influences that I couldn\u2019t do it,\u201d and, perhaps most tellingly, said would-be billionaires should avoid backup plans: \u201cI think that the minute that you have a backup plan, you\u2019ve admitted that you\u2019re not going to succeed.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

That thinking on Jan. 6 resulted in the announcement of 155 layoffs<\/a> (paywall)\u201440% of the company\u2019s staff. Those job losses, The Wall Street Journal reported, come on top of 340 cuts in October, leaving Theranos with about a quarter of the staff it had last August. In a statement, awkwardly titled \u201cCompany Re-engineers Operations<\/a>,\u201d the company said it has \u201cidentified a core team of 220 professionals to execute on its business plans,\u201d and that its rejiggered executive team has \u201csubstantial additional regulatory, compliance, and operational expertise.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Maybe it’s just the engineer in me, but this doesn’t sound like an obscure legal problem, but rather the reality that Your Solution Doesn’t Work. It might even be A Bloody Fraud. It could even be I Must Be Part Of The Game.<\/p>\n

Which doesn’t have anything to do with respecting your customers, nothing to do with social responsibility. Now, I haven’t researched any further, although I’ve heard rumbles about the troubles of Theranos<\/em><\/strong> for years. So I suppose I’m just troubled – why not shut the company down and be done with it? Surely it’s not hard to prove the technology does or doesn’t work, it seems to be a well-defined and, if I dare, an unsubtle problem to prove solved.<\/p>\n

I’m puzzled.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Quartz reports on the\u00a0turbulence of biotech company Theranos: In 2015, Stanford Business School published a fawning interview with Elizabeth Holmes, founder and CEO of Theranos, the now-discredited biotech company that claimed to have invented cheap, effective, and revolutionary blood-testing technology. In the interview, Holmes said her road to success \u201cwasn\u2019t \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7579","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7579","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7579"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7579\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7580,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7579\/revisions\/7580"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}