In the current environment I doubt Elizabeth Holmes would go to prison. She would be saying the machine would work by early next year. After all a drop of blood is just a smaller quantity. Making the machine work is just an engineering problem.

If she were really clever she would recruit a social media army of all the weird conspiracy theorists who think "medbeds" are real.

Of course now we know that a drop of capillary blood containing interstitial fluid and a random mix of venous and arterial blood is unsuitable for most blood tests. At least you will have googled that if you're an Elon stan preparing to tell me how they're not comparable.

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ryandrake an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Cool thought process, but the real reason Elizabeth Holmes would not go to prison if she pulled that shit today is much, much simpler: She would know to make a nice sized donation to the current administration (or a sweet business deal for one of his family members), and the justice system would simply be completely hands-off her. She'd give 5% equity to Jared Kushner or something, and go on committing fraud with confidence. It's not complex anymore. Pay to play.

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umpalumpaaa 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The big difference was that she was in the medical field. She used her machines that worked unreliability on patients and caused actual damage to humans. Then she noticed that this could be a problem and switched to blood analyzer from Siemens. But she still continued to say that the machines do work. She lied to investors. I still feel her case is a lot different to what musk is doing. I think you can definitely say “coming next year” and actually needing 5 years. You cannot blatantly lie and harm people along the way

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hansvm an hour ago | parent | next [-]

But what if you say that FSD is actually here and that the only reason you can't fully use it is regulations and then need an extra decade (at least -- still pending)? As one of many examples....

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Zigurd 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Are you a biochemist? Would the Theranos machine have worked with new tests using new reagents? Is the needed blood volume not similar to, for example, payload capacity? Are we discriminating against people who affect an unusual voice?

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akiselev an hour ago | parent [-]

It wouldn't have worked, period. You can't use capillary blood for the kind of blood tests they were claiming to. It's statistically impossible because the sample isn't big enough and drawing more capillary blood doesn't improve the SNR. Two samples taken at the same time from different spots on the same finger can yield wildly different results.

Everyone in diagnostic medicine knows this (they've been dealing with this problem since the glucose finger prick test). That's why no biotech VC ever invested in Theranos and they had to get tech VCs and fancy board members like Henry Kissinger. A cursory glance at the proposal by someone qualified would have shut that down immediately, but tech VCs don't do due diligence anymore.

	▲	ikiris 37 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		It’s not a lack of due diligence, it’s a lack of prosecution of fraud. They think they can just unload to some sucker for a big payday. See also the entirety of cryptocurrency.
	▲	close04 an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		> but tech VCs don't do due diligence anymore They hope they can cash out before the bubble bursts, whatever that bubble is.

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qwery 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> caused actual damage to humans

You might need to qualify that a bit harder or someone could quite easily point out that all of these worthless shitdribblers cause actual damage to humans. They all lie, they all continue to claim that they hold the future in their feeble sticky hands. Just to take, take, take. You seem fixated on lying being a problem but only one of these two liars causes you to feel that her case is different? Maybe the difference between the two is in the lie of the beholder.

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duped 36 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

The medical field is filled with charlatans and quacks. Elizabeth Holmes went to jail because she defrauded the wrong people.