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Over the last few months, the lab-testing startup Theranos has endured a relentless stretch of bad publicity, morphing from a health tech darling to a Silicon Valley cautionary tale. It started last October, when The Wall Street Journal published an investigation of the company’s much-hyped technology, which promised it could run a host of lab tests from just a few drops of blood taken from a finger. Its proprietary technology and lower prices, the company said, would democratize blood testing and encourage its use for routine health monitoring.
But the Journal reported that the proprietary device wasn’t all it was cracked up to be, and that the company was running most of its tests on conventional lab machines. Since then there has been news of dissolved business partnerships, problems with regulators, criminal and civil probes and personnel changes.
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Much of the debate over the last few months has been about whether Theranos’s technology can actually do what the company has said it can. But there’s a dubious assumption at the heart of Theranos, arguably just as damning as the questions about its technology. Theranos wants us to believe that ostensibly healthy people can get healthier by having more tests. But the science suggests that is far from true.
Read full, original post: Theranos Is Wrong: We Don’t Need More Blood Tests
