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Theranos's troubles continue with the layoffs of about half its workforce:
Theranos is closing its labs and wellness centers, CEO Elizabeth Holmes announced today in a post on the company blog. And this isn't a temporary closure: the "approximately" 340 employees running them are out of a job. [...] The company pivoted away from working on its closely held "nanotainer" technology to a "miniLab" in August. The boxy device — unveiled at the American Association for Clinical Chemistry conference — collects small samples of blood and urine and then uploads them to a centralized system for further analysis. And it's a far cry from what the company, once valued at $9 billion, set out to do. According to several experts whom TechCrunch spoke to at the unveiling, it might not be very innovative, either. Although Theranos didn't want its new device referred to as a "lab on a chip," that's essentially what these experts said the miniLab was. And that has been done.
The new device hinges largely on FDA approval — something Holmes said she'd hoped to fast-track under the emergency use authorization (EUA) for Zika detectors. That plan didn't go so well, however. The FDA denied Theranos approval after finding the company failed to use proper patient safety protocols. [...] The news Theranos is shuttering its labs and wellness centers and laying off nearly half its workforce comes after a series of shocking revelations over the past year involving faulty test results and improperly trained workers. The company is now facing numerous lawsuits, was forced to shut down it's California lab facility, lost its main partner Walgreens and was subject to a Congressional inquiry. Finally in July regulators banned Holmes from stepping foot in her own labs.
Previously: Theranos Introduces New Product to Distract from Scandal
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 06 2016, @02:58PM
This is probably just a spurious correlation, but I perceive a notable drop in media hype about the Zika virus since then. I wonder if that was orchestrated as part of some last ditch effort to save Theranos.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday October 06 2016, @04:16PM
Of course, because the end of the Olympics and the fact Zika only showed up in a tiny corner of Florida afterwards, the start of the school year, fall, and the elections, have absolutely nothing to do with Zika going from bug-spray-selling summer headline to 5-minutes attention span obscurity... It must have been a giant Theranos plot...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 06 2016, @04:25PM
Miami becoming the Zika hot zone happened fairly recently. But now "winter" is coming (yet another factor).
(Score: 2) by Aighearach on Thursday October 06 2016, @06:21PM
The prediction would be that a bunch of small-headed babies would follow the olympics. It is too soon to know if that will result or not. Most people who are infected do not need hospitalization and may not be tabulated.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Friday October 07 2016, @12:44AM
Let's disregard Puerto Rico, because it's merely a U.S. territory, not an actual state.
Pregnant Women with Any Lab Evidence of Zika Virus Infection*
US States and DC: 837
US Territories: 1,638
[...]
Zika Virus Disease Cases Reported to ArboNET*
US States and DC: 3,818
US Territories: 24,201
-- http://www.cdc.gov/zika/index.html [cdc.gov]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 06 2016, @04:16PM
</tinfoil hat>
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 06 2016, @04:30PM
> This is probably just a spurious correlation
Yes it is.
Thats kind of like starting a sentence of with , "I'm not a racist, but ..."
(Score: 4, Touché) by SecurityGuy on Thursday October 06 2016, @03:34PM
And this is from the company whose CEO famously advocated not having a backup plan.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 06 2016, @03:35PM
On the bright side, think of the approximately 340 Aeron chairs to be auctioned off.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 06 2016, @04:27PM
I need a new one. I got my last aeron from the enron auction and its pretty raggedy now.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 06 2016, @07:28PM
I remember an article back in the late days of the DotCom craze where someone had come with with an "Aeron Ratio" to predict how fast a startup would fail based on how many of those chairs that they had in their office.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 06 2016, @05:11PM
SN shud expand its cyberbegging initiative to start a "feed-teh-trolls" campaign as all 340 ployees laid off from Theranos come here to shitpost yesh.
(Score: 2) by stormwyrm on Friday October 07 2016, @03:21AM
Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 07 2016, @11:59PM
Sometimes the links to previous stories are worth following.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 08 2016, @09:18AM