Re:Walgreen Terminates Partnership with Theranos
by honkhonkpants on Sunday June 12, 2016 @10:06PM
(#11891339)
I don't think that's "our community". It certainly isn't my community. I believe (and hope) that the delusional libertarian wing of the entrepreneurial class, who believe that regulation has no place in a market, is a fringe element.
Re:Walgreen Terminates Partnership with Theranos
by HarryHirsch on Sunday June 12, 2016 @11:57PM
(#11891644)
The "no regulation faction" is fighting hard to get out of its corner. A few days ago, Jessica Flanigan (https://sites.google.com/site/jessicamflanigan/Research), an anti-FDA medicine ethicist at the University of Richmond, made the rounds on this very board. She shows how this group is trying to get its ideas accepted by the mainstream.
Note that she is housed at a philosophy department! Physicians are trained to put patient outcomes first. If she were invited to speak at any medical school she would be torn to pieces. She wouldn't have any good answers how her positions would help prevent Elixir Sulfanilamide or now Theranos. The medical school I am associated with is in the South, in a conservative town, and she wouldn't fare well here. But I guess at a conservative philosophy department they don't ask that kind of hard questions.
We need to fight to keep the libertarian fringe confined.
Re:Walgreen Terminates Partnership with Theranos
by wpietri on Monday June 13, 2016 @11:21AM
(#11894577)
That's a little no-true-scotsman for my tastes. I don't like those people either. But it's hard to say that those people are not part of the Silicon Valley startup community, or the Hacker News community.
Re:Walgreen Terminates Partnership with Theranos
by dnautics on Monday June 13, 2016 @01:03AM
(#11891819)
Pretty sure most libertarians are ok with regulations when they involve possibly causing harm to someone's body or laying hands on someone's body or property, and fraud. This case hits two of those concerns.
Re:Walgreen Terminates Partnership with Theranos
by nommm-nommm on Monday June 13, 2016 @10:44AM
(#11894244)
Not from what I've seen posted here. Hopefully that is a very fringe group that's just very vocal.
Re:Walgreen Terminates Partnership with Theranos
by 1138 on Sunday June 12, 2016 @10:57PM
(#11891471)
What does their blood test tech not working have to do with regulators?
Re:Walgreen Terminates Partnership with Theranos
by nommm-nommm on Monday June 13, 2016 @10:45AM
(#11894251)
Regulators allow only blood tests that work.
But I think it's worth reflecting a bit on how much our community created and benefits from the tech-genius hype cycle that they exploited. On how much we have supported a mythos that our cutting-edge innovations can't be judged by existing stick-in-the-mud regulators.
I'm not saying that those are entirely bad things. But it's worth remembering that Theranos couldn't have happened without Silicon Valley. If we want to keep the latitude we've been given, maybe should be more vigorous about policing the people making use of it.