Genetic profiling company now admits to massive science fraud... Leftist media once heralded this company as a breakthrough for humanity

Friday, June 03, 2016 by: J. D. Heyes
Tags: Theranos, Elizabeth Holmes, scientific fraud

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(NaturalNews) She was once a billion dollar baby but now she's just known as a phony.

As reported by Zero Hedge, the largest-ever "multi-billion" private firm is now at risk of being targeted by regulators, criminal investigators and enforcers of the federal kind – an investigation that could end in jail time for "billionaire" founder Elizabeth Holmes.

Zero Hedge reported that Holmes' company, Theranos, has confirmed – after it was reported by The Wall Street Journal – that the company was forced to void two years of results from its Edison blood-testing devices, and had to issue tens of thousands of corrected reports to doctors and patients.

The WSJ reported:

"The Edison machines were touted as revolutionary and were the main basis for the $9 billion valuation attained by the Palo Alto, Calif., company in a funding round in 2014. But Theranos has now told regulators that it threw out all Edison test results from 2014 and 2015.

"The company has told the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services that it has issued tens of thousands of corrected blood-test reports to doctors and patients, voiding some results and revising others, according to the person familiar with the matter."

890,000 mistakes

"As a reminder, the basis for Theranos ludicrous $9 billion valuation which it appears was achieved without anyone doing any actual due diligence, were the 'Edison' machines which were touted as revolutionary - not just by Holmes but by the fawning media and even the Clintons," Zero Hedge added.

Worse than informing regulators of the bogus test results, Theranos has also told regulators that it used the Edison for a dozen types of tests out of more than 200 offered to consumers, and stopped using the devices altogether in late 2015.

To break it down, Theranos' insane "valuation" was achieved on the basis of only doing 6 percent of blood tests in-house (and all of them erroneously, we now know), while outsourcing 94 percent to companies whose testing products actually worked correctly and who have far lower valuations than its own.

"In the process of commiting [sic] fraud and building up her valuation, Holmes repeatedly gambled with people's lives, sending them clearly wrong results," Zero Hedge reported, citing the WSJ. "As a result some patients have received erroneous results that might have thrown off health decisions made with their doctors ... . All [that] is needed is one death and there is a criminal case."

During an inspection, records reviewed by federal health regulators showed that the California lab ran some 890,000 tests last year. The inspection also found that Edison machines in the lab failed often to even meet the company's own accuracy requirements, the WSJ reported.

Revoking licenses, fines threatened

"There have been massive recalls of single tests in the past, but I'm not aware of one where a company recalled the entirety of the results from its testing platform," Geoffrey Baird, associate professor in the department of laboratory medicine at the University of Washington in Seattle, told the paper. "I believe that's unprecedented."

In March, the CMS officials proposed banning Theranos founder Holmes from the blood-testing business for at least two years, after coming to the conclusion that the company failed to make satisfactory improvements to what regulators have said were major problems at the company's lab.

In addition, CMS officials have also threatened to revoke Theranos' federal license and impose fines against the company.

Theranos' admission that its testing and machines were inadequate was part of a process to head off federal sanctions.

One of the company's biggest partners is the drug retailer Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc., and officials with the retailer have announced that they intend to end their relationship with Theranos unless the company quickly complies with federal regulations.

Sources:

ZeroHedge.com

WSJ.com

Science.NaturalNews.com