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Debates9 963919 9878034 Final Group Paper Group 9 Against Edison- Potential Patients Kendall Travis, Charles Goff, Jenna Lang, Isaiah Watts Position: Against Edison Perspective: Potential Patients Strategy: Against Edison- Potential Patients Background As appealing as Theranos’s low prices are for blood testing, the cost of that is results that are far from the truth. The lab technicians who work at Theranos have little faith in the tests that they do. They feel criminal, uncertain, and concerned enough to the point where they would never do a test there or allow a family member to. For anyone to work there, non-disclosure agreements have to be signed. Clearly the company is hiding something. And for the many workers who have quit Theranos, they have spoken up about how defective everything is there, knowing it would result in the harassment and hounding from Theranos’s team of lawyers and higher up individuals, a price they were willing to pay to warn potential patients like us. The life-changing effects of Theranos’s work have all been anecdotal claims from Elizabeth Holmes, her work is discovered in isolation, and also her work is impossible to achieve with a single drop of blood according to medical experts. All of these are signs of bogus science that can be tied to Theranos. The list of concerns we have compiled comes from watching The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley on HBO. The documentary alone has made it easy for us, as potential patients, to see that Theranos is a fraudulent and unfit company that is unethical for any patient to go to. What is relevant to your analysis: There are many moral and practical challenges for Edison. According to Dark Daily, there are multiple patients that have spoken out about the negative effects of Theranos testing. Breast-cancer survivor Sheri Ackert told the Wall Street Journal she panicked when her blood tests from Theranos indicated her cancer may have reoccurred. After being retested by a different clinical laboratory, her results were found to be normal. Its inaccurate results like this can change a person's life and that is not worth the cheap, fast testing of Theranos. A practical challenge regarding Edison is the machine itself. According to The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley, an individual that had worked with the machine firsthand stated that the machine functioned very poorly. It would tense up and he would have to reach in there with his hands where the needles are sharp enough to easily puncture skin. It was a mess, blood would evaporate in the room, the centrifuges would explode inside in the middle of testing, and the machine was said to be extremely small for its claimed functions. It has been said that the machine is impractical, “The laws of physics aren't going to permit us to cram all the stuff that we’ve decided needs to go in there into this little box”. An engineer working in Silicon Valley mentioned that it may be more feasible to make the box bigger but was shut down after the recommendation. Your Task/Strategy: Our strategy for our case is to make sure that Theranos never operates as a company ever again. As concerned patients we want to make sure that Elizabeth Holmes Group 9 Against Edison- Potential Patients Kendall Travis, Charles Goff, Jenna Lang, Isaiah Watts and all of her staff are held accountable for the fraud of the Edison. We will appear in court to testify against the company with evidence claiming that Theranos never cared about the correctness of their product or their patients’ safety. As a group we will discuss why Theranos’s logic is flawed and how they manipulate the public to believe why their product the Edison is the future of healthcare. The use of Edison has not been shown to the public which makes the issue of whether or not their product actually works doubtful. In the end, our main goal is to end all production relating to the company of Theranos because we as patients view Theranos as a fraudulent company that needs to be shut down. What position on the relevant elements does your strategy take: The position we take on this issue is all for technological innovation commitments! We support the idea of technological advancements and that is why we went to Edison. But we are also supporters of ethics involving business concerns, patient privacy, and patient care. It is unethical to withhold information from the using patients and to falsify numbers to keep the business running. Our biggest concern is that the patients are being deceived and negatively impacted by common misdiagnosis. We are also concerned about the wellness of the staff workers but that is another story. As for stakeholders, which is just another name for people with an interest in something such as a business, if they were investors in the company then they would probably motivate them to turn their shoulders on a terrible instance like this. And in that case, we will have opposing views. If the money is powerful enough to make them continue to support the company, then no lectures about ethics will help. I believe our strategy should be to sue the company for its wrongdoings. If all goes as planned, we hope to get Edison shutdown. Justification The reason why we as patients believe that Theranos should be sued and lose their company is because the lie to their patients about the vision of their product. When reporters and people have asked about the Edison and if Elizabeth Holmes would show us how the product works, she and all of her staff have continually told reporters that the machine was not ready to be tested. The company as a whole has made no progress at releasing any new information about their product. Elizabeth Holmes, who is the founder and CEO of Theranos, has got away with manipulating stockholders to invest in the Theranos company and product even though they have never produced any results. After Ian Gibbons, who was biochemist, leaked some private files to the New York Times about the validity of the company he shortly after committed suicide. After this instance, we as patients are determined to make sure that Theranos will not affect any patients ever again. Counterpoints Criticisms of our view are individuals that support Edison, its function, and its results. For example, the inventor of Edison Elizabeth Holmes is a strong supporter of it but there are definitely counter arguments. When people doubt the technology of Theranos and the function of the Edison machine, Elizabeth Holmes states that she is a Group 9 Against Edison- Potential Patients Kendall Travis, Charles Goff, Jenna Lang, Isaiah Watts qualified individual and that her invention will revolutionize health care. She assures that Theranos is painless, fast, easy, and reliable. This perspective of Theranos is incorrect in many ways. Elizabeth Holmes was a college dropout, she says that she is an engineer. There is no way that a college dropout would be able to revolutionize this kind of technology. Whenever Elizabeth is in an interview, she steers away from controversial questions, and constantly keeps her eyes open- showing uncomfortable body language. Stated in the program: The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley, Edison has a “comedy of errors” like not being able to transfer fluids, regulate temperature, and has constant design changes including the color, shape, and mechanics. Elizabeth Holmes was so concerned with the reputation of her company that her expert blood tester Ian Gibbons Ph.D., majorly doubted the functionality of her technology and was concerned that because of his beliefs, he would lose his job. Ian then got into bad shape with Elizabeth and her college Sunny, he fell into a deep depression and ended up committing suicide. The company of Theranos and its CEO Elizabeth Holmes, is not out to help people; the establishment and their machine Edison are not reliable. Personal Plea: After doing our research, it is clear to see that Theranos is the last place anyone should go to for their blood tests. There are too many variables in regards to Theranos that raise concern for us such as: no approval from the FDA, lab technicians who feel uncertain and criminal in their work, harmed patients speaking up about negative effects and experiences, the vagueness of the entire company and its processes, modified standard equipment, violated lab procedures and standards, lies told to the public and patients about their product, multiple signs of bogus science raised, and their hostility towards skeptics to protect their “trade secret” to list a few issues, is inexcusable. The best and safest choice we see as potential patients is to choose a different company for blood tests. Health needs to be taken seriously and processed carefully to give patients accurate results. Theranos giving inaccurate results to patients that can create unnecessary death scares is unacceptable. Test your blood at a company that has been around, proved itself to be safe, and that is capable to give its patients accurate test results that are not tampered with. Group 9 Against Edison- Potential Patients Kendall Travis, Charles Goff, Jenna Lang, Isaiah Watts Bibliography “The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley” HBO Now. Accessed November 25, 2019. https://play.hbonow.com/feature/urn:hbo:feature:GXGWJ8wyZ- K2uAwEAAAAK?icid=hbo_signin_now “Previously High-Flying Theranos Provides Clinical Laboratories and Pathology Groups with Valuable Lesson on How Quickly Consumer Trust Can Be Lost.” Dark Daily. Accessed November 26, 2019. https://www.darkdaily.com/previously-high-flying- theranos-provides-clinical-laboratories-and-pathology-groups-with-valuable-lesson-on- how-quickly-consumer-trust-can-be-lost/.
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