Theranos’ Future Looks Bloody Grim as Feds Threaten a Shutdown
Biotech startup Theranos is in trouble again. This time, federal regulators are threatening to shut down the company’s California lab and ban its owners from running another blood testing company for two years.
For a company built on the promise of painless blood tests, that’s gotta sting. Now, the government hasn’t shuttered Theranos quite yet. The warning, a letter from Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services procured by the Wall Street Journal, is dated March 18. Theranos has responded to the feds about the infractions listed in the letter (which include issues with flawed test results), and CMS is currently reviewing their response.
This is bad, bad news for a company whose brand is already facing serious problems. Since October 2015, when the Journal exposed troubling flaws in Theranos’ signature fingerprick technology, the company has lost credibility with the press, the diagnostic community, and consumers. Perhaps most importantly, it has threatened important business partnerships with companies like Walgreens1. The question now is, can Theranos survive?
