Latest news with #ElizabethHolmes
Yahoo
30-06-2025
- Automotive
- Yahoo
theranos Calls on President Trump to Pardon Suresh 'Sunny' Balwani
PALM BEACH, Fla., June 30, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- After calling on President Trump last Friday to pardon Elizabeth Holmes, Ryan ElHosseiny, current CEO and inventor behind the revived theranos, now also urges the President to pardon Ramesh 'Sunny' Balwani. ElHosseiny, who re-launched the theranos brand earlier this year, has taken over the name and mission, replicating the technology. 'I watched nearly eight hours of the SEC deposition. Everything this man said is factual. Every problem the lab industry has, theranos solved,' said ElHosseiny. Sunny Balwani referred to commercial analyzers as 'clunkers' during his SEC testimony, a statement ElHosseiny strongly agrees with, particularly in regard to Siemens machines. 'Before theranos, I ran the first lab in the U.S. to install the Siemens Atellica System in 2018. For at least five years, we dealt with Siemens engineers practically living in our lab due to constant breakdowns. You can read reviews on Reddit from hospitals and labs describing the Atellica system as 'hell on earth' and wishing they had chosen another manufacturer.' theranos, like performance brands in other industries, modified its commercial analyzers to improve their reliability and performance. ElHosseiny draws a direct comparison: 'Just as Brabus modifies Mercedes-Benz vehicles and Taran Tactical customizes Glock pistols, theranos upgraded Siemens machines to improve their performance,' ElHosseiny said. 'Brabus takes an already solid Mercedes and transforms it into a high-performance vehicle.' Both Brabus and Taran Tactical proudly place their logos on their modified products, and so did theranos. 'We didn't modify for fun—we had to. And every test was validated as an LDT (Laboratory Developed Test) under CLIA regulation,' ElHosseiny explains. 'We didn't 'hack' anything, as falsely claimed by Wall Street Journal journalist, John Carreyrou. The Siemens Advia 1800, for example, is an 'open channel' instrument. That means I can load reagents from other manufacturers and program protocols to run custom testing workflows. So the hacking myth is exactly that, a myth.' ElHosseiny has been traveling across the country with and recently revived the company theranos last month. Since then, the company has gone viral, gaining a large following after announcing the discovery of critical safety concerns involving the pharmaceutical drug Avastin. According to ElHosseiny, the company's findings echo long-standing concerns raised by RFK Jr., Director of the Department of Health and Human Services. 'We are here to support MAHA, not just in word but through real action, by pressing for transparency and accountability in the regulatory process. Protecting America's public health is our shared mission,' ElHosseiny said. 'Our work highlights critical safety concerns, and we're committed to doing everything in our power to save lives.'In a personal statement, ElHosseiny adds: 'Mr. President, both Sunny Balwani and Elizabeth Holmes dedicated themselves to the mission of theranos. This work isn't easy, I've been in it for over four years. theranos is echoing what you and RFK Jr. are fighting for: to fix a flawed healthcare system. Please set them free, not just because I asked, but because the work I've published proves they are both innocent and made real contributions to the United States of you, sir. Over and out.' ElHosseiny has released a new documentary, The Inventors, now streaming on the theranos website: Media Contact: Ryan ElHosseiny, ryan@
Express Tribune
27-06-2025
- Politics
- Express Tribune
Order out of chaos
Listen to article Master disclaimer: If I manage to cover all disclaimers in this piece, I will get to the core of my argument today. Otherwise, perhaps I will rename it Disclaimers and leave it at that. But you will appreciate these disclaimers are necessary. First disclaimer: The phrase "order out of chaos" ("ordo ab chao" in Latin) is often attributed to the 33rd Scottish Rite Masonry. This piece has nothing to do with them. I use the phrase because it resonates with my message, as you will see. Second disclaimer: There is a beautiful quote attributed to Elizabeth Holmes, the disgraced founder of Theranos, a privately owned corporation once touted as a breakthrough health-tech company. It goes like this: "First they think you're crazy, then they fight you, and then all of a sudden you change the world." Upon closer inspection, it seems to be a paraphrase of the following statement, commonly misattributed to Mahatma Gandhi: "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." In reality, this too is a rewording of a statement by Nicholas Klein, an American trade union activist speaking in 1918. Consider the statement: "First they ignore you. Then they ridicule you. And then they attack you and want to burn you. And then they build monuments to you." I like all three versions because they correspond with my lived experience. The third disclaimer relates to one of my own recent positions. In my piece titled "Why states fear complexity", dated 14 September 2024, I pointed out that two forces — complexity and acceleration — were making societies too complicated to be governed by any state, resulting in the state's woefully inadequate responses like repression, spin, propaganda and moral pollution. Then I wrote: "With such state-driven projects to subvert and pervert all arguments, moral pollution will only add to complexity... States' reaction to this turf encroachment will not present a pretty sight." Then I suggested a remedy: "What can ordinary citizens do? The best disruption is the simplest — basic human decency. We can take charge of the future if all decent souls worldwide are vigilant. If you count yourself among them, wake up, be ready to use everything you have got, and watch this space." You are within your rights to complain that this is the context — where is the disclaimer? So here it is: I believe the simple remedy worked, and is still working. Now to my core argument today, albeit with some context. In my past columns, I have repeatedly pointed out that in his book, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, Samuel Huntington was being manipulative rather than prescient. With the luxury of 20/20 hindsight, one can say that his chief purpose was to divide and prime the world for a clash that could conveniently be weaponised and used by his favoured groups and entities. I have also mentioned that while the direct impact of this sordid propaganda piece started to wane after the retirement of the Global War on Terror (GWOT) in 2017 — due to the emergent complexity of politics — two of its and GWOT's key beneficiaries and committed Islamophobes (India and Israel) clung to it as if their lives depended on it. While nations are bigger than ideologies, their ruling elites often are not. Especially when their rise to power and influence can be directly linked to such a virulent ideology or philosophy. Since the governments headed by Benjamin Netanyahu and Narendra Modi have repeatedly tried to reshape their respective countries' internal political structures and the global rule-based order through a clever use of Islamophobia — with diminishing returns and capacity — they have been growing restless. So, in the past sixty days, both nations initiated dangerous wars. India attacked Pakistan. Israel attacked Iran. Their sense of entitlement has been informed by their experiences spanning decades. Since Kargil in 1999, India has felt that most of its claims are taken at face value. After 9/11, this trend was solidified. In 2016, it claimed the Uri incident was perpetrated by Pakistan-backed militants, against whom it had carried out a surgical strike. The world did not see any reason to dispute either claim. In 2019, on the cusp of a national election, it again blamed Pakistani militants and claimed to have carried out aerial strikes — again, without much proof. No disputes there either. The international media only questioned the claim about downing an F-16. This time, everything changed. Likewise, Netanyahu did the same. Since the ghastly attacks of 7 October 2023, he has launched a forever war. Gaza, then Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen. But forever wars need superpower-level resources, which Israel lacks. So, his recent attack on Iran was an attempt to externalise the forever war by dragging the US into it. But through his cleverly calculated moves, President Trump demolished that attempt. The question is: what changed? The first reason: the law of diminishing returns. If you destroy the international rule-based system to such an extent that it can do nothing about your atrocities in Gaza or Kashmir, then the very order which rescued you repeatedly in the past can no longer come to your rescue. You got greedy and slew the golden goose. The second reason is even simpler. It speaks to the nature of complexity I flagged earlier. While the inner workings of everything are getting complex, their end result is a simpler interface. For instance, you once needed knowledge and practice to code, make music, or create videos. Now you tell AI what you want and, with some refinement, it delivers results. The same goes for narratives. If you keep calling out propaganda, prejudice, and manipulations consistently and clearly, people begin to listen. Again, this is my lived experience. You need coherence and credibility, not sophisticated perception management. Just tell people what you hear and see. Since they can relate to your estimation of the objective truth, they pay attention. Now the question is: where do we go from here? These two elements are down but not out. If they can be convinced that the age of spin and conspiracy is over, the world can take a beautiful turn. But will they? Sadly, there are few signs that they will. In fact, they might want to hurt President Trump. In their diminished capacity, Indians are already trying to do that. But Mr Trump is what Nassim Nicholas Taleb calls 'antifragile', growing with every attempt to undermine him. Perhaps after such outdated tactics are exhausted, they may discover a better world is possible: one where all prejudices — Islamophobia, Christianophobia, antisemitism, Hinduphobia — are equally repulsive, and we can all progress in harmony. Order out of chaos, perhaps!
Yahoo
16-06-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Elizabeth Holmes Is in Prison But 'Theranos 2.0' Just Hit the Market
'You Cannot Silence the Science,' Says Theranos and Blue Magic Inventor PALM BEACH, Fla., June 16, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Elizabeth Holmes may be behind bars, but the vision she once promoted, a world where blood diagnostics could be easier, affordable and more accessible…is experiencing an unexpected revival. Ryan ElHosseiny, former lab CEO and inventor of the viral Blue Magic bio-formulation technology, has officially re-launched Theranos. Despite its quiet launch, the news media is beginning to take notice. The CBS12 investigative team in West Palm Beach recently spotlighted ElHosseiny and his bold new vision pressing him with tough questions about whether this technology is actually valid and accurate. ElHosseiny not only welcomes the scrutiny he encourages it. 'I want this technology challenged,' he said. Mike Magnoli, head of CBS 12 I-Team, said he could not come to a conclusion because he is not a scientist. A very different conclusion than former WSJ investigative reporter and Bad Blood author, John Carreyrou. 'The invention has worked since 2007. It's a complex technology that needs to be understood. Now, we're here to deliver—transparently, ethically, and with science that undisputedly stands up to scrutiny. This isn't just a biotech reboot. It's a reckoning and an opportunity to restore public trust in health innovation by delivering life-saving tools to the people who need them most with all of that information on our website.' 'Elizabeth Holmes may be in prison, but the technology is real and it is out now,' said ElHosseiny. 'You can't silence the science.' ElHosseiny's new venture aims to bring out the facts after he already validated and replicated Elizabeth Holmes' inventions. The technology is already gaining attention from biotech insiders for its transparency, clinical rigor, and potential to reshape preventative care.' With delays in diagnostics still plaguing hospitals and early detection more critical than ever, the platform's timing is significant for a new preventive, MAHA health care system. 'I am not a sock puppet in the healthcare space. I am an innovator, an inventor and put quality products before profits. I've been doing that for over 20 years and that is exactly what's written all over theranos since it was founded by Elizabeth Holmes. No one did their homework on theranos, I did and here I am today,' says ElHosseiny. The company is currently operating in stealth mode, with early clinical validations already in place. Website: CONTACT: For more information, media inquiries, or interview requests with Ryan ElHosseiny, contact Emily Pantelides at Emily@
CNN
07-06-2025
- Entertainment
- CNN
TikTok's scam sleuth wants to show you how companies are cheating — in a fun way
We live in the golden age of grift. Most of us can't go a day without at least one scammy text about an unpaid toll or a call from an unknown number with a shockingly human-like AI voice on the other side. The scale of the scam onslaught feels like it's part of some Faustian bargain we all entered into: In exchange for the miracle of, like, access to all the world's knowledge and people in our pockets, all the world's knowledge and people similarly have access to us, including the hustlers and the con artists. But way more hustlers, con artists and grifters than any other generation of human beings on Earth has ever had to comprehend before, let alone fend off. Thankfully, all the scam spam doesn't seem to have killed anyone's appetite for the grift as a genre. Elizabeth Holmes' Theranos con? I'll take a book, a podcast, a documentary and at least one serialized streaming project, please. Lifting the veil on a doomsday cult? I'm in, every day, and twice on Sundays. Never forget: We once had two dueling Fyre Festival documentaries on Hulu and Netflix. OK, maybe I'm just a mark for tales of clever cons, exposed. This newsletter is, in part, an outlet for my own fascination with the business hype cycle, which tends to, you know, exaggerate the truth. Or straight-up lie. But (thanks again to the miracle of the internet), I know that I'm not alone. Alex Falcone, an LA-based comedian, is a fellow con connoisseur (a con-noisseur?). Through his TikTok channel, Falcone excels at the art of the two-minute explainer, tackling frauds big (AI) and small (white chocolate). Falcone says he isn't a journalist, but he approaches his work with a similar hunger to peek behind the facade of a thing and expose it. Of his early foray into 'unfun facts,' Falcone says, he wanted to find the intersection of 'a little bit of a wet blanket, but you're OK afterwards… I don't like ruining people's day.' He's hit a nerve on TikTok, where he has more than half a million followers and a popular recurring series called 'Is it a scam? Yep.' (The delivery here is crucial: 'Is-it-a-scamyep!') The schtick is fast-talking facts and plenty of jokes about the companies and people and concepts that are, in one way or another, selling a bill of goods. I caught up with Falcone recently over Zoom to discuss the businesses of grift, comedy and journalism. The following interview has been edited for length and clarity. Nightcap: Can you tell me how you got on the scam beat? Alex Falcone: I've always liked the scheme-y underbelly. My grandfather worked in a few different contexts in carnivals, but the bulk of his life he was a pitchman, setting up a table by the midway selling kitchen gadgets and magic tricks. My dad's first job was as a kid standing in the audience while his father demonstrated a magic trick then yelling, 'How did he do that? I'll take two!' I met a con man when I was 16, and he taught me how to do card-cheating and pool-sharking stuff… and, like, mostly didn't use it for evil. I just like knowing how it works. It's sort of like the glass elevator where you see the mechanism behind it. Like, how am I being manipulated? I was working on 'unfun facts,' which is like the opposite of a party trick. My party-ruiner is telling people something that's going to bum them out that they didn't know. And that, it turns out, had a lot of overlap with my interest in things that were slightly crime-y. Nightcap: Why do you think people on TikTok have been so receptive to the scam series? Falcone: I think everybody is vaguely aware that they're walking around in a haunted carnival all the time — that everybody is trying to take advantage of them. If you're at a midway, then you know the basketball hoop is harder than other basketball hoops. Otherwise they wouldn't give you stuffed animals for making one free throw. Why is that? It's because it's 11 feet, and it's not perfectly round… and you know that it's wrong, but then it's still fun to be like, 'Oh, that's how you were getting me.' Nightcap: Do you find yourself, or your audience, experiencing scam fatigue? Falcone: So this is the trick. By slightly redefining what 'scam' means, it allows me to keep finding new ways to talk about things instead of just being bummed out. Whenever I'm tired of talking about AI or crypto, I can do an episode on white chocolate. Nightcap: Ugh, such a scam! Falcone: It's disgusting! It was originally invented as a medical coating for pills. And then they were like, 'we can sell this because we have all this extra cocoa butter lying around, and we can mix it with palm oil, which we've cut down the rainforest to make, and now we have too much of it.' Every step of that is terrifying, but also it tastes like cat vomit. So that's inherently funny. That's my palate cleanser. I have an escape valve for a lot of this. Actually, if you hadn't asked that, I would have asked you the same question… How do you avoid getting bummed out by this? Are all of your colleagues just sort of zombie-brained now? Nightcap: There's a bit of zombie-brain going around. I will say I spend a good amount of time — like a shameful amount of time — disassociating on TikTok. Falcone: I think that's great… There are a lot of problems with the way algorithms work, but one of the things that's great is you can just create an account with a new name, a fresh algorithm, and decide this algorithm is just for escapism. I did a video about algorithms a while ago, and so as a demonstration I decided to make an account for videos about bunnies. In TikTok, it took me 15 minutes before the algorithm was just rabbits and nothing else… So that is one of the ways that I've kept myself sane — having multiple algorithms that I play with depending on my mood. Having a rabbit account as a side project is really fun. Nightcap: You've covered AI hype and marketing a few times… Falcone: It feels like there's an emperor-has-no clothes situation — that we're all just waiting for somebody to be like, Oh, wait, it's bad! Oh… we thought so, and then you told us we were dumb for thinking that it's not working, but it is actually bad. Nightcap: How do you source your scam material? Falcone: I have what I think of as the mainline scam, where the answer is 'yep,' and I just have a backlog of those. Occasionally, stuff from friends pops up. Somebody mentioned to me the other day that the Oscars were originally started to prevent actors from unionizing, which I assumed couldn't possibly be true. But it turns out, [Louis B. Mayer] of MGM was the founder of the academy, and that was what he said he was doing. (Editor's note: This checks out.) The user submissions have a separate path, because the answer to 'Is it a scam?' can sometimes be 'no.' Nightcap: I was so nervous when I came across one of your videos about Costco. Please don't ruin Costco! Falcone: Costco was a great 'nope.' The thing about Costco, and this is true of a lot of these things, is it's not a scam, but it's definitely a scheme. You have to pay to shop, which is such a crazy business model. You pay to walk in the door of a store where everything still costs money. That's definitely a scheme. But I don't think it's a scam. Now I have 100-150 messages every day on the different platforms, asking 'can you look into this thing for me' … But the main source is just things that I'm generally mad about in my own life. I have plenty of those to keep this going for another couple years.
CNN
07-06-2025
- Entertainment
- CNN
TikTok's scam sleuth wants to show you how companies are cheating — in a fun way
We live in the golden age of grift. Most of us can't go a day without at least one scammy text about an unpaid toll or a call from an unknown number with a shockingly human-like AI voice on the other side. The scale of the scam onslaught feels like it's part of some Faustian bargain we all entered into: In exchange for the miracle of, like, access to all the world's knowledge and people in our pockets, all the world's knowledge and people similarly have access to us, including the hustlers and the con artists. But way more hustlers, con artists and grifters than any other generation of human beings on Earth has ever had to comprehend before, let alone fend off. Thankfully, all the scam spam doesn't seem to have killed anyone's appetite for the grift as a genre. Elizabeth Holmes' Theranos con? I'll take a book, a podcast, a documentary and at least one serialized streaming project, please. Lifting the veil on a doomsday cult? I'm in, every day, and twice on Sundays. Never forget: We once had two dueling Fyre Festival documentaries on Hulu and Netflix. OK, maybe I'm just a mark for tales of clever cons, exposed. This newsletter is, in part, an outlet for my own fascination with the business hype cycle, which tends to, you know, exaggerate the truth. Or straight-up lie. But (thanks again to the miracle of the internet), I know that I'm not alone. Alex Falcone, an LA-based comedian, is a fellow con connoisseur (a con-noisseur?). Through his TikTok channel, Falcone excels at the art of the two-minute explainer, tackling frauds big (AI) and small (white chocolate). Falcone says he isn't a journalist, but he approaches his work with a similar hunger to peek behind the facade of a thing and expose it. Of his early foray into 'unfun facts,' Falcone says, he wanted to find the intersection of 'a little bit of a wet blanket, but you're OK afterwards… I don't like ruining people's day.' He's hit a nerve on TikTok, where he has more than half a million followers and a popular recurring series called 'Is it a scam? Yep.' (The delivery here is crucial: 'Is-it-a-scamyep!') The schtick is fast-talking facts and plenty of jokes about the companies and people and concepts that are, in one way or another, selling a bill of goods. I caught up with Falcone recently over Zoom to discuss the businesses of grift, comedy and journalism. The following interview has been edited for length and clarity. Nightcap: Can you tell me how you got on the scam beat? Alex Falcone: I've always liked the scheme-y underbelly. My grandfather worked in a few different contexts in carnivals, but the bulk of his life he was a pitchman, setting up a table by the midway selling kitchen gadgets and magic tricks. My dad's first job was as a kid standing in the audience while his father demonstrated a magic trick then yelling, 'How did he do that? I'll take two!' I met a con man when I was 16, and he taught me how to do card-cheating and pool-sharking stuff… and, like, mostly didn't use it for evil. I just like knowing how it works. It's sort of like the glass elevator where you see the mechanism behind it. Like, how am I being manipulated? I was working on 'unfun facts,' which is like the opposite of a party trick. My party-ruiner is telling people something that's going to bum them out that they didn't know. And that, it turns out, had a lot of overlap with my interest in things that were slightly crime-y. Nightcap: Why do you think people on TikTok have been so receptive to the scam series? Falcone: I think everybody is vaguely aware that they're walking around in a haunted carnival all the time — that everybody is trying to take advantage of them. If you're at a midway, then you know the basketball hoop is harder than other basketball hoops. Otherwise they wouldn't give you stuffed animals for making one free throw. Why is that? It's because it's 11 feet, and it's not perfectly round… and you know that it's wrong, but then it's still fun to be like, 'Oh, that's how you were getting me.' Nightcap: Do you find yourself, or your audience, experiencing scam fatigue? Falcone: So this is the trick. By slightly redefining what 'scam' means, it allows me to keep finding new ways to talk about things instead of just being bummed out. Whenever I'm tired of talking about AI or crypto, I can do an episode on white chocolate. Nightcap: Ugh, such a scam! Falcone: It's disgusting! It was originally invented as a medical coating for pills. And then they were like, 'we can sell this because we have all this extra cocoa butter lying around, and we can mix it with palm oil, which we've cut down the rainforest to make, and now we have too much of it.' Every step of that is terrifying, but also it tastes like cat vomit. So that's inherently funny. That's my palate cleanser. I have an escape valve for a lot of this. Actually, if you hadn't asked that, I would have asked you the same question… How do you avoid getting bummed out by this? Are all of your colleagues just sort of zombie-brained now? Nightcap: There's a bit of zombie-brain going around. I will say I spend a good amount of time — like a shameful amount of time — disassociating on TikTok. Falcone: I think that's great… There are a lot of problems with the way algorithms work, but one of the things that's great is you can just create an account with a new name, a fresh algorithm, and decide this algorithm is just for escapism. I did a video about algorithms a while ago, and so as a demonstration I decided to make an account for videos about bunnies. In TikTok, it took me 15 minutes before the algorithm was just rabbits and nothing else… So that is one of the ways that I've kept myself sane — having multiple algorithms that I play with depending on my mood. Having a rabbit account as a side project is really fun. Nightcap: You've covered AI hype and marketing a few times… Falcone: It feels like there's an emperor-has-no clothes situation — that we're all just waiting for somebody to be like, Oh, wait, it's bad! Oh… we thought so, and then you told us we were dumb for thinking that it's not working, but it is actually bad. Nightcap: How do you source your scam material? Falcone: I have what I think of as the mainline scam, where the answer is 'yep,' and I just have a backlog of those. Occasionally, stuff from friends pops up. Somebody mentioned to me the other day that the Oscars were originally started to prevent actors from unionizing, which I assumed couldn't possibly be true. But it turns out, [Louis B. Mayer] of MGM was the founder of the academy, and that was what he said he was doing. (Editor's note: This checks out.) The user submissions have a separate path, because the answer to 'Is it a scam?' can sometimes be 'no.' Nightcap: I was so nervous when I came across one of your videos about Costco. Please don't ruin Costco! Falcone: Costco was a great 'nope.' The thing about Costco, and this is true of a lot of these things, is it's not a scam, but it's definitely a scheme. You have to pay to shop, which is such a crazy business model. You pay to walk in the door of a store where everything still costs money. That's definitely a scheme. But I don't think it's a scam. Now I have 100-150 messages every day on the different platforms, asking 'can you look into this thing for me' … But the main source is just things that I'm generally mad about in my own life. I have plenty of those to keep this going for another couple years.
