It sounded too good to be true when I first heard about Theranos, a company that promised to revolutionize medical testing by making it possible to perform dozens of tests on a single drop of blood, rather than the several tubes that would typically be required. And that wasn’t all. Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes, a Stanford dropout and media magnet whose wardrobe seems to consist solely of all-black outfits, promised to empower patients by giving them the ability to order their own tests, rather than needing to ask a doctor to do so.
Now that the company is under criminal investigation and under pressure to prove that its technology works, FiveThirtyEight reporter Katherine Hobson pointed out that routine blood testing in healthy people has numerous downsides that Holmes never mentioned, including poor predictive value, false positives, overdiagnosis. Even if the test accurately diagnoses a risk factor such as high blood sugar levels, a United Kingdom study found that persons invited to diabetes screening were no more likely than controls to quit smoking, reduce alcohol consumption, or become more physically active.
Yet the fascination with do-it-yourself medical testing continues. A New York Times article recently led with the story of Kristi Wood, a 49-year-old woman who was experiencing fatigue and cognitive problems. Rather than seeing a doctor, she turned to a direct-to-consumer testing service which told her that her vitamin D levels were too high, apparently because she had been overdosing on vitamin D supplements. Once she reduced her supplement dose, “she almost immediately felt better.” She credited the testing service for making this (obvious) diagnosis and now has a bunch of blood tests repeated every four months.
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