Americans Fell for a Theranos-Style Scam 100 Years Ago. Will We Ever Learn?
The huckster understands what people want – an easy route to good health -- and figures out just how to provide it as long as no one asks too many questions.
"Americans are very much prone to this sort of thinking: Give me a pill or give me a magical bean that can make me lose weight!"
The keys to success: Hoopla, fancy technology, and gullibility. And oh yes, one more thing: a blood sample. Well, lots and lots of blood samples. Every testing fee counts.
Sound familiar? It could be the story of the preternaturally persuasive Elizabeth Holmes, the disgraced founder of Theranos who stands accused of perpetrating a massive blood-testing fraud. But this is a different story from a different time, one that dates back 100 years but sounds almost like it could unfold on the front page of The Wall Street Journal today.
The main difference: Back then, watchdogs thought they'd be able to vanquish fake medicine and scam science. Fat chance, it turned out. It seems like we're more likely to lose-weight-quick than make much of a dent into quackery and health fraud.
Why? Have we learned anything at all over the past century? As we sweep into a new decade, experts says we're not as advanced as we'd like to think. But the fight against fraud and fakery continues.
Quackery: As American As America Itself
In the 17th century, British healers of questionable reputation got a new name -- "quack," from the Dutch word "quacksalver," which originally referred to someone who treats others with home remedies but developed a new meaning along the lines of "charlatan." And these quacks got a new place to sell their wares: the American colonies.
By 1692, a Boston newspaper advertised a patent medicine that promised to cure "the Griping of the Guts, and the Wind Cholick" and – for good measure – "preventeth that woeful Distemper of the Dry Belly Ach." A couple centuries later, the most famous woman in the United States wasn't a first lady or feminist but a hawker of nostrums named Lydia Estes Pinkham whose "vegetable compound" promised to banish "female complaints." One advertisement suggested that the "sure cure" would have saved the life of a Connecticut clergyman whose wife killed him after suffering from feminine maladies for 16 years.
By the early 20th century, Americans were fascinated by electricity and radiation, and both healers and hucksters embraced the new high-tech era. Men with flagging libidos, for example, could irradiate their private parts with the radioactive Radiendocrinator or buy battery-powered electric belts equipped with dangling bits to supercharge their, um, dangling bits.
The Rise of the Radio Wave 'Cure'
Enter radionics, the (supposed) science of better health via radio waves. The idea was that "healthy people radiate healthy energy," and sickness could be reversed through diagnosis and re-tuning, write Dr. Lydia Kang and Nate Pedersen in their 2017 book "Quackery: A Brief History of the Worst Ways to Cure Everything."
Detecting illness and fixing it required machinery -- Dynamizers, Radioclasts and Oscillocasts – that could cost hundreds of dollars each. Thousands of physicians bought them. Fortunately, they could work remotely, for a fee. The worried-and-potentially-unwell just needed to send a blood sample and, of course, a personal check.
Sting operations revealed radionics to be bogus. A skeptic sent a blood sample to one radionics practitioner in Albuquerque who reported back with news of an infected fallopian tube. In fact, the blood sample came from a male guinea pig. As an American Medical Association leader reported, the guinea pig "had shown no female characteristics up to that time, and a postmortem examination yielded no evidence of ladylike attributes."
When Quackery Refused to Yield
The rise of bogus medical technology in the early 20th century spawned a watchdog industry as organizations like the American Medical Association swept into action, said medical historian Eric Boyle, author of 2012's "Quack Medicine: A History of Combating Health Fraud in Twentieth-Century America."
"When quackery was recognized as a major problem, the people who campaigned for its demise were confident that they could get rid of it," he said. "A lot of people believed that increased education, the truths of science, and laws designed to protect consumers would ultimately drive quackery from the marketplace. And then throughout the century, as modern medicine developed, and more effectively treated one disease after another, many observers remained confident in that prediction."
There's a bid to "flood the information highway with truth to turn the storm of fake promotional stuff into a trickle."
But fake medicine persisted as Americans continued their quest to get- healthy-quick… or get-rich-quick by promising to help others to get- healthy-quick. Even radionics refused to die. It's still around in various forms. And, as the Theranos scandal reveals, we're still hoping our blood can offer the keys to longevity and good health.
Why Do We Still Fall for Scams?
In our own era, the Theranos company rose to prominence when founder and CEO Elizabeth Holmes convinced journalists and investors that she'd found a way to cheaply test drops of blood for hundreds of conditions. Then it all fell apart, famously, when the world learned that the technology didn't work. The company has folded, and Holmes faces a federal trial on fraud charges this year.
"There were a lot of prominent, very smart people who bought into the myth of Elizabeth Holmes," a former employee told "60 Minutes," even though the blood tests never actually worked as advertised.
Shouldn't "prominent, very smart people" know better? "People are gullible," said Dr. Stephen Barrett, a psychiatrist and leading quack-buster who runs the QuackWatch website. But there's more to the story. According to him, we're uniquely vulnerable as individuals to bogus medicine.
Scam artists specifically pinpoint their target audiences, such as "smart people," desperate people and alienated people, he said.
Smart people, for example, might be overconfident about their ability to detect fraud and fall for bogus medicine. Alienated people may distrust the establishment, whether it's the medical field or government watchdogs, and be more receptive to alternative sources of information.
Dr. Barrett also points a finger at magical thinking, which comes in different forms. It could mean a New Age-style belief that our minds can control the world around us. Or, as professional quack-buster Alex Berezow said, it could refer to "our cultural obsession with quick fixes."
"Americans are very much prone to this sort of thinking: Give me a pill or give me a magical bean that can make me lose weight! But complex problems need complex solutions," said Berezow, a microbiologist who debunks junk science in his job as a spokesman for the American Council on Science & Health.
American mistrust of expertise makes matters worse, he said. "When I tell people they need to get vaccinated, I'm called a shill for the pharmaceutical industry," he said. "If I say dietary supplements generally don't work, I'm a shill for doctors who want to keep people sick."
What can ordinary citizens do to protect themselves from fake medicine? "You have to have a healthy skepticism of everything," Berezow said. "When you come across something new, is someone trying to take advantage of you? It's a horrible way to think about the world, but there's some truth to it."
"Like any chronic disease, we will have to live with it while we do our best to fight it."
The government and experts have their own roles to play via regulation and education, respectively. For all the criticism it gets, the Food & Drug Administration does serve as a bulwark against fakery in prescription medicine. And while celebrities like Gwyneth "Goop" Paltrow hawk countless questionable medical products on the Internet, scientists and physicians are fighting back by using social media as a tool to promote the truth. There's a bid to "flood the information highway with truth to turn the storm of fake promotional stuff into a trickle," said Dr. Randi Hutter Epstein, a writer in residence at Yale School of Medicine and author of 2018's "Aroused: The History of Hormones and How They Control Just About Everything."
What's next? Like death, taxes and Cher, charlatans are likely to always be with us. Boyle quoted the late William Jarvis, a pioneering quack-buster in the late 20th century who believed health fraud would never be eradicated: "Like any chronic disease, we will have to live with it while we do our best to fight it."
23andMe Is Using Customers’ Genetic Data to Develop Drugs. Is This Brilliant or Dubious?
Leading direct-to-consumer (DTC) genetic testing companies are continuously unveiling novel ways to leverage their vast stores of genetic data.
"23andMe will tell you what diseases you have and then sell you the drugs to treat them."
As reported last week, 23andMe's latest concept is to develop and license new drugs using the data of consumers who have opted in to let their information be used for research. To date, over 10 million people have used the service and around 80 percent have opted in, making its database one of the largest in the world.
Culture researcher Dr. Julia Creet is one of the foremost experts on the DTC genetic testing industry, and in her forthcoming book, The Genealogical Sublime, she bluntly examines whether such companies' motives and interests are in sync with those of consumers.
Leapsmag caught up with Creet about the latest news and the wider industry's implications for health and privacy.
23andMe has just announced that it plans to license a newly developed anti-inflammatory drug, the first one created using its customers' genetic data, to Almirall, a pharma company in Spain. What's your take?
I think this development is the next step in the evolution of the company and its "double-sided" marketing model. In the past, as it enticed customers to give it their DNA, it sold the results and the medical information divulged by customers to other drug companies. Now it is positioning itself to reap the profits of a new model by developing treatments itself.
Given that there are many anti-inflammatory drugs on the market already, whatever Almirall produces might not have much of an impact. We might see this canny move as a "proof of concept," that 23andMe has learned how to "leverage" its genetic data without having to sell them to a third party. In a way, the privacy provisions will be much less complicated, and the company stands to attract investment as it turns itself into [a pseudo pharmaceutical company], a "pharma-psuedocal" company.
Emily Drabant Conley, the president of business development, has said that 23andMe is pursuing other drug compounds and may conduct their own clinical trials rather than licensing them out to their existing research partners. The end goal, it seems, is to make direct-to-consumer DNA testing to drug production and sales back to that same consumer base a seamless and lucrative circle. You have to admit it's a brilliant business model. 23andMe will tell you what diseases you have and then sell you the drugs to treat them.
In your new book, you describe how DTC genetic testing companies have capitalized on our innate human desire to connect with or ancestors and each other. I quote you: "This industry has taken that potent, spiritual, all-too-human need to belong... and monetized it in a particularly exploitative way." But others argue that DTC genetic testing companies are merely providing a service in exchange for fair-market compensation. So where does exploitation come into the picture?
Yes, the industry provides a fee for service, but that's only part of the story. The rest of the story reveals a pernicious industry that hides its business model behind the larger science project of health and heredity. All of the major testing companies play on the idea of "lack," that we can't know who we are unless we buy information about ourselves. When you really think about it, "Who do you think you are?" is a pernicious question that suggests that we don't or can't know who we or to whom we are related without advanced data searches and testing. This existential question used to be a philosophical question; now the answers are provided by databases that acquire more valuable information than they provide in the exchange.
"It's a brilliant business model that exploits consumer naiveté."
As you've said before, consumers are actually paying to be the product because the companies are likely to profit more from selling their genetic data. Could you elaborate?
The largest databases, AncestryDNA and 23andMe, have signed lucrative agreements with biotech companies that pay them for the de-identified data of their customers. What's so valuable is the DNA combined with the family relationships. Consumers provide the family relationships and the companies link and extrapolate the results to larger and larger family trees. Combined with the genetic markers for certain diseases, or increased susceptibility to certain diseases, these databases are very valuable for biotech research.
None of that value will ever be returned to consumers except in the form of for-profit drugs. Ancestry, in particular, has removed all information about its "research partners" from its website, making it very difficult to see how it is profiting from its third-party sales. 23andMe is more open about its "two-sided business model," but encourages consumers to donate their information to science. It's a brilliant business model that exploits consumer naiveté.
A WIRED journalist wrote that "23andMe has been sharing insights gleaned from consented customer data with GSK and at least six other pharmaceutical and biotechnology firms for the past three and a half years." Is this a consumer privacy risk?
I don't see that 23andMe did anything to which consumers didn't consent, albeit through arguably unreadable terms and conditions. The part that worries me more is the 300 phenotype data points that the company has collected on its consumers through longitudinal surveys designed, as Anne Wojcicki, CEO and Co-founder of 23andMe, put it, "to circumvent medical records and just self-report."
Everyone is focused on the DNA, but it's the combination of genetic samples, genealogical information and health records that is the most potent dataset, and 23andMe has figured out a way to extract all three from consumers.
Edible Silverware Is the Next Big Thing in Sustainable Eating
Sure, you may bring a reusable straw when you go out to eat. But what about digesting your silverware at the restaurant? The future is already here.
Edible cutlery feels like a natural progression post-reusable straw.
Air New Zealand just added the new edible coffee cup Twiice into their in-flight service. Made from vanilla, wheat flower, sugar, egg and vanilla essence, the Twiice cups will be standard issue for the international airline.
On the ground, the new, award-winning startup IncrEDIBLESpoon has shipped more than a quarter million edible scoopers. The spoons are all-natural, vegan, and made from wheat, oat, corn, chickpea and barley.
The technological breakthrough is in creating tasty, mass-market material durable enough for delivery in an assembly line environment like airplane service, as well as stable enough to hold a hot cup of coffee or a freezing scoop of ice cream. Twiice cups can last several hours after hot coffee is added, while IncrEDIBLESpoon cutlery holds up to 45 minutes.
"We already caught the interest of a couple major ice cream chains," says Dinesh Tadepalli, co-founder of the IncrEDIBLESpoon parent company Planeteer. "If all goes well, one of them will test out our spoons at their scoop shop early this year."
Next Up
Edible cutlery feels like a natural progression post-reusable straw. And more is already on the menu.
The coffee cup company Twiice is already planning on expanding. Co-founder Jamie Cashmore says other serving items are coming later this year.
IncrEDIBLESpoon is also getting into more utensils. "We plan to mass produce the complete set by year's end: Edible straws, edible forks and edible coffee stirrers," Tadepalli says.
Most notably, Twiice's partner Air New Zealand sees the coffee cup as just a start to other sustainable solutions. The airline estimates it currently serves eight million cups of coffee annually. It's even suggesting customers bring their own reusable cup to the plane – though that isn't as ergonomic nor as attractive as eating everything you are served.
Open Questions
Making everything edible has a few challenges. First is cultural acceptance: With respect to current success, changing eating habits will require going beyond eco-focused and curious eaters.
Second, it's unclear if the short-term economics will add up in favor of airline carriers and other companies. Like alternative fuel, organizations will be more likely to adopt new science when it doesn't require a retrofitting or expensive change to their current business model – even if it does create long-term benefits.
The changes will likely be lopsided, influencing cultures at different times. Airplanes are a great start, as passengers are a captive audience interested in removing waste as soon as possible.
"Imagine eating a black pepper spoon after your soup or a chocolate spoon after your ice cream?"
We can expect edible cutlery to make an easier impact with certain cultures or foods. For instance, injera, the spongy Ethiopian bread, has served as an African plate of sorts for years. It makes sense that IncrEDIBLESpoon's four flavors, Salt, Masala, Spinach and Root, all fit in another bread-as-plate friendly culture: Indian.
Coffee and desserts sound like a good bet for now, though, especially for foodies. "People are curious to try edible spoons as they never heard or experienced them before," Tadepalli says. "Imagine eating a black pepper spoon after your soup or a chocolate spoon after your ice cream?"