I am sick of the Bull$h!t, Navi has a Lab and Dodd isn't responsible for AIG

Ok, so today is one of those little rant days. I am pretty sick and tired of companies, politicians and bankers......

It just plain stinks that our economy hit the skids. But we did a lot of this to ourselves. How?

Some say Greed.

Others say lack of regulations.

I say, we believed in Bull$h!t........Everyone was selling it...... That is what killed this economy.

Think about it, our intuitive BS meters were dropped a long time ago. Million dollar homes in rural America???? Sure, why not? Everywhere else prices are going up....

Only make 50k a year? That's ok, your house is worth that million.......We'll take that risk.

The same thing was true with Biotech and this new abomination of DTC.......

Have a technology that has no true clinical application, nor proven utility for informing people of risk????

Sounds great. Here's your term sheet.....heck, why not? Everyone else is doing it......

This type of overselling killed the mortgage industry. It destroyed the market......And like Francis Collins had said in the past, over selling personalized medicine is the quickest way to destroy its promise......

But, don't worry about me folks......My bull$h!t meter is back on and ticking.......That's why I laugh about Navigenics......A good friend of mine pointed out that they were hiring in Sacramento and it became very obvious.

A. They were starting a lab OR
B. They were buying Affy's lab

It became clear when they announced (Likely Early) that they were buying Affy's lab with the 6 million they had left from after their bender in SoHo.....

Ok, makes a ton of sense. Navigenics will need to make a clinically useful test.....but owning a lab is not the way to that.....the Scripps study is.........Which is why my Bull$h!t meter really went off the hook!!! Listen to this....

From Vance (Romance) Vanier.......

"For its part, Navigenics decided to acquire the clinical lab because the company has seen an increase in the volume of orders for its genetic screening service, according to Vance Vanier, Navigenics' chief medical officer."

Really? In an economy when people are trying to decide whether they buy their life saving medications or eat, there are way more requests for a suspect test which STILL COSTS MORE than 23andMe's "similar" test.....

Even richer is the fact that Affy would sell it to you. They spent 10s of millions putting it together, it is over 10,000 square feet!!! And just WHEN, do you expect it to start producing revenue for you on a mass scale????

You have to be either:

A. Full of Bull$h!t because you are looking to flip a company and need assets to sell it.
B. Blatantly lying to hide some other agenda
C. Crazy
D. Actually selling more tests.....but to whom? The Government? The military? Those are the only buyers I see out there......and don't they already have NHGRI????

He goes further

The increase in testing volume may be attributed to the launch of a cheaper service offering, a marketing partnerships with a physicians group called MDVIP, and a research collaboration with The Scripps Translational Science Institute, Affymetrix, and Microsoft to genetically screen 10,000 participants.

Ok. So the answer is you are full of $h!t because you are trying to flip a company.....

1. You guys just said it was hard to recruit people for the Scripps Study

2. MDVIP's CEO was extremely lukewarm when talking about the partnership

3. You service is STILL MORE THAN 23andMe's!!!


The Sherpa Says: DTC genomics, your venture teams are killing personalized medicine.....WHY??? Just like Chris Dodd, your VC teams are full of Bull$h!t. Even Medicare is on to you.....and so is New York State. When will we demand honesty from our financial organizations???