It&#x27;s useful to try to understand what&#x27;s going on with the blood testing stuff, because it shows how hard it is for people in public health to get accurate messages across.<p>Some people think more information is always good.  We see healthy people without any symptoms will sometimes pay for &quot;whole body MRI scans&quot;.<p>Some people think that if you have an illness it&#x27;s going to be seen in the blood.<p>Frequent traditional blood tests are time consuming and not that pleasant.<p>Theranos claims that they don&#x27;t need that much blood; that they can do a blood test with just a drop.<p>This means people don&#x27;t need to see a phlebotomist nurse to have blood taken, they can just blot a drop of blood on a stick.<p>So, the claim goes that people can have very many blood tests all the time, and that will give us more data, and that data is always good.<p>Theranos plays into some deeply entrenched stuff, so while it&#x27;s alarming they got so much money it shouldn&#x27;t really be that surprising.