Evaluation of News Magazine Stories

            Research labs have to abide by certain regulations in order to operate. What happens if they don’t? Can the government actually shut them down? Is it really correct to say that your prescription medication should be taken once daily?

            The first debate is essentially whether a lab in California should be shut down. The Theranos Lab tests blood samples and has recently been questioned for its practices. They had deficient blood tests, incapable employees, and had cheated on some of their proficiency tests. All of these issues raise major health concerns for patients. The health inspector noted that this could get them shut down.

            Ed Thornborrow and Tim Hammill commented on how serious these conditions were. The lab just hired two new employees, a lab director (Dr. Kingshuk) and a clinical consultant, Dr. Waldo Concepion. The company claims that the addition of new employees will further help the company.

Although dates were never specifically mentioned, one can imply that it was recently before the article was published (perhaps sometime in January of 2016). Most of the test samples are sent from the lab In San Francisco to the company’s other lab in Arizona.

The most sympathetic person in this article is Ed Thornborrow. He is the medical director at UC San Francisco’s clinical labs. This is because he is simply stating that these conditions will pose health issues for patients. There is almost no bias behind what he is saying. He is the most sympathetic in the relative sense. He is certainly not apologetic in any way.

The least sympathetic has to be a mix between the author of the article and Tim Hammill. Tim Hammill is the director at UCSF’s China Basin labs. His first remark is that they are very close to being shut down (with the addition of an exclamation point). He obviously does not like the Theranos Lab and has no sympathy for it.

The author (Nick Stockton) clearly believes the lab should be shut down as well. He states how the lab is going to be ran into the ground and uses sarcastic/ snarky remarks such as “ahem”.

Haywood, Lee. "Clock" 06/02/05 via Flickr.
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The next debate is over the timing of taking prescription medications. Basically, we have these “biological clocks” in our bodies, known as circadian rhythms, that keep track of certain physiological needs. The clock keeps track of when we last ate, when we are tired, how fast or slow our metabolism is, etc. Essentially, when our metabolism is high, our bodies would be able to handle a higher dose of some medication. This would in turn allow the disease to dissipate more quickly.

So the question is, would taking some prescription at night really help is get better faster? A French oncologist, named Francis Lévi, thinks that would be the case. He has recently been using bio-medical technologies to figure out when the patients should take these medications. The debate is really whether this would actually work or not. The development of the technology has certainly been a process, but the recent publication of this article indicates the question has been researched within the last few months.

Lévi appears to be the most sympathetic in the article. Again, it is just speaking comparatively. He is simply stating the facts. Our bodies are operating different at different times and it is necessary to find out what times those are. He has more evidence and technology to back up his claims.

The author, Jessa Gamble, does not have much or any evidence to back of their claim. Surely they state facts about rhythms in the body but they have no way of knowing when cancer cells multiply the fastest without doing research. This, to me, seems to be more opinionated. She seems to be slightly more subjective towards the matter and thus more argumentative. This makes me feel a little bit less sympathetic for her argument.