Theranos Derangement Syndrome
Theranos Derangement Syndrome is a phrase in the essay with which Kent Kemmish introduces Epic Quest Bio, the role-playing game that is the management system of Molecular Reality Corporation. The essay uses it for readers who answer the company's goals with "You sound like Theranos!", and it prescribes "15 milligrams of Epic Quest Bio™ for a complete recovery".[1][a]
The objection
Theranos was a California blood-testing company. On January 3, 2022, a federal jury in San Jose found its founder, Elizabeth Holmes, guilty of one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud against investors and three counts of wire fraud against investors, and on November 18, 2022 she was sentenced to 135 months in prison.[2][3]
Kemmish's essay proposes a device in a toilet drain that could "replace any and all liquid lab tests you might ever need". Earlier in the same essay he is blunt about the field's record: in 2025, he writes, patients "might also take blood tests that, despite much hype, more often than not fail to detect early stages" of cancer. Then he states the technical mission, "utility-scale solid-state universal high-throughput single-molecule sensing", and explains the last term: current lab tests "need millions of identical molecules to 'see' anything", while the company's devices would "detect and count molecules one at a time". After that comes a section headed "SOME POPULAR KNEEJERK REACTIONS & HOW I RESPOND", which lists five objections he expects. The first is "You sound like Theranos!"[1]
The answer
It is two short paragraphs. "You may have a case of Theranos Derangement Syndrome. Don't worry, just take 15 milligrams of Epic Quest Bio™ for a complete recovery." Epic Quest Bio is a game, and the dose is in milligrams.
"What Theranos tried to do was entirely in the realm of the possible. Trying was not the crime. Tens of thousands of honest people, in labs, startups, and corporations all over the world, work toward similar goals. More people should know this!"[1]
The four objections after it are about smart toilets, air filters, superintelligent AI and the lack of any technology to do the job. To the last, "There is no technology that can do what you're saying!", the essay answers "Agreed!", and the next section is the history of the Coulter counter, titled The Hole Enchilada. In it Wallace H. Coulter "pioneered the most heavily used medical diagnostic test on the planet: the complete blood count".[1]
Elsewhere
The information panel of the member software EQBio-OS includes the question "Are you just another Theranos?", and its answer begins with "No."[4] The company's field guide states that "nothing on the stream is a medical claim".[5] The other answers in the essay's list are treated in the articles on Biopopulism and Team Basic Sanity, which takes its name from the reply on air filters.
The form
"X Derangement Syndrome" was not new in the essay. In December 2003 the columnist Charles Krauthammer, who had trained as a psychiatrist, introduced "Bush Derangement Syndrome" in the Washington Post as "the acute onset of paranoia in otherwise normal people" in reaction to the president of the time.[6] The essay does not say where it took the form from.
See also
Notes
- ^ The essay exists in more than one text. A later text words the diagnosis and the prescription differently, and the quotations here are from the text of March 2026.
References
- ^ a b c d Kemmishtree (March 2026). "Epic Quest Bio". Molecular Reality Corporation.
- ^ "Theranos Founder Elizabeth Holmes Found Guilty of Investor Fraud". United States Attorney's Office, Northern District of California. Retrieved October 25, 2026.
- ^ "Elizabeth Holmes Sentenced to More Than 11 Years for Defrauding Theranos Investors". United States Attorney's Office, Northern District of California. Retrieved October 25, 2026.
- ^ "EQBio-OS help: questions and answers". Molecular Reality Corporation. 2026.
- ^ "Keltar's Field Guide to Molecular Reality". Molecular Reality Corporation. August 2026.
- ^ Krauthammer, Charles (December 5, 2003). "The Delusional Dean". The Washington Post.