Crypto News: Is this startup just wellness theater?

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Israel sent more forces into Gaza as concerns grows about the mounting death toll.
President Biden has signed a sweeping executive order regulating AI.
More middle-class Americans are worried about the state of the economy than a year ago.

In 2020, Abhishek Chaki began having mysterious pain in his abdomen, bloody diarrhea and bouts of fatigue. Sometimes his symptoms necessitated trips to the emergency room. Other times flareups left him bedridden. "It came out of nowhere," he says. Having read that the body is influenced by the gut microbiome—the rich, vital community of bacteria, viruses and fungi that coexist in the digestive tract—he stumbled across a startup called Viome Life Sciences Inc. He bought its standard at-home stool testing kit, which the company uses to analyze an individual's gut microbiome and recommend a customized diet based on their unique biochemistry. "Got digestive issues?" Viome's marketing asks. "We got solutions."

Testing one's gut is not for the squeamish. While Viome sells $259 standalone gut health tests, like the one Chaki bought, it heavily promotes its $399 signature Full Body Intelligence test, which involves mailing in fresh stool (to test the gut microbiome), saliva (to test the oral microbiome) and blood samples (to assess "cellular function"). This requires spooning out a pea-size amount of poop and pricking a finger to squeeze out enough blood to fill two pipettes. The company's artificial intelligence technology analyzes the mailed-in samples; within a few weeks, customers receive a report and a detailed action plan for avoiding harmful foods and consuming "superfoods." There's also a health assessment dictating suggested improvements, such as "inflammation response" or "metabolic fitness." To address any nutrient deficiency or replace a blacklisted food, the company offers a fix, too: a subscription to customized Viome supplements. It also recommends repeating the entire process every four to six months.

Illustration by Robert Beatty

While Chaki took into account the test's disclosures, such as "not an FDA-approved product," Viome's pitch sounded sciency enough. As a tech analyst, he'd also come across Viome's co-founder and chief executive officer, Naveen Jain. A longtime Silicon Valley fixture, Jain was making the rounds at health conferences, on biohacking podcasts and in business magazines, declaring that every single chronic disease is caused by gut issues and boasting that his company's revolutionary science would ultimately make them "optional." (Viome also professed to "restore gut health," "slow biological aging," "promote a resilient immune system" and help one attain "glowing skin.") Both the health-care system and the pharmaceutical industry, he said, were "a parasite on humanity," financially invested in keeping the public as patients. "They don't really want you to be well," he told podcaster Lewis Howes in 2017. With Viome, Jain said, he could help a billion people and in the process create a $100 billion company. Viome's Instagram ads featured Jain with text reading: "Has this guy discovered the future of healthcare?"

Chaki got his results back. He ignored the barrage of follow-up emails exhorting him to buy supplements, but he did abide by the dietary action plan: Stop eating tomatoes, bell peppers and other staples of his diet. Even watermelon got the ax. Many other Viome customers have left reviews online saying they were also told to strip dozens of foods from their diet, including fiber-rich vegetables, meat, fish and dairy. One Viome ad states that 49% of its customers are instructed to avoid broccoli, with no further explanation.

After a year—which included another round of testing—Chaki's symptoms hadn't improved. He finally went to a gastroenterologist, who diagnosed him with ulcerative colitis, an inflammatory bowel disease. The doctor was furious that Chaki had subjected himself to a restrictive diet and an unproven product. Says Chaki: "What if a general layman uses this and never goes to a doctor?"

Viome was founded in 2016, just as a rush of startups were capitalizing on two decades of microbiome research. Humans have several microbiomes, including skin and mouth, but the one in the gut is increasingly being studied—and hyped. Startups including Seed Health and ISOThrive sell supplements that target the gut microbiome, while Floré and Zoe focus on gut testing. The emerging industry had its first high-profile implosion several years ago when the founders of a San Francisco company called uBiome were criminally charged with securities fraud and health-care fraud. (The company filed for bankruptcy and shut down before its executives were indicted; the case is still pending.) Still, venture capitalists have invested $5.9 billion in the microbiome market since 2018, according to PitchBook Data Inc.

Viome focuses on nutrigenomics, the science of how food and genes interact and affect the body, by using RNA sequencing technology and AI. While DNA is the master blueprint of genetic potential, RNA carries out actions from that blueprint. Viome, which has $175 million in funding from investors including Salesforce Inc. CEO Marc Benioff, has sold 500,000 kits, mostly through its website. Its oral and throat cancer early-detection test has received breakthrough device designation from the US Food and Drug Administration, and it's formed partnerships with pharmaceutical companies including GSK to use its technology to help learn more about chronic diseases. Now Jain is eyeing partnerships with established research institutions and developing more consumer products.

Jain says Viome has the world's largest database of human and microbial gene expression from saliva, blood and stool samples—roughly 600,000 biological samples from its research study participants and customers who consent to their data being used for research when signing up. The company also collects data such as medical conditions, the symptoms individuals experience and their daily habits. "The potential is so huge," Jain says. "We can predict who is going to develop diabetes, who is going to develop IBS [irritable bowel syndrome], who is going to develop many diseases, even autism."

But more than a dozen microbiome scientists say Viome is exploiting the emerging science to sell pseudoscience. They, along with dietitians, researchers and physicians, tell Bloomberg Businessweek that they don't consider Viome's work to be evidence-based but the epitome of the booming wellness industry, dangling enticing placebos in place of scientifically supported health interventions. Because Viome's tests are categorized as general health and wellness, they're exempt from FDA medical device regulation. The company publicly touts its "actionable insights" but also warns in the fine print that "the information Viome provides is for educational and informational use only."

Is Viome just wellness theater? To learn more about the startup, and what scientists and former employees have to say, read the whole story.

Colorful Burano island building exteriors in Venice. Photographer: Flavia Morlachetti/Moment RF

Ever looked up at a balcony and thought, that looks strange? Well, it's probably because there are more balcony styles than one might think. For Citylab, Feargus O'Sullivan breaks down the different designs. Here is a taste below; for the full entree, go here.

The Loggia-Style Balcony
If balconies were belly buttons, then one constructed loggia-style would be an "innie" when compared with an "outie" sun balcony. Recessed into the facade rather than jutting out of a building, a loggia-style balcony is essentially a sort of room where a wall has been removed to expose the space to the open air.
These semi-sheltered spaces have some obvious advantages. On the upper floors of taller buildings, loggias are less likely to make you feel exposed and dizzy and can shelter you from vertical (if not diagonal) rainfall. They can also feel more like natural extensions of apartments. At the same time, they can prevent some light entering the main body of an apartment that a sun balcony wouldn't obstruct. They're also not necessarily a great favorite of developers, because they occupy potentially valuable interior floor space.
Street-facing loggia-style balconies are a staple of older tenement buildings in Berlin and other German cities, where the term "loggia," which once meant a covered, colonnaded gallery, came to refer to these balconies. They are relatively rare in the US but do feature in some taller American buildings, such as New York's Skidmore, Owings & Merrill-designed Park Loggia, as more secure, less gusty alternatives to sun balconies. Chris Cooper, design partner at SOM, notes that loggias are satisfying "in-between spaces" that straddle the divide between inside and out. "It feels like a room," he says, "but one that has outside air, where you can grow plants on because there's enough sunlight so you feel both at home and that you're in a natural outdoor setting."
The Juliet Balcony
This tiny little jutting platform can be a bête noire for people looking on the internet for homes with balconies. They turn up in searches for balconied apartments but are basically railings in front of a big window, with enough space for a flowerpot outside, if you're lucky.
Often intended primarily to ornament a facade—by providing a space for lacey ironwork and potted plants—these small additions are nonetheless unfairly belittled. Their true function is not actually to provide outside space, but to create a barrier that allows residents to open a floor-to-ceiling window without the risk of anyone or anything falling out of it. As such, they can make part of a room feel balcony-like, especially if you flank the opening with plants. If you're determined to get the feel of outside space in your home, grouping big leafy plants around this type of window can do the trick. And while adding a proper balcony to a building can be expensive and complex, Juliet balconies can usually be added to a facade without planning permission.
The name refers to the balcony where Juliet is approached by Romeo while taking in the night air in Shakespeare's play (although the structure in Verona visited by tourists as "Juliet's balcony" is actually a full-blown sun balcony). Perhaps the best places to find real Juliets are the boulevards of Paris, where little Juliet balconies (called "French balconies" in several languages) are one of the features that makes the city's limestone tenements so delightful. Venice, meanwhile, specializes in a version that could be called a semi-Juliet—a balustraded platform outside a window just deep enough to put your feet on, but too narrow to count as an actual outside space.

As the Hamas-Israel war enters new, deadly stages, one entity has emerged in a pivotal role: Qatar. As Fiona MacDonald writes today, the small Middle Eastern country is in the center of the action—for better and worse:

For Qatar, it was a case of cometh the hour, cometh the country. The nation has spent more than a decade trying to position itself as the Middle East's indispensable go-between, criticized by its neighbors for housing Hamas leaders while maintaining channels to Israel. The time had come to step up.
It's that status in an unstable region that Qatar sees as key to the security of the tiny peninsula, sandwiched between the two great rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran. The crisis in Gaza—with Israel launching a ground invasion over the weekend—has now become the ultimate test of Qatar's ability to show its Western allies they need it as much as it needs them.
"Qatar has wanted to play a useful role for important states for a very long time," says David Roberts, an associate professor at King's College London who worked in Qatar and specializes in Middle East security. "It gives Qatar a certain influence on one of the central questions in the Arab world, building up relations with this very important group in Gaza—like it or loathe it."

It's worth learning more about Qatar as it steps up as a peacekeeper, and also wonder, who is benefiting from Qatar's important new role? Read it all here.

9.2%

That's how much more money you're shelling out this year for Halloween candy. Sugar and sweets are seeing higher inflation than food in general, thanks to a global shortfall of sugar and cocoa.

"A huge victory"

Shawn Fain

President, United Auto Workers

Ford's tentative agreement to end the UAW's six-week strike includes $8.1 billion in investments at both internal combustion and electric vehicle plants, as well as record raises. Read more about the deal here.

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