Dr. Mansafa Bepari

More and more people are becoming health conscious and signing up for blood testing subscriptions. New companies are popping up every day offering dozens or even hundreds of biomarkers in a single package. But before we jump at these services, there's a question we should be asking: how do we know we can trust the lab producing our results? Blood testing is technically demanding. Even a small mistake during collection, transportation, storage, or analysis can affect the result. Even two reputable laboratories can report different values for the same blood sample because of differences in testing methods and calibration. So before choosing a blood-testing provider, here are some questions worth asking. First, do you conduct the tests in your own laboratory, or do you outsource them? If you outsource, which laboratory actually processes my blood? Second, is that laboratory accredited? In India, for example, does it hold NABL accreditation under ISO 15189, and does that accreditation cover the tests I'm purchasing? Third, how do you ensure quality control? Do you regularly test control samples to verify that your equipment and procedures are producing reliable measurements? Fourth, does an independent organization evaluate your laboratory's performance through external quality-assessment programs? Fifth, how do you ensure that blood samples are collected, transported, stored, and processed under appropriate conditions? And finally, if I'm subscribing to repeated testing, will my samples consistently be analyzed by the same laboratory using the same methods? These aren't unreasonable questions. They're fundamental questions about the reliability of the measurements we're paying for. When it comes to blood testing, the most important question isn't how many biomarkers a company can measure; it's how accurately and consistently that company can measure them. Preventive healthcare is rising, and so is the bullshit that comes with it. To protect yourself, join this community and ask any questions you like. No one is going to sell you anything here. freegym.ai/communities/is-it…

Weak argument. “Good for all” ignores the cost to the ecosystem. The cost for society is very real. Funds have limited money and limited bets. Institutional investors deploy fixed funds across a limited number of companies. That money and that slot in the portfolio are gone. It also signals what gets funded. The market learns that reputation beats evidence. Investors herd toward similar bets, and unknown founders with stronger science find it even harder. This is the crowding-out effect of access and conviction, not just dollars. Talent is finite too. A famous founder with $54 million pulls skilled engineers and scientists into a project whose core claim is unproven. That’s arguably a bigger cost than the money.

After reading the preprints, @deepigoyal’s posts and @agingroy’s replies, my honest take on @temple: this is the emptiest marketing I’ve ever seen. It started with the “Gravity Ageing Hypothesis.” Then Deepinder announced a breakthrough: they’d “literally discovered” a new biomarker. It was hyped online as frontier science that India should be proud of. But what’s actually there? Pre-orders opened before either study was even posted. Both preprints admit they haven’t established that the signal is specific to the brain. Even in the best case, with both papers peer-reviewed, it’s barely incremental. Elsewhere, AI is designing drugs, gene editing is treating disease, and brain implants are restoring speech. India has people who could push us toward that frontier. They just can’t raise $54M on a hypothesis. Underwhelming. And honestly, embarrassing.

How can you tell the difference between an innovation in its early stage and a scam? Here’s a heuristic: innovation seeks ground truth; scam avoids it. The distance between innovation and scam is measured by accountability to reality. The grey zone is real, though. Early-stage innovation often lacks empirical ground truth. But theoretical or mechanistic ground truth should always be there. If someone can’t show you data or explain why it should work in terms of things we already understand, you’re not looking at innovation.

The need of the hour. We've just launched a new community on FreeGym. Thinking of buying a wearable, supplement, or biomarker test? Ask here before spending. Let's examine the science, challenge the claims, and cut through the BS. freegym.ai/communities/is-it…

No Indian VC has approached me about freegym.ai yet. We'll eventually become the biggest platform in this space.