The woman behind Theranos
Theranos, a startup in Silicon Valley would revolutionize the way we do blood analysis to discern information about the health of a patient. The company worked on a new technology that required microscopic blood samples rather than a traditional collecting blood from veins. Elizabeth Holmes, a brilliant young Stanford dropout was behind the breakthrough invention was anointed as the next Steve Jobs or Bill Gates. Holmes initially pitched the idea to reap "vast amounts of data from a few droplets of blood derived from the tip of a finger" to several of her professors at Stanford; most of them said that it was "virtually impossible to do so with any real efficacy". However, Holmes succeeded in getting Dean Channing Robertson to back her idea. From then on, Theranos experienced a spectacular rise before its ultimate downfall.
Author John Carreyrou spoke to ex-employees and whistleblowers; obtained numerous documents and email exchanges. From chapters 19 to 24, the author chronicles the odyssey of his investigations after he first gets a tip from Adam Clapper of “Pathology Blawg,” an amateur blogger who discovered huge fraud at Theranos, but he was unable to bear the legal retributions from Elizabeth Holmes. The author was at Wall Street Journal’s investigative reporting team, during research, discovered enormous deficiencies in Theranos technology. He reveals a fascinating story of deception and greed that ran deep inside the executive offices of Elizabeth Homes and Ramesh ‘Sunny’ Balwani. On learning of his investigation, Holmes threatened through her attorney David Boies to sue the Wall Street Journal if it did not stop printing the story. This book is a fascinating read about the way Holmes conducted herself and threats she used on her own employees while the company was misleading patients, investors and its clients.
Few examples from this book makes a great reading. Henry Mossley was the first CFO of the company; and he was nervous about the way company was doing. Since there were no pharmaceutical contracts, and the ambitious revenue forecasts were never realized. He kept digging and found that the company’s technology was unreliable and posed danger to patients. Despite all this, CEO Elizabeth Holmes was upbeat and a happy leader glowing about her business operations. When Mossley confronted her for truth, he was fired on spot. In one instance, after rapid resignations of her key staff at R&D division, Elizabeth called an employee meeting to vent her frustrations and lack of obedience to her rules. In an angry tone, she declared that she is building a religion, and if there are anyone who did not believe in her, they should leave.
On 3/14/2018, SEC charged Elizabeth Holmes and Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani for conducting years-long fraud at Theranos. The amount of damage they would have caused due to missed diagnoses or wrong medical treatment would have been catastrophic. The company was on the verge of expanding its blood-testing services to Walgreens 8,134 stores in the United States. Theranos blood monitoring system was conducted in Nashville, TN on terminally ill cancer patients at great risks to patients. Similar studies were conducted in Palo Alto, CA, and Phoenix, AZ.
This is a good investigative story and I recommend this work to anyone interested in Theranos and Elizabeth Holmes. In fact, there is a movie in the making, and Oscar-winner Jennifer Lawrence is set to play Elizabeth Holmes.
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