It seemed appropriate that my library hold for this book became available right after I had watched the HBO documentary The Inventor. Before I watched the documentary I wasn’t that familiar with Elizabeth Holmes or Theranos. All I had known was that there were these machines that were supposed to do blood tests and then we found out that the machines weren’t doing the tests at all and the company was shipping the blood to other facilities and doing the tests there.
But there was so much more to this scandal. This book is aptly subtitled “Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup”. It was a fascinating and incredibly researched account of the rise and fall of Theranos.
If you’re not familiar with Elizabeth Holmes or Theranos, here is a quick rundown. Elizabeth Holmes is a Stanford dropout who started a blood testing company named Theranos. Theranos claimed it had a device that could perform hundreds of tests using only a few drops of blood, thereby getting rid of the need to have vials and vials of blood taken from your veins. The company quickly grew to ginormous proportions and was soon valued at $9 billion. Elizabeth Holmes was worth an estimated $4.7 billion. She was endorsed by the Clintons and Joe Biden, she gave TED talks, and appeared on television shows, as well as on the covers of Forbes and Fortune. Theranos soon entered into business with Walgreens to have their devices placed in Walgreens stores and Holmes even claimed her devices were being used in the military. But it all came crashing down when it was revealed that the magical blood machines did not work at all and that the company was using other machines to perform blood tests. Theranos’s claim that hundreds of tests could be performed using only a few drops of blood was false and the company was found to have numerous FDA violations.
The book is written by John Carreyrou, a reporter at the Wall Street Journal. He interviewed many people and former employees of Theranos and some of the things he uncovered are unbelievable. Holmes reportedly had a fake laboratory set up to show Joe Biden when he visited the company’s office. Quality control results that showed there were issues with quality control were thrown out and classified as outliers. When prospective investors would visit, Holmes would offer to have their blood tested. The machines were programmed to show a slow progress bar so Holmes would offer to show the investors other parts of the office while the machines worked and would tell them their test results would be provided later. The blood was then removed from the machines and transferred to commercial blood analyzers and the tests were run on that.
There are a lot of individuals in this book. For at least the first two-thirds of this book, each chapter tells the story of a different individual and/or former employee of Theranos who came to realize that Theranos and everything it was claiming it could do was a lie. However, because there were so many individuals in this book, I found it difficult to follow along at times. I kept forgetting who was who and what department they worked in and why they were fired/quit.
It’s easy to see how so many people got caught up in Elizabeth Holmes’ vision. The medical technology device and tests, if they worked, would have revolutionized the medical field. I wanted to believe in it. I still want to believe in it. I don’t know if what Theranos claimed it could do, hundreds of tests just using a pinprick of blood, can actually be done. But when you read about what was going on behind the scenes, you realize that Theranos was never close to developing that technology and the whole company was a fraud.
Sometimes I wonder how Holmes got so many people on board with her and her idea. I still don’t understand how so many intelligent people followed her when there was plenty of evidence that showed her company couldn’t do what it promised. What was interesting, and I think telling, is that if you look at the board of directors of Theranos, it was filled with venture capitalists, political powerhouses, CEOs – you know, rich old white men. There were no healthcare professionals on her board, probably because they would have been able to disprove Theranos’ claims.
Honestly, I still don’t know if Elizabeth Holmes is 100% guilty. On the one hand, I totally get the fake it till you make it mind frame. I think that in the early stages of Theranos, it was definitely fake it till you make it and Holmes likely thought they would develop the technology and the devices would soon work. On the other hand, it’s obvious that after the technology was never going to work, many lies were told and that people and instances were manipulated. I feel that towards the end of Theranos, Holmes was definitely lying to everyone. And when you are dealing with someone’s health, you can’t lie about that.
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