The overall impression was that of an eighth-grade science project.
--John Carryrou, Bad Blood (Knopf, 2018)
Bad Blood is an impressive piece of investigative journalism about Elizabeth Holmes and her company Theranos, who claimed that they had a marvelous new system to do blood analysis with just a finger prick, freeing us all from big needles. The problem was that the technology that Holmes (a college dropout with no medical or scientific training) supposedly invented simply did not work.
The amazing part of the story was that Homes raised millions of dollars to start her company, which even included Henry Kissinger on its board. Carreyrou's book details how she did it, with elements of "fear of missing out," "fake it until you make it," lies, chicanery, greed and intimidation by Holmes's lover and enforcer Sunny Balwani and a high-priced law firm that threatened to sue former employees for revealing so-called trade secrets. The dam finally broke when Adam Clapper, who had a blog called Pathology Blawg, called Carreyrou at The Wall Street Journal with his suspicions based on conversations with former Theranos employees.
Carreyrou was not intimidated; his articles got FDA on the case and that was the beginning of the end for Theranos. I am certainly sympathetic to the idea of simplified blood tests, as I have health problems that call for my blood to be tested regularly. Apple, Microsoft, et al. can do whatever they want with their gadgets, but what Holmes was doing was misleading and dangerous for the effect that a botched blood test could have on one's health; Carryrou gives numerous examples of the fear and anxiety caused by Theranos's blood tests.
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