The thing I really went for was blood work. Getting five or seven milliliters drawn was almost painless due to a wonderful phlebotomist. While she was reading the needle at my vein, I was distracting myself by thinking about the blood testing company, Theranos. This was a meteoric startup that developed and sold a machine that could complete tens (hundreds?) of tests from just a pin-prick and drop of blood. Imagine that! A technician would lance your finger and have so many tests run on just a drop of blood. It's a great (outstanding, fantastic, etc) idea, but it's pure science fiction... at this point. The analytical scientist in me wasn't convinced of this being possible now... maybe ever. Blood is fragile and the detection limits sometimes mean you need to collect a lot to find to find that tiny amount that might be there. Investors were convinced to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars invested.
Rather than me recount it, read the articles of the Wall Street Journal's John Carreyrou starting with:
He made contact with an insider who had seen the results and was desperately concerned with how inaccurate Theranos's machines were. Carreyrou suffered some slings and arrows when he cast stones at this darling of a startup. A lot of this story is just as sordid and sad as you might imagine. Carreyrou is a journalist, not a hero. His work is good. The hero is the insider whistleblower.
What I thought about on Friday as the phlebotomist was telling me to release a fist an readying to stick me, was the CEO of Theranos, Elizabeth Holmes. She had ridden very high, and few articles about her fail to mention her admiration (and attempt to copy) Steve Jobs. The loads of positive press she had received while Theranos was on the way up, turned and turned hard.
I had followed Theranos and Elizabeth Holmes for a while. I was impressed with what she was building (even if the science seemed impossible or unlikely at best). I was affected and swayed by the negative press into some righteous dislike, maybe even schadenfreude at her Icarus-type fall. I am not sure how anyone reading the articles cannot find some dislike for her.
As I sit back and consider it, I don't believe what she did was all that rare. I wonder if the scale and vigor she approached it with might be significantly above average, but her actions, I think, are very common when people are attempting to raise money to build a company to do something not yet done. The articles talk about her demand for secrecy and strict adherence to message. These would have been important if Theranos was a case of fake-it-until-you-make-it. They had loads of money, and maybe, in time, they would have developed something amazing. The unfortunate thing is, they were already testing patients' blood with their machines. These machines were demonstrably inaccurate. This to me was their cardinal-sin, faking it until they made it was just not tolerable (not to mention ethical) when that faking was going to affect patients.
Elizabeth Holmes had (still has) an idea and a vision. Many investors have seen fortunes evaporate when it came to light that her invention was a mirage. I used to be harder on her. I have changed some. I won't defend her, but the people she.. conned? could have done their homework. She was able to sell this vision amazingly well. The buyers (investors) bear a lot of guilt for their greed.
There is a hero here. I will discuss him and his despicable grandfather in another post.
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