Name: Funding a Sociopath: the Theranos story
Uploaded: 2021-10-11T07:29:08.000Z
Duration: 11 min 57 s
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Her rocksteady gaze and baritone voice lured you in. Then, her idea blew your mind.

One drop of blood, hundreds of results: Theranos was going to revolutionize the healthcare

industry. And Elizabeth Holmes led this revolution.

Investors blindly trusted her. She rocked magazine covers, and the media called her

the female Steve Jobs. Her company was worth billions. But it was all a lie.

How did one person fool the entire world? We'll tell you all about it in this episode

By age 9, Elizabeth Holmes had envisioned her time machine. By high school, she was

fluent in Mandarin and sold C++ compilers and had her sights on becoming a billionaire.

She wanted to study medicine but was afraid of needles.

So, she enrolled in Chemical Engineering at Stanford. There, she met Channing Robertson

and insisted he let her work at his lab. A lab, mind you, in which mostly Ph.D.'s worked,

During her first college break, she spent a stint in Singapore, working at a lab testing

And it was there that she began questioning current medical blood tests: one needed to

draw blood, then transfer it to another device for analysis. Once results were in, medications

came from a different place and medical follow-up from yet another source. It was a labor-intensive,

error inducing process unchanged in decades.

To a point, she was right, as 70% of errors in testing occur before the lab tests the

Once back at Stanford, she began working on an idea to obtain not just one, but hundreds

of results quickly, from drops of blood, instead of traditional vials. Her pace was relentless.

It took her less than a year to file her first patent: a smart drug delivery patch.

But her obsession was blood testing. Holmes believed in the power of a single drop of

blood. She was so adamant that she dropped out of Stanford to form Theranos, even if

her professor Channing Robertson told her not to.

She did it anyway. At just 19, she formed her own company, Real-Time Cures, but that

first name was ineffective, so she changed it to Theranos, from Therapy and Diagnosis.

She convinced Robertson to form a part of Theranos, as

Robertson introduced her to several venture capitalists, including Tim Draper, who gave

Theranos the first million dollars, and it didn't end there. Elizabeth Holmes took the

world by storm: she had raised more than $30 million by 2006, and $400 million by 2014.

Holmes was now the youngest self-made female billionaire.

Theranos had big names backing it up. Board members included former secretaries of state

George Shultz and Henry Kissinger; New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft gave $1 million.

Controversial figure Betsy DeVos added $100 million; even Rupert Murdoch pledged $125 million.

They believed in her idea, but one question remained unanswered: what exactly did Theranos

Holmes's aura was enigmatic. She spent all day at work. Vacations were unnecessary, so

was coffee. (Forget the billions, she didn't drink coffee. that's amazing). Her daily

routine consisted of a fancy turtleneck uniform, little sleep, and vegan shakes.

But when she walked into a room, her energy drew people's attention, with her powerful

Like her idol, Steve Jobs, she wanted to change the world. Theranos wasn't just a blood test.

Its aptly named Edison machines would eliminate or improve error-prone areas by automating

them. Testing would happen in-site with results available in just hours. Plus, blood waste

A cholesterol check runs for $30, but Holmes promised a cost of just $3.

Some people even entered Theranos test labs. Journalist Joseph Rago explained that the

process was swift. A technician increased blood flow to the fingers by warming them,

then drew a few droplets of blood, which landed in a small receptacle called a nanotainer.

Within the same lab, this nanotainer traveled through analyzers and delivered results by

It seemed perfect. But you know what this show is about.

Holmes was in the center of the media universe, thanks to her promise of a better tomorrow.

Supermarket giant Safeway decided to invest $350 million to retrofit 800 locations with

The Cleveland Clinic joined forces with Holmes to spark up innovation, reduce costs, and

increase visit turnover. During a Fox News interview, both Holmes and Cleveland Clinic's

CEO, Toby Cosgrove, even spoke of "getting ahead of diseases."

With great fanfare, Holmes announced that Theranos had partnered with pharma giant GSK.

In 2015, its first test, for Herpes Simplex I, received FDA approval outside a laboratory

Amidst all this seeming success, Holmes ran such a tight ship, no one knew how Theranos

operated, which caught the attention of one doctor.

Stanford University's own Dr. John Ioannidis noticed something unusual: medical innovation

goes through constant reviews by other medical community peers, which ensures the validity

of the design and the safety of patients. But Theranos had divulged no reviews, no white

Such practices are called stealth research, and its goal is to prevent others from copying,

But Ioannidis felt stealth research was paradoxical.

He wrote a column on the topic and used Theranos as an example. In no time, a legal team sought

The company even pressured Ionnadis to coauthor an editorial with Holmes in "some major journal"

to clarify that the FDA approved Theranos, which was enough evidence of its efficacy.

But he said no, and he wasn't the only suspicious person.

Meet journalist John Carreyrou, who aimed at Theranos and didn't spare any bullets.

In his first article, he uncovered that Theranos used traditional methods, and not its Edison

devices, to analyze blood. The technology displayed only flawed tests under a façade

Holmes fired back the same day the article appeared. In a television appearance, she

said that: "This is what happens when you work to change things, and first they think

you're crazy, then they fight you and then all of a sudden you change the world."

But those damning articles started an avalanche that would bury Theranos' reputation.

In 2015, Safeway pulled out of the alliance, citing delayed testing and unanswered questions.

Some Safeway employees confirmed that Theranos technicians first drew out blood with their

system and then with a traditional syringe method.

Others reported misdiagnosis. One employee even got results that indicated prostate cancer.

When he retested in another lab, the results came back normal.

Then there's that big alliance with GSK, of which GSK had no recollection, according to

Holmes then insisted that they had worked with GSK ever since 2008, but Theranos wasn't

In 2015, an FDA inspection showed that Theranos' labs were mishandling products, and not following

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Funding a Sociopath: the Theranos story

process

reveal

controversial

convince