https://www.amazon.com/Bad-Blood-Secrets-Silicon-Startup/dp/152473165X/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1529758754&sr=8-2&keywords=bad+blood+john+carreyrou&dpID=41paCsyQxBL&preST=_SY291_BO1,204,203,200_QL40_&dpSrc ="srch#customerReviews"
"Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup"
Might be the most important book of the year, maybe in MANY years. It reads more like a thriller than a work of non-fiction and it was very hard to put down.
Author and Wall Street Journal investigative reporter John Carreyrou was YOUR health advocate in exposing the fraud that was blood testing company Theranos. And he persisted through threats of lawsuits from high powered Theranos legal counsel David Boies. Your advocate when no one else was..........not Walgreens, not the FDA, not CMS (Center for Medicare/Medicaid Services), not a Theranos board of directors which included an impressive cast of political luminaries including former secretaries of state George Schultz and Henry Kissinger. Five years ago, Theranos' blood testing device was actually rolled out and was being used in Walgreens stores in Palo Alto, CA and Phoenix, AR. And it never worked. THAT SHOULD SCARE YOU.
If you are not interested in reading the book (or even if you are), this is a great 31 minute interview with the author:
[Edited on 6/23/2018 by robslob]
A relative of mine that has worked in blood testing labs for decades, knew that claim by the company and their supposed blood testing device was nothing but a scam or confidence scheme devised to get people to invest in the company, since there's no way you can run all sort of blood tests with just a single drop of blood or that low of an amount of blood.
The device needed FDA approval and they are not easily convinced with new technologies. FAct is, they never received any concrete data that the testing as described actually produced the results the co claimed.
They were never going to grant approval.
Goober, the FDA was hoodwinked by Elizabeth Holmes just like investors were. They knew the FDA was coming and they knew exactly how to fool them, it was all planned. They had two separate labs. The FDA was shown the machine called the Edison which was supposed to be capable of doing this outrageous array of tests. Then they would take the blood to the other lab downstairs and run it on traditional blood analyzer machines which they had purchased from Seimens!! Talk about fraud.........Holmes and her COO boyfriend Sunny Balwani both belong in jail. It's one thing to to lie about computer technology. But this product was actually rolled out on the market, Doctors were relying on it and lives were at stake.
One of the main reasons that it all came crashing down (no small thanks to the brave author Carreyrou) is that CME was tipped off that this technology was not anything close to what the company was leading everybody to believe it was. CME did a surprise inspection; unlike before Theranos had no idea it was coming. It was a grueling reality check.......CME went into great detail to find out what this machine could really do. They took a prominent lab employee away from her peers and Supervisors and grilled her in private as to what was really going on. She was scared to death, even asked to have an attorney present. Why? Because Theranos was threatening employees who talked with lawsuits and they had a high powered legal team behind them. The kind of attorneys you can afford when your company reaches a valuation of $9 billion. And employees knew that they were not joking around.......they had sued ex-employees as far back as 2007. One of them was a personal friend of mine. I live in Silicon Valley. He never talked to me about it at the time for obvious reasons. Oh by the way......he is briefly mentioned in the book.
[Edited on 6/30/2018 by robslob]
