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Bad Blood book review
Dec. 28th, 2020 02:59 pmOne of my Christmas presents was “Bad Blood” by John Carreyrou. This was on my wish list, and my Dad not only got it for me—he sent me his own copy.
This book is about Theranos. If you missed the headlines about this a few years ago, this was a Silicon Valley startup at one point valued at over $10 billion that was trying to disrupt laboratory blood testing. The claim was they could use a single drop of blood to test for over 200 things.
This is, quite frankly, complete bullshit. Per my dad—who is in laboratory medicine—everyone in the field knew that this was impossible, and knew that the way that Theranos was conducting itself (not releasing any data, avoiding regulation) was highly unethical and way outside the norms of the industry. But that didn’t stop them from being about to raise over $900 million in investments over ten years, become a media sweetheart, and launch patient services in Walgreens.
The reality was—that technology does not exist, so to be able to meet the commitment to Walgreens, they (among other things) “jail-broke” a Siemens analyzer to use it with diluted finger stick samples rather than the recommended amount of venous draws. The laboratory was also incredibly poorly run, so even when they were using commercially available techniques, their results were hugely unreliable. They were faking regulatory filings. They hid one of their labs from an FDA inspector. They went after whistleblowers with PIs and lawyers (more than half that $900 million went to legal fees).
The founder/owner, Elisabeth Holmes, and a few of her compatriots are under criminal indictment, but the court case was delayed to next year because of COVID.
( The lessons I drew from this )
Basically, over and over and over, anyone with any knowledge of laboratory medicine or any visibility into what the company was actually doing could see immediately that there were major problems, and a lot of them chose to leave because of the ethical violations, especially once they started treating patients.
But over and over, powerful people ignored the warnings from the people with more information because they had decided that Elisabeth Holmes was the real deal and they didn’t want to give up on the dream.
My Dad has pointed out, Theranos is a real cautionary tale, especially now. There is currently a gold rush for laboratory technology—it has never been more central in the public consciousness. So the lessons of this are important. There will be a lot of snake oil salesman. Listen to what the scientists say, listen to the warnings from people on the ground, and don’t latch onto an idea as true just because you really want it to be.
This book is about Theranos. If you missed the headlines about this a few years ago, this was a Silicon Valley startup at one point valued at over $10 billion that was trying to disrupt laboratory blood testing. The claim was they could use a single drop of blood to test for over 200 things.
This is, quite frankly, complete bullshit. Per my dad—who is in laboratory medicine—everyone in the field knew that this was impossible, and knew that the way that Theranos was conducting itself (not releasing any data, avoiding regulation) was highly unethical and way outside the norms of the industry. But that didn’t stop them from being about to raise over $900 million in investments over ten years, become a media sweetheart, and launch patient services in Walgreens.
The reality was—that technology does not exist, so to be able to meet the commitment to Walgreens, they (among other things) “jail-broke” a Siemens analyzer to use it with diluted finger stick samples rather than the recommended amount of venous draws. The laboratory was also incredibly poorly run, so even when they were using commercially available techniques, their results were hugely unreliable. They were faking regulatory filings. They hid one of their labs from an FDA inspector. They went after whistleblowers with PIs and lawyers (more than half that $900 million went to legal fees).
The founder/owner, Elisabeth Holmes, and a few of her compatriots are under criminal indictment, but the court case was delayed to next year because of COVID.
( The lessons I drew from this )
Basically, over and over and over, anyone with any knowledge of laboratory medicine or any visibility into what the company was actually doing could see immediately that there were major problems, and a lot of them chose to leave because of the ethical violations, especially once they started treating patients.
But over and over, powerful people ignored the warnings from the people with more information because they had decided that Elisabeth Holmes was the real deal and they didn’t want to give up on the dream.
My Dad has pointed out, Theranos is a real cautionary tale, especially now. There is currently a gold rush for laboratory technology—it has never been more central in the public consciousness. So the lessons of this are important. There will be a lot of snake oil salesman. Listen to what the scientists say, listen to the warnings from people on the ground, and don’t latch onto an idea as true just because you really want it to be.