I did sign up for HBO to watch the Elizabeth Holmes/Theranos documentary. Did anyone else catch it?
After reading Bad Blood and seeing a few other documentaries, I can’t say I learned much of anything new, but it was interesting seeing the footage taken inside Theranos during some of their company meetings. I’m glad to hear that Grandpa Schultz has finally seen at least a little bit of the light and given his brave grandson his due.
I have never heard her speak until I watched the documentary. Oh my. That’s a true talent. She could have done great playing villains in superhero movies or something!
I didn’t see the HBO documentary, but I read Bad Blood (so good) and just finished listening to the podcast The Dropout. Neither Elizabeth Holmes nor Sunny Balwani to this day thinks they did anything wrong. They appear to have either no shame or no conscience. During her lengthy court depositions, Holmes repeatedly denied knowing that anything was going wrong. Sure Jan.
The 20/20 from 2 weeks ago had several of the same interviews (the Dr from Stanford, the low voice, the George Shultz history). It was pretty good.
I think it’s both. The HBO documentary makes much of the fact that Elizabeth really believed in her idea and desperately wanted it to come to fruition. My take is “so what?” The plethora of lies she and SB told potential investors, regulatory agencies whose mission is to protect the public, and patients was so potentially dangerous, it’s kind of irrelevant that her idea was “noble.” The lengths she and her thug attorneys went to to intimidate and frighten those on the inside who brought up the inconvenient notion that you can’t fudge on blood tests that impact patient health decisions is criminal. Elizabeth and Sunny definitely belong in jail.
In his deposition shown on the HBO special, George Schultz described the attorney Michael Brille (who came to his home to bully his grandson Tyler into signing all kinds of agreements that would serve to hide the truth of what was transpiring inside the walls of Theranos) as “an animal.” David Carreyrou singles Brille out as displaying the worst pit bull behavior in Bad Blood. Heather King came of particularly bad as well. Sounds like some of these attorneys really should be disbarred for their witness intimidation tactics.
I really hadn’t followed this story but it was a topic of discussion on The View this week. She is a piece of work, and needs to be locked up immediately. The way things are going these days she will probably get a slap on the wrist. I’m not holding my breath.
The SEC settlement was a joke. She cannot be an officer of a publicly held company for x years. The company she used to defraud investors of hundreds of millions of dollars was a private company, so they haven’t prevented her from doing the same thing over and over.
@Nrdsb4 Agree. How/why did she not get prison time? She intentionally defrauded individuals. And worse yet, she gave patients FALSE lab results that could have resulted in harm and/or their death. She is a public menace, made worse by the fact that she accepts no responsibility. If they lock people up for writing bad checks, why not lock her up?
Because she’s blond, attractive and could hire expensive representation paid for by the billions that she bilked from investors.
I read Bad Blood cover to cover on a long flight yesterday. :o I was wondering if Tyler Schultz is back in his grandfather’s good graces now — couldn’t tell at the end of the book. Super proud of those employees who stood up to the pressure!
PS - when did our emojis change??
According to the program I watched, Tyler said that he is indeed back in his grandfather’s graces. 
@intparent, as BB said above, yes, George Schultz was FINALLY convinced of EH’s dishonesty and eventually told Tyler he was proud of him.
Just finished reading the book and am looking forward to watching the HBO documentary. Some random thoughts:
“Why continue with the project at that point, with a new, untested company?”
Because someone would look really bad for making that decision… This is not unique; HBS case after case demonstrates that decision makers often have a hard time letting go of sunk costs and keep throwing good money after bad.
It’s been a while since I read the book, but as I recall, Walgreen hired a scientific expert to evaluate the technology, and then sidelined him when he began to be skeptical and ask hard questions. That is evidence of a very bad process on Walgreen’s part. Walgreen should have been more skeptical at the end, but they also should have been more skeptical at the beginning.
This is true, but also Theranos had a huge employee turnover. A lot of scientists/engineers did acknowledge that the technology didn’t work, and either left or were fired.
I just think there are players here that are not being publicly examined. There are just too many OTT parts of the story that could be explained away easily. There is a bigger criminal element than can be attributed to Holmes.
@Sybylla, you keep saying this, but I’m not clear on why you think the scam as described in great depth by John Carreyrou is too simple or not believable. Elizabeth Holmes had charisma, great persuasive abilities, and some really impressive family connections. Bad Blood describes over and over how investors were fooled. I don’t see why this is unbelievable and a big shady conspiracy is the better explanation. Walgreens and Safeway both saw red flags but didn’t want to “miss out” on what really could have been massive profits if her technology had worked. So the money men ignored those flags and the rest is history. Investors who were scammed have admitted that Elizabeth’s impressive board gave her company legitimacy. Most investors were not science/medical savvy and chose to believe that her board wouldn’t have been involved in a scam. It’s pretty easy for me to see how she pulled this off. As to medical regulators, Carreyrou goes into much detail about how she was able to keep out of their sights for so long.
She and Sunny were also vindictive and threatening. Moreover, they hired attack dog superlawyer David Boies to go after anyone who threatened to expose them. It’s obvious why so many employees left quietly.