In the early 2000s, charismatic Stanford dropout Elizabeth Holmes starts the medical technology company Theranos. She raises millions of dollars on a promise to be able to conduct numerous medical tests from a single drop of blood. Theranos’s reputation grows as Holmes attracts more investors, befriends the political elite, and forges a partnership with Walgreens. Amid all the hype, however, the company’s proprietary technology proves unreliable, a fact that Holmes and her COO (and secret boyfriend) Ramesh “Sunni” Balwani conceal by maintaining a cloud of secrecy and either firing employees who raise ethical concerns or intimidating them to remain silent. As Theranos ramps up its promises, veteran lab director Alan Beam and junior employees Tyler Schultz and Erika Chueng can’t abide by the idea of gambling with patients’ health and decide to blow the whistle, only to find themselves under surveillance and facing litigation.
Wall Street Journal reporter John Carreyrou’s book-length examination of Theranos’s rise and fall is an engrossing look at the extent to which smart people will delude themselves rather than admit that they were wrong. This is true not only of Holmes, a black turtleneck-clad figure with an artificially deep voice who models herself after Steve Jobs, but also of those who believed in her and took up Theranos’s cause despite the seemingly obvious need for skepticism. Said dupes include the esteemed likes of former secretary of state George Schultz (Tyler’s grandfather, awkwardly) and future secretary of defense James Mattis.
Bad Blood reveals not only truths that its principal actors were loath to confront but also those that a segment of its audience may shy away from as well. Those expecting to encounter older white conservative men behind acts of corporate malfeasance will have to reckon with a cast of villains that includes a manipulative young woman (Holmes), a Pakistani bully (Balwani), and an aggressive Democratic lawyer (David Boies), all of whom were complicit in years of fraud, deceit, and intimidation. Meanwhile, the heroes include a young white man from a privileged family (Tyler Schultz, who risked both litigation and estrangement from his powerful grandfather), a Rupert Murdoch-owned newspaper that refused to back down, and even Murdoch himself in a way (for refusing to kill the Journal’s story despite his own investment in Theranos and a personal appeal by Holmes). Yes, Carreyrou comes across as annoyingly self-congratulatory at times, and his summation of Holmes’s character is nothing if not vindictive, but then again, maintaining objectivity would prove a chore after being denounced, surveilled, and threatened with frivolous lawsuits.
To his credit, Carreyrou balances intrigue – Balwani’s outbursts, cloak-and-dagger secrecy, legal chicanery, and his own quest to get ahold of a regulatory report that Theranos tried to bury – with workmanlike explanations of blood draws and testing procedures. Bad Blood is quite accessible to readers who lack a background or even an interest in medicine or biotechnology though some of the examples given (surprise, the Edison machine failed again!) may come across as repetitive.
A fascinating read that fits the “truth is stranger than fiction” maxim, Bad Blood is a sobering exposé that reminds us that the appropriate response to “We can do it” should not be a pat on the back but a “Can you really?”
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