Elizabeth Holmes, a 19-year-old Stanford University drop-out, formed a Silicon Valley company called Theranos. Elizabeth Holmes sold investors on the idea that she and her company could produce devices that with a few drops of blood could run hundreds of tests on that blood. Essentially, it would put traditional blood testing companies like Quest Diagnostics out of business. Millions of dollars rolled in. Holmes was able to attract investors like Rupert Murdock, Bob Kraft (owner of the New England Patriots), Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim, John Elkann (Fiat Chrysler Automobiles), and Cox Enterprises. Even more impressive was the star power of the Board of Directors Holmes was able to recruit: Henry Kissinger, George Shultz, Sam Nunn, and Trump Secretary of Defense “Mad Dog” Mattis. How Holmes mesmerized these high-powered people into supporting her dream is a mystery. For years, the Theranos devices failed. Turnover within the firm increased. Holmes would fire anyone who doubted her vision. She fired staff that raised questions about the technology she claimed worked just fine.
John Carreyrou of the Wall Street Journal started to investigate Theranos. Holmes refused to be interviewed by him. Carreyrou was followed. Theranos’s legal team threatened to sue the Wall Street Journal and Carryrou if they published articles critical of Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos. Despite all the intimidation, the truth finally came out. Theranos was a billion dollar scam. Elizabeth Holmes is under indictment. Her devices were bogus. Bad Blood reads like a thriller. Suspense and breath-taking events show up on practically every page. How could so many smart people get fooled? Why did this scheme succeed so long? Bad Blood points the way to some answers to these questions. This is the best non-fiction book I’ve read in 2018 so far! Highly recommended! GRADE: A
I want to send out a Special Thanks to my son, Patrick, who not only recommended Bad Blood but also provided me with a copy to read!
Table of Contents
Author’s Note ix
Prologue 3
1 A Purposeful Life 9
2 The Gluebot 18
3 Apple Envy 30
4 Goodbye East Paly 41
5 The Childhood Neighbor 54
6 Sunny 67
7 Dr. J 81
8 The miniLab 95
9 The Wellness Play 109
10 “Who Is LTC Shoemaker?” 120
11 Lighting a Fuisz 132
12 Ian Gibbons 141
13 Chiat\Day 150
14 Going Live 161
15 Unicorn 174
16 The Grandson 184
17 Fame 201
18 The Hippocratic Oath 213
19 The Tip 223
20 The Ambush 240
21 Trade Secrets 250
22 La Mattanza 259
23 Damage Control 268
24 The Empress Has No Clothes 281
Epilogue 294
Acknowledgments 301
Notes 305
Index 325
Sounds great. I am always amazed when supposedly smart people are taken in so thoroughly by con men (and women). I mean, everyone knows Trump is a grifter and he doesn’t even bother putting up a plausible front like Theranos did, yet because of who he is, he is able to stay afloat. I have been waiting for his Emperor’s New Clothes moment for years. Believe me, it will come eventually (though the country may be in even worse straits by then), and I guarantee you that all the enablers will be “shocked, I tell you, shocked!”
Jeff, you’re exactly right. The capacity of people to buy into bogus schemes boggles the mind. BAD BLOOD is being made into a movie with Jennifer Lawrence starring as Elizabeth Holmes.
You mean that thing with 4 wheels and a motor ISN’T better than my old horse and buggy? What?
“How Holmes mesmerized these high-powered people into supporting her dream is a mystery.” I’d venture to suggest that her cool blonde ice-princess good looks may have had something to do with it! I’m curious though—what was her end-game? Did she really believe her product would eventually work? Did she imagine she would just clear out the account one day and fly off to a non-extradition-treaty country?
They say each of us has a particular con that we’ll fall for. We try to protect ourselves as best we can, but the one thing that hits us in the right psychological spot will have us opening our wallets.
Deb, you may be right about Elizabeth Holmes’s powers to bamboozle rich white men into investing in her magical blood device. As far as an end-game is concerned, at one point Elizabeth Holmes was worth around $5 billion dollars. I’m sure some of that money found its way to a Swiss Bank and the Grand Cayman Islands. I suspect Elizabeth Holmes clung to a dream that someone in her company would make the device work somehow.
Kissinger probably still can be led around by his genitals and certainly his ego.
This is absolutely fascinating, and I can’t believe I never heard about it before today. Guess I’m not paying enough attention to business news. I’ll have to buy the book since my library already has enough holds on it that it would probably take months to get it. Wouldn’t it be great if President Con Man had been taken in by this?
Michael, you might be able to score an inexpensive copy on AMAZON PRIME DAY which kicks off at 3 P.M. today. You will love BAD BLOOD. It reads like a thriller! Trump didn’t fall for Theranos but Trump’s Secretary of Defense, James “Mad Dog” Mattis, did.
Been meaning to watch HALT AND CATCH FIRE which is about the beginnings of all this.
Patti, HALT AND CATCH FIRE focuses on a computer start-up. But some of the same issues from BAD BLOOD appear.
Yes, HALT AND CATCH FIRE is about (in the first season) the lightly fictionalized version of how Compaq Computers began, and the subsequent seasons are all about the same group of people being in on the ground floor of every sort of major development in computing and related matters…it gets a bit unlikely rather quickly, but it’s still good to see. Even the initial fronting in the first season isn’t really like this story, so much as not yet being ready for the market, as opposed to being Not Even Close.
Todd, both HALT AND CATCH FIRE and BAD BLOOD show the Dark Sides of the Tech World.
I just recently discovered this story and the book sounds fascinating.
Jennifer Lawrence would be a good choice; she resembles her.
Beth, I agree: Jennifer Lawrence is perfect casting for Elizabeth Holmes. And the director of BAD BLOOD, Adam McKay, did a fabulous job on THE BIG SHORT. McKay knows the ins and outs of business and skullduggery.
Sounds very interesting. Not enough to buy, but maybe from the library. Wait, I have too many library books and holds already. I’ll see. There must have been some Reasonable Science involved, or the big investors wouldn’t have bought in.
Rick, it astonished me that Theranos’s Board of Directors had NO ONE who knew anything about blood! They were all high-powered political or tech figures. Elizabeth Holmes really didn’t know that much about blood, either, since she only took two courses in Biochemistry at Stanford before she dropped out.
There are 121 holds on 19 copies at the library. I put one on too.
Rick, BAD BLOOD is worth the wait.
Sounds fascinating, George!
Scott, I think BAD BLOOD will make a terrific movie with Jennifer Lawrence!
You have to admit, the notion of putting Quest Diagnostics out of business is pretty irresistible, given their billing procedures…perhaps even venture capitalists were swayed in part thus. “I had Jeeves pay this bill six months ago…”
Todd, revolutionizing blood work was an irresistible Idea. But having a device about the size of a paperback book that could run 300 tests on a drop of blood is absurd on the face of it.