You may have heard of Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos. Maybe you say the HBO documentary “The Inventor.” Maybe you listened to the ABC News podcast “The Dropout.” Maybe you read about her medical breakthrough back when she first took the media by storm. But however you first heard about her, if you want the whole story of how she came to take the tech world by storm with her idea of using only a drop or two of blood to complete a battery of medical tests within hours, you need to read Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup.
Written by John Carreyrou, the Wall Street journalist who first pulled the curtain back on the wizard of bio-tech, Bad Blood goes back to Holmes’ beginnings, as a Stanford dropout with a world-changing idea, to the woman being prosecuted for perpetrating millions (billions?) of dollars’ worth of fraud on her investors. The ups and downs of her story are fascinating and horrifying, and I could not stop listening to this audio book.
Based on interviews from insiders from Theranos, Bad Blood takes you through all the years, all the iterations of Holmes’ ideas of taking health care into homes as well as doctors’ offices, wellness clinics, clinical trials, and even the front lines of the Army. All the attempts to create her magical machine, all the marketing hype and stock offerings, all the secrets, all the lies, all the times they made promises they knew their technology could not fulfill—every insane piece of the puzzle comes together as the chapters roll on. This story is so unbelievable it can only be true.
Here’s the story in a nutshell if you’re not already familiar: while a sophomore at Stanford, Elizabeth Holmes comes up with an idea. She wants to invent a machine, one that could sit on a counter, that could run a battery of blood tests using only a drop or two. The blood drops go into a cartridge which fits into the machine, which then runs the tests and sends the results to the person’s doctor. It’s an idea that could change the face of medicine. There could be instant results, instant diagnoses, a way to monitor if a medicine is working, a way to get instant progress reports in medical testing. It would change everything.
The only problem? It’s not actually possible. And instead of admitting that, Holmes just kept hiding her “technology” and lying to investors and making promises she couldn’t fulfill, and people ended up getting hurt by her actions. Now she faces lawsuits and possible criminal charges. And while she just kept smiling and charming people, a handful of people stood up to her and her very powerful attorneys to find the truth about what she was doing. The story of that is Bad Blood. And it’s fascinating.
If you’re a true crime addict or someone who loves a story of the bad guy getting caught, Bad Blood is for you. Narrator WIll Damron can be a bit robotic at times in his narration, but it’s still a must-listen with a horrifyingly engrossing real-life story. I recommend this book and the audio to anyone wanting a deeper dive into this crazy story. John Carreyrou spills all the secrets and unlocks all the doors of this crazy tale of fraud.