M&B May Book Club Pick: Bad Blood
In one of the most interesting pieces of long-form journalism I’ve read in a long time, Bad Blood by Wall Street Journal’s political and business journalist John Carreyrou, carefully presents the ongoing Theranos corporate scandal saga, which received full-fledged whistleblower treatment in 2015. A number of astounding first-party accounts document the 2003 founding and unprecedented rise of Silicon Valley medtech company, Theranos, and its enigmatic leader, then 19-year-old Elizabeth Holmes.
Theranos’ mission was to revolutionize the medtech world with unprecedented blood testing nanotech, rendering painful blood draws unnecessary and allowing patients to receive a battery of medical tests with only a prick of a finger, a drop of blood, and near instantaneous diagnostics. It was revolutionary technology; tech that earned Theranos unicorn status (privately held startups with over $1 billion dollar valuations), and Elizabeth the market value of $4.5 billion dollars, making her the wealthiest and youngest female billionaire CEO in the Valley.
The only problem? The tech didn’t exist, at least not in a functional capacity.
The Fyre Festival of Silicon Valley, if you will, Theranos was built on secrecy, a corporate culture of fear and intimidation, an evangelical leader with a talent for recruitment and fundraising, and the intoxicating lure of being part of something history-making. It’s a fascinating examination of the flaws of Silicon Valley, with its lack of regulation in the name of innovation, as well as a damning expose on the fall from grace of medtech’s most vaulted wunderkind, and likely sociopath.*
Elizabeth Holmes with the famed Theranos nanotainer
I would suggest reading this book for good background, before the onslaught of movies and documentaries come out. HBO recently released a documentary The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley; there’s a podcast called The Dropout through ABC; a Jennifer Lawrence project is in the works; as is a Kate McKinnon-Hulu iteration. The story is too absurd for Hollywood to ignore, and Silicon Valley is a shiny object of fascination for most of North America, a mecca of brilliance and dangers-to-society.
*Side bar: if you are interested in sociopathy as a diagnosis, and the way sociopaths operate, check out Confessions of a Sociopath by M.E. Thomas… also a fascinating read.
