At trial, it was revealed that Theranos’ “ proprietary finger-prick blood testing device” only worked for 12 out of the 240 tests it was meant to be able to carry out. With the help of whistleblowers, along with the widow of Ian Gibbons - a biochemist who’d worked for Theranos and was named on many of the company’s patents - Carreyrou was able to shine a light inside the secretive healthcare startup. Related: What happened to WeWork? The incredible true story behind new series ‘WeCrashed’ The product didn’t work as intended, and the technology couldn’t keep up with the company’s ambitious expansion. This not only put patients at risk, but showed that Holmes had essentially been selling a lie to customers and investors. As reported at length by The Wall Street Journal in a series of articles, despite rolling out its tests in Walgreens pharmacies, Theranos’ own technology was allegedly unreliable, and sometimes produced incorrect results. Instead, the company had been using machines bought from other, more established laboratories like Quest Diagnostics. The Wall Street Journal‘s John Carreyrou initially broke the story, revealing that Theranos wasn’t using its own technology to perform all of its blood tests. But internally, Theranos had some problems. According to CNBC, the company had raised over $945 million from investors during its lifespan. BETH DUBBER / HULU Where did it all go wrong?īy February 2014, Theranos was valued at $9 billion. With so many big-name backers, Theranos quickly became a company to watch in Silicon Valley. Over the years, Holmes would prove adept at winning over some of America’s most influential white men, from former secretary of states Henry Kissinger and George Shultz to former secretary of defense William Perry. By the end of 2004, Theranos had raised an impressive six million dollars (via The New Yorker). Per The Wall Street Journal, Holmes gained the support of Channing Robertson, her advisor at Stanford, who introduced the young ingenue to venture capitalists. Holmes claimed that her technology would lead to earlier diagnoses, thereby saving lives. Theranos’ “ Edison” machines could supposedly conduct the tests in mere minutes, which was an attractive prospect for doctors and patients alike. According to The Wall Street Journal, she initially claimed her company could test for as many as 240 conditions using only a drop of blood, inspired by her own fear of needles. She became determined to revolutionise the blood testing space with “ nanotainers,” tiny vials less than half an inch in size. Holmes named her company Theranos, combining the words “therapy” and “diagnosis,” per The New Yorker. (That idea was eventually abandoned.) A year later, she dropped out of Stanford’s School of Engineering entirely, and according to Inc, convincing her parents to let her use her tuition money to start a company. Holmes filed her first patent - for a wearable patch that could test patients and deliver medicine - in 2003, when she was a college student, via Inc.
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