There was a time when Elizabeth Holmes was not synonymous with fraud and infamy, a time when her company, Theranos, was valued at $10 billion and she was seen as the next great tech visionary. A new documentary by Alex Gibney for HBO, shows this time, as well as the total disarray that was happening behind the scenes.
Theranos, according to The Daily Beast, was trying to “disrupt the health-care industry with imaginary technology that was never fully realized.” Holmes herself was selling “a world in which no one has to say goodbye too soon.” This world was possible thanks to the Edison, a machine that would take a small amount of blood and run a variety of tests, which would help eliminate the need for pricey lab diagnostics.
But, the new documentary shows, that the machine would actually become coated in blood and pieces of it would fall off or explode, and this chaos only got worse as the company got more attention and accolades.
“We were fudging results,” one former employee attested to The Daily Beast, explaining, “If people are testing themselves for syphilis using Theranos, there’s going to be a lot more syphilis in the world.”
Thanks for reading InsideHook. Sign up for our daily newsletter and be in the know.
