The pending Elizabeth Holmes jury trial in California exposes a fascinating scheme that allegedly defrauded highly sophisticated investors and had the potential to jeopardize patient health through false blood test results. Sifting through the remarkable events related to Ms. Holmes’ vision of revolutionizing the blood testing industry and becoming the next Steve Jobs of Silicon Valley, we see images of her miniature vials, her allegedly abusive relationship with her former boyfriend and Chief Operating Officer, Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, her successful efforts to promote her vision and entice famous investors, and the eventual exposure of fatal shortcomings in the company’s devices. Ultimately, we encounter Erika Cheung, a whistleblower whose activities contributed to the company’s spectacular downfall.
Ms. Cheung’s testimony during the pending trial of Ms. Holmes not only provided key revelations about how Theranos’ blood-testing machines were not reliable enough to use on patients, but has also become a cautionary tale for employers with respect to the handling of whistleblower complaints.
In her Ted Talk, Ms. Cheung, a former Theranos lab associate, provides a compelling description of her excitement at the prospect of working at Theranos and how she was crestfallen upon learning that Theranos’s proprietary technology often did not work.
While Theranos allegedly said its proprietary machines “could run over 200 tests with tiny amounts of blood,” Ms. Cheung recently...
We’ve spotted several social media posts sharing videos and stills supposedly of a power plant in Israel’s northern city of Haifa being “blown up” by an Iranian missile. While there have been repor...