I gotta cut straight to the point- Elizabeth Holmes is one of the most fascinating people I’ve come across in my life.
And I’d come across some pretty fascinating people…
The fact we refer to her just by her first name in our house should speak volumes of this.
Even though all the news coverage on her as of late had been negative and she officially became a convicted felon this year… that oddly hasn’t changed.
…
The history about Elizabeth and her company Theranos goes all the way back to 2015. Yet the staggering rise and eventual downfall of this company escaped our notice until a couple years ago.
On one of his last flights (not just cuz of 2020 but also his retirement), my dad watched an HBO documentary. He found it and her so fascinating he watched it twice, told us all about it when he got home and proceeded to buy the DVD on Amazon so we could experience it.
[This will only be a brief overview of my main takeaways from this doc. If I don’t go into excessive detail or leave any key things out, that’s why. If you want to know more, you can Google it]
Incidentally, by the time we got the DVD, I’d only retained one thing- she was the CEO of a Silicon Valley startup founded on the premise they could perform multitudes of bloodwork from a single drop of blood.
Either my dad conveniently forgot to mention it or I completely forgot (I probably did the forgetting)… this goal ultimately went unrealized.
This one bit of missing information created one of the most fascinating movie experiences I’d ever had.
The whole thing starts with her dropping out of Stanford and the company being found and all of us seeing her Edison prototype. And I was rooting for this to happen because I loved the idea.
I’d had blood drawn 4 times in my life- one pint a week over a 4 week period- so I’d have enough set aside after I had major surgery. Since then, I’d developed a huge dislike of needles to where even the idea of getting a couple of small vials drawn for blood work makes me squirm.
Then as I watched, people they interviewed started saying not-so-nice things about Elizabeth and Theranos… and I was like “why?” I couldn’t understand what the issue was.
Then they dropped the bombshell… Edison didn’t work as promised. This groundbreaking technology was a failure.
And the worst part: Elizabeth was doing nothing about it. She kept going on about the idea of the company and her vision and her facade never cracked.
We learned about the mountain of consequences of what these shortcomings were creating. The dangers of maintaining this illusion and how it was affecting patients. On top of it all, the company was spying on its employees at microscopic levels. One person that was interviewed said her keystrokes were being monitored. Another went to a major newspaper to speak out and he was hounded so avidly by Theranos lawyers, his family had to shell out unbelievable sums of money to compensate their own.
For me, there was a huge dramatic switch that went off in my brain. Where I went from fighting to support Elizabeth and her vision to wanting badly for her company to be exposed and shut down.
I thought the stance of my loyalty in Captain American: Civil War did a lot of switching around… that was nothing compared to this.
…
Long story short, thanks to the newspaper article and a whistleblower (the same person who talked about her keystrokes), Theranos run out of money and was forced to close down.
And Elizabeth faced a lengthy inquiry and investigation that only ended at the start of this year. She was only convicted on 4 of the 11 counts against her- nearly all of them correspond to misleading investors and committing wire fraud involving obscene amounts of money.
All the while, she never stopped believing in her vision…
I think the one thing that might make me feel better about all this— hearing her say just once that she was sorry about the pain her company caused for a lot of people. A couple of people got false positives and false negatives from the tests- I think one was told they had cancer and got a second opinion that found out they hadn’t. Stuff like that…
It’s one thing to stand by your convictions. That quality is one I still greatly admire about her. But all of us also need to acknowledge when mistakes are made and make an attempt to change course to ensure they don’t happen again. Especially when peoples' lives and health are at stake. There are fewer things more dangerous than receiving incorrect medical treatment, whether it’s being treated for something you don’t have or not being treated enough for something you do.
ABC did a 20/20 special on Elizabeth a couple of years ago. It had a little more current information so it wasn’t the exact same thing as the HBO doc we watched.
But they were right upfront with their premise- Elizabeth Holmes had a vision that could change the medical industry. There’s just one problem- it didn’t work.
Sure, it was probably my own fault for not reading the synopsis on the DVD case that I missed that vital bit of information… but I wouldn’t change it if I could.
The most curious thing about her- she just has this way of convincing you of her vision. Had she been around in Salem way back when, she probably would’ve been convicted as a witch… but because she’s charmed so many people, they probably wouldn’t have gotten her to a stake.
Something about her eyes and her voice- heck, I’m a straight female and I think she'd convince me to switch teams if she made me such a proposition.
After the trial, they talked to 2 of the jurors. Like her investors, they were both older white men and they agreed- they knew they did the right thing in the role they were given, but they felt bad for doing so because they believed she was sincere and genuine.
And I completely agree with them.
It honestly wouldn’t surprise me if years from now, dozens of academic papers will be written about this whole saga. Not just from a business and economic standpoint but also a psychological one. Because there’s a lot to be said on all of those fronts.
...
I've had all this written and in reserve for several months. Now that Elizabeth has officially been sentenced. She won't be brought in to serve until April (with the assumption future appeals don't bear fruit), but the official sentence as of this moment is 11.25 years plus three years of supervised release.
My guess: she was going to be ordered to 10 years, but get out in 4 for good behavior.
And today when she addressed the court, she took responsibility and admitted to her failings. It's not a point-blank apology, but it's at least a step in the right direction.
I'll say it again- she fascinates me and it's hard to really explain why.
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