Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup
The gripping story of Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos—one of the biggest corporate frauds in history—a tale of ambition and hubris set amid the bold promises of Silicon Valley, rigorously reported by the prize-winning journalist.
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Community Reviews
It’s a story about ambition, power, and the limited power of the truth to eek out a win against powerful interests.
Some criticize this story because it unfairly picks on a woman when men are doing the same thing. It’s a reasonable instinct but misplaced here. Scale of this too big and relationship to healthcare makes it different. How so? Two hundred thousand patients were told by their doctors to get a blood test and then Theranos gave them inaccurate results. This is an Enron Scale Fraud and belongs in that club, regardless of the CEOs gender.
So if it’s an ESF, what’s the lesson? Bad people exist and aren’t that uncommon. They become dangerous when our institutions fail. And that’s what is interesting here. This is to the VC and healthcare industries what Enron was to the cozy worlds of accounting and investment banking.
The author clearly dislikes Holmes and Balwani, rightly so. But my suspicion is fraud is not so uncommon as we might like to believe. The smoking gun story of a sociopath so enamored of their own ego that they disconnect from reality is - while not a daily occurrence - not exactly a rarity either. It’s interesting to peer into the mind of someone like this - chilling really. But it’s not all that helpful. We all must live as if these people exist because they always will. Most don’t do all that much. Why did this get big is the better question.
The thing that made this fraud work wasn’t Holmes, rather the gatekeepers failed - lawyers, elites, media, regulatory agencies, the military, and healthcare corporations.
Not unlike Enron, the real story here should be the institutions around the bad actor and why they failed. Why is Walgreens not accountable for putting sham kits into its stores? Why is it ok to be a board member to a fraud and keep your reputation? Why should a law firm be allowed to perpetuate a fraud through aggressive litigation against anyone who tried to expose it? And pay nothing for that crime against our society?
Similarly the heroes here are all whistleblowers who took great personal risks to get the story out. I’d have liked more details about what it felt like to do that. I’ll bet it was terrible and any relief that came from being right wasn’t worth the trauma.
Do we have the right protections in place to protect people who do step forward? Clearly not. The powerful always have the upper hand and the lesson most will take from this book is - even if you have a smoking gun you can lose a decade of your life, all your money, your sanity, and possibly your life (one senior scientist was literally driven to suicide) for doing what’s right. If you are right, you will receive no reward whatsoever but if you are wrong your life will be ruined and probably it will he ruined if you are right too.
Of course the criminals who got off without punishment were all the gatekeepers. And they will be the ones to crown the next sociopath who happens to come along. Without them a sociopath disconnected from reality is just a lunatic. With them, that same sociopath can change the world.
There will be another Theranos because within the halls of Boies law firm, within the meeting rooms of Walgreens, within the chambers of power in DC, no one paid for their complicit participation. I’m sure it will make a good book.
Four stars!
Some criticize this story because it unfairly picks on a woman when men are doing the same thing. It’s a reasonable instinct but misplaced here. Scale of this too big and relationship to healthcare makes it different. How so? Two hundred thousand patients were told by their doctors to get a blood test and then Theranos gave them inaccurate results. This is an Enron Scale Fraud and belongs in that club, regardless of the CEOs gender.
So if it’s an ESF, what’s the lesson? Bad people exist and aren’t that uncommon. They become dangerous when our institutions fail. And that’s what is interesting here. This is to the VC and healthcare industries what Enron was to the cozy worlds of accounting and investment banking.
The author clearly dislikes Holmes and Balwani, rightly so. But my suspicion is fraud is not so uncommon as we might like to believe. The smoking gun story of a sociopath so enamored of their own ego that they disconnect from reality is - while not a daily occurrence - not exactly a rarity either. It’s interesting to peer into the mind of someone like this - chilling really. But it’s not all that helpful. We all must live as if these people exist because they always will. Most don’t do all that much. Why did this get big is the better question.
The thing that made this fraud work wasn’t Holmes, rather the gatekeepers failed - lawyers, elites, media, regulatory agencies, the military, and healthcare corporations.
Not unlike Enron, the real story here should be the institutions around the bad actor and why they failed. Why is Walgreens not accountable for putting sham kits into its stores? Why is it ok to be a board member to a fraud and keep your reputation? Why should a law firm be allowed to perpetuate a fraud through aggressive litigation against anyone who tried to expose it? And pay nothing for that crime against our society?
Similarly the heroes here are all whistleblowers who took great personal risks to get the story out. I’d have liked more details about what it felt like to do that. I’ll bet it was terrible and any relief that came from being right wasn’t worth the trauma.
Do we have the right protections in place to protect people who do step forward? Clearly not. The powerful always have the upper hand and the lesson most will take from this book is - even if you have a smoking gun you can lose a decade of your life, all your money, your sanity, and possibly your life (one senior scientist was literally driven to suicide) for doing what’s right. If you are right, you will receive no reward whatsoever but if you are wrong your life will be ruined and probably it will he ruined if you are right too.
Of course the criminals who got off without punishment were all the gatekeepers. And they will be the ones to crown the next sociopath who happens to come along. Without them a sociopath disconnected from reality is just a lunatic. With them, that same sociopath can change the world.
There will be another Theranos because within the halls of Boies law firm, within the meeting rooms of Walgreens, within the chambers of power in DC, no one paid for their complicit participation. I’m sure it will make a good book.
Four stars!
I’m not that interested in Theranos specifically, but what is interesting about this book is all the patterns of corruption that I’ve seen before in numerous places: bullying people through numerous expensive bogus law suits, wanting employees to be loyal instead of highly qualified (which often includes nepotism), toxic work environments, numerous firings: especially when people are fired for questioning appropriate work practices, lying or loose ethical standards by management, employees that are so stressed that they start keeping written records of their interactions with management.
The employee suicide was a horror, and they should have focused on that part more. Also the involvement of General Mattis is super weird. Otherwise, the book could have benefitted from a lot of editing though because it keeps talking about how the product wasn't working and they kept pretending it did. Okay, I get it.
Surprisingly the end of the book was the most exciting. It was a meta section about how difficult it was to get the story of Theranos corruption published. Another reminder of how important free journalism is.
The employee suicide was a horror, and they should have focused on that part more. Also the involvement of General Mattis is super weird. Otherwise, the book could have benefitted from a lot of editing though because it keeps talking about how the product wasn't working and they kept pretending it did. Okay, I get it.
Surprisingly the end of the book was the most exciting. It was a meta section about how difficult it was to get the story of Theranos corruption published. Another reminder of how important free journalism is.
Absolutely loved this book - perhaps one of my favourite book club reads. I found the story riveting, Holmes infuriating, but mostly found myself ranting at the (mostly elderly, male) Directors who did so little due diligence and seemed to be willing to overlook blatant fraud when dazzled by the charm of a pretty, white woman.
This book took me down a rabbit-hole of reading about the case, and I've since read a number of other books about Holmes and watched several documentaries. LOVED IT!
This was pretty good but I still stand by my point that I don't really care about rich f***s doing rich f*** things.
The amount of sociopathic audacity of Ms. Holmes has made me so mad. The secrets and lies exposed in this book are only the tip of the iceberg and is a small sign of what's wrong with capitalistic rich folks. The sad part is the idea of what she'd hope to accomplish would be great and could be if she used the money she raised towards the science.
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