BAD BLOOD by John Carreyrou

BAD BLOOD: SECRETS AND LIES IN A SILICON VALLEY STARTUP

“By positioning Theranos as a tech company in the heart of the Valley, Holmes channeled this fake it until you make it culture and she went to extreme lengths to hide the fakery…Hyping your product to get funding while concealing your true progress, and hoping that reality eventually catches up to the hype, continues to be tolerated in the tech industry. But it is crucial to bear in mind that Theranos was not a tech company in the traditional sense, it was first and foremost a healthcare company.”

Can I get away with comparing back to back books to Fyre Festival?? Because this story is Fyre Festival meets the healthcare industry. And y’all. If I’m going to recommend one non-fiction book this year (non-memoir) it’s this one. This is a story of a young, Stanford dropout determined to make it in the male-dominated tech and healthcare industries. While her confidence and determined demeanor were admirable at first, there came a point when Holmes disconnected completely from reality, disenchanted by what she wanted to be, and not who she really was. Elizabeth Holmes’ dream for Theranos was her green light. Like Gatsby, she believed so hard in its attainability that it broke her.

But make no mistake, this story is NOT a piece of Fitzgerald fiction. It’s the real life account of a healthcare tech company that promised our most vulnerable populations—the sick and the elderly—a technology that could streamline their medical diagnoses. And then we learned it was all a lie. If anything, Elizabeth Holmes is the Daisy Buchanan of this story—she was selfish and cruel, taunting the world and the rest of the healthcare industry with her revolutionary technology, only for the curtain to be pulled back and her fraud to be revealed (another favorite quote: “like her idol Steve Jobs, she emitted a reality distortion field that forced people to momentarily suspend disbelief.”).

I had a varying stream of emotions as I read this story: shock, anger, disbelief, fear, and—at the end—relief. Relief that Elizabeth Holmes didn’t completely get away with her fraud. Because stopping her led to thousands of lives saved.

And John Carreyrou was the perfect Nick of our story (okay, done with the Gatsby references, I’m sorry). This is hands down the best piece of investigative journalism I’ve read to-date. It was thorough beyond belief and paced wonderfully.

So why not five stars? This is total preference, but I will say this story is *dense* - there is a lot of complex medical and tech terminology that went WAY over my head. I craved a bit more background information to help me, a layperson, understand some of the key components of the technology involved. So my only cautionary advice before picking this one up is maybe learn what an immunoassay is? And then report back to me because I still don’t understand.

Also – I will disclaim that I listened to the podcast, The Dropout, prior to reading Bad Blood. It also covers the story of Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos and I thought it was an excellent prelude to this story. Highly recommend! It may help you keep track of the main players in this story, because there are a LOT to remember.