The Rise and Fall of Elizabeth Holmes

The Rise and Fall of Elizabeth Holmes

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In 2014, Fortune magazine ran a cover story featuring Elizabeth Holmes: a blonde woman wearing a black turtleneck, staring deadpan at the camera, with the headline “This CEO’s out for blood.”

A decade earlier, Holmes had founded Theranos, a company promising to “revolutionize” the blood testing industry, initially using a microfluidics approach — moving from deep vein draws to a single drop of blood. It promised easier, cheaper, more accessible lab tests — and a revolutionized healthcare experience.

But it turns out that those promises were just that. There was no revolutionary new way to test blood. This spring she settled a lawsuit with the securities and exchange commission (though admitting no wrongdoing) and last Friday, another nail in the coffin for Theranos in the form of federal charges which were filed against Holmes and the company’s former president. 

The alleged crimes were uncovered by the dogged reporting of John Carreyrou, an investigative journalist at the Wall Street Journal and author of “Bad Blood: secrets and lies in a silicon valley startup”.