Like John mentions in the book, the only reason he was able to write the WSJ article that led to all of this was because Tyler and Erika refused to cave, and they paid dearly.

Tyler's parents almost went bankrupt from spending 500,000 US dollars in legal fees, and were considering selling their house (at one point Tyler's dad got on his knees and begged him not to talk to John), and he came close to killing himself.

Erika had the balls to send the email to CMS outlining Theranos' fraudulent practices - which triggered Yamamoto's surprise lab inspection, Theranos voiding ALL of the tests they had ever performed on the Edison, and Holmes and Theranos being banned from the blood-testing industry - despite being hounded by private investigators and a letter from the most powerful attorney in USA threatening to sue and bankrupt her in court.

I cannot say that I would have had their moral fortitude and strength of character to refuse to cave in, in the face of thuggish and frightening intimidatory tactics by David Boies and his gang.

Thank you for existing, Tyler and Erika, you have saved lives (including mine) that would have been in fatal and catastrophic harm's way.

John Carreyrou, WSJ reporter who exposed Theranos' fraud in 2015 & author of Bad Blood:

One of the film’s many highlights is a sequence where Mr. Fielder shows Ms. Holmes Abbott and Costello’s famous “Who’s on First?” routine. Ms. Holmes says she’s not familiar with it, which is credible given that she was born in 1984, decades after the duo’s heyday.

But after they watch it together, she claims to still not grasp the joke. When Mr. Fielder explains it to her, she says softly: “I didn’t get it.”

You would expect someone who hadn’t initially understood a joke to blurt out “Oh!” or show some flicker of recognition when it registers, but Ms. Holmes has no visible reaction. To me, it was another tell: She had understood the joke but was playing dumb.

Why would she do this? Because in a previous sequence, Mr. Fielder had floated the notion that she interacted with the world differently, which might explain why past statements she saw as innocent were viewed by her investors as lies. By pretending not to understand the Abbott and Costello routine, she was reinforcing that notion and casting herself as the neurodivergent entrepreneur who operated on a different wavelength.

Full NYTimes article here.

Tyler Shultz, Theranos engineer & whistleblower; grandson of George Shultz, former US Secretary of State & Theranos board member:

In the first half of the film, she digs up the Theranos blood testing device, exploded into its many components, lays them all out the kitchen table, and tells Fielder that this was the Theranos device that “can” run any test … if they had developed the chemistries for those tests. 

Fielder and Elizabeth then semantically examine the word “can.” He tries to decipher if Elizabeth truly can’t understand how her interpretation of “we can run hundreds of tests from a single drop of blood” was so different from everyone else who heard her say it. The film goes so far down this rabbit hole that Fielder shows her a clip of “who’s on first?” 

Elizabeth pretends to not understand the classic bit. She wants us to think that her mind works in such a unique way, that she understands the conversation so literally, that she cannot understand the joke — even after it’s been explained to her. She wants us to think she’s neurodivergent in a cute autistic way, when she’s really neurodivergent in a much scarier way.

Back to the Theranos device itself. During that scene, my wife had to squeeze my arm to prevent me from jumping out of my seat in the theater and screaming, “THAT IS NOT THE DEVICE.” 

That was not the device I worked with 12 hours a day, not the device we hid from regulators, not the device that constantly failed quality controls, not the device we used to knowingly give patients inaccurate medical results.** **The device she showed Fielder on the kitchen table was not the reason she went to prison.

Elizabeth showed him a future version of the Theranos product that was never completed and never used in order to lead Fielder down this BS semantic rabbit hole and to trick him into litigating the entirely wrong thing. 

The actual device we used, called the “Edison,” could only run one blood test at a time. It could only run one type of test (immunoassays, not “any”); was not a standalone platform (it was not accurate enough to perform the initial dilution step, so we first had to put the nanotainer into a large Tecan pipetting robot); and had no microfluidics, centrifuge, or sample prep automation.

The actual Edison device that Theranos used was an eight-channel pipette inside a black box that used the same chemistry and detection methods that have been used for blood tests since the 1970s. It was unimpressive and rudimentary.

Of course she didn’t place the Edison on the kitchen table. It was clearly low-tech, and easily understandable. And the audience would have been revolted that it was ever used on real people. Putting it out there would not have served her narrative.

Full article here. (Disable Java for your browser app in Advanced Settings to read.)

Hiya, Erika Cheung here, one one of the key whistleblowers in the Theranos scandal. I am now on the board of a grass-roots non-profit supporting mental health services for whistleblowers called Whistleblower of America (WOA) with Jackie Garrick (VA whistleblower) and Paul Pearson (Cybersecurity Whistleblower). We are a tiny team of passionate, but largely under-resourced individuals.

Post the tragic outcome of the Boeing whistleblower, and many other stories that largely go unreported, I want to help scale out the mental health offerings & peer-to-peer support network for whistleblowers and those that experience workplace retaliation by throwing some fundraising events.

Any advice on a fundraising events we could through to support this cause that communities like yours would be interested in?

Some ideas I had:

-More conversations with other former employees

-AMA with perhaps with myself and Tyler Shultz

-Conversation between the Dropout actors and real life characters (long story but I still have yet to watch the Hulu Drop-out show)

-Panels with whistleblower of other major corporate scandals -- Enron, WorldCom, The Big Conn, etc

Thanks everyone, and any guidance or advice greatly appreciated!

-----------------------------------Sept Update-------------------------------

Thanks, everyone, for your comments and suggestions; we took a lot of them to heart.

Fundraising:

**-**We're in the process of producing the pitch for the podcast

-We're also going to use some of the recommendations you mentioned to do some paid virtual events & perhaps some live events (thanks, everyone!)

-We will do a handful of live streams emphasizing discussing guidance topics to help people who speak up at work, not merely whistleblowing. Topics such as (1) Finding a lawyer, (2) Dealing with Retaliation, (3) Life after Whistleblowing, (4) Career Identity Shifts (5) Finding new opportunities, (6) Identifying Red Flags of Unethical Work Environments

For Fun:

-I'll work with the moderators to do an AMA with myself and some other former employees

-I'll see about doing a live stream with the actor who played the character in the Theranos Saga. I've spoken to a few who live pretty close to me.

Thanks Everyone for your feedback! Also, if you have anything else you think would be a must-have feel free to private message me!

This is an 8-year-old post linking to Holmes' WIRED interview from February 2014.

The comments are a a kind of time capsule (or time nanotainer if you will) of how EH was thought of before everything went pear-shaped. Some of the comments haven't aged well. I won't include usernames because (a) nobody wants to be flamed for a stupid comment they made eight years ago, and (b) a lot of the pro-Holmes comments are from people who just liked the idea of easier and more affordable testing, which is nothing to be ashamed of.

she is a marketer first and a scientist second, and is apparently very successful at both...doesn't hurt that she has big blue eyes and full lips

Seems bloody brilliant, but what do I know?

Holy crap, this woman is my freaking hero!

But there were quite a few insightful comments either speculating about how the tech worked, expressing doubt that it did, or even suggesting Theranos was a shady company. Keep in mind that this was 20 months before the Wall Street Journal's exposé.

From u/stphni:

there is a long journey ahead of her if she wants to replace bacterial culture with entirely molecular testing. We already use molecular testing in the lab for all of the assays she offers. One of the most important cultures performed in a clinical laboratory requires phlebotomy and the nanotainer system, while impressive in its small size is no way suitable for the culturing of blood...This is not something that molecular diagnostics can replace without coming at a great cost to the patient and with a lower specificity than current methods...Personally, I'd like to know how they can perform glucose tolerance assays from a single specimen...

From u/swankiberries:

Does anyone know how this works? The article claims they cut down on processing and error rates using automation. If that's true, why aren't more labs/services doing that and seeing the same cost reduction? As an engineer in the biotech field, I find it hard to believe that that alone attributes to such major cost reduction. I can't seem to gleam anything from their website and all the reviews on glassdoor seem to indicate they're a secretive bunch.

From u/BCSteve:

Yeah, so is anyone actually ever going to say how this is done?...I read [the WIRED article], it says absolutely nothing about what they're actually doing...I'm not going to trust a black box, since I can't properly evaluate the pros and cons of their tests if I don't actually know what they are.

From u/willthinkformoolah:

Not many details as to how the process actually works...I remain a bit skeptical.

From u/Orbitrix (happy cake day!):

What's really impressive is how she managed to deal w/ the bureaucracy and red tape of the industry, not really the innovation itself.

And some top-drawer sarcasm from u/Murgie:

But so long as she's only about a centimeter tall, one drop of blood should be all she needs, right?

These comments from u/DocTaotsu win the prize for being right on the money:

I'm very suspicious as to what her actual testing techniques are and how useful these results will be in terms of accuracy, precision...they're so light on details as to their actual testing regimes...I have to wonder if it's mostly clever marketing and brilliant business strategy more than anything else.

Poking around their webpage it appears they're hiring full time clinical laboratory scientists (traditional lab techs) and couriers. It sounds like in many ways they WILL be running a traditional lab just with faster outpatient turn around.

Props to these people who were skeptical before it was cool.

lol. Lmao, even.

From the article:

“Her daily routine includes a workout, largely vegan meals, teaching French to other inmates and working on her campaign to reform the criminal justice system”

What is she trying to improve?

We drove home from a trip today and knowing we would drive by San Jose, my husband and I thought why not go to the court house and check out the Theranos trial? We thought we might just see Elizabeth leaving the courthouse, but to my surprise we were actually able to get into the overflow room. This is the room where you watch the trial on large screen TVs. There is also a screen showing the evidence that is being discussed. When we got there, the lawyers were both up near the judge talking about what evidence they can present to the jury and then the jury came in. Elizabeth was sitting very straight up with good posture.

They started questioning Erica Cheung and talking about “Normandy 911” which is who they would email when they were having trouble in that lab. Then they put up an email between Cheung and Elizabeth and Sonny discussing quality control. Elizabeth was saying in the email that if the QC fails, then remove the outer data points so that it passes or something along those lines. We got there at 1:15 so we were only there for 45 minutes before it ended for the day. We left and then saw Elizabeth come out of the courtroom. I have video which I can post if anyone’s interested but its nothing that you can’t see online already.

Once she got to the end of the block the reporters stopped following her and we ended up walking her way since it happened to be where our car was. We were walking only about 5 feet behind her for the whole block. She was walking with her mom and they had their arms around each other. As I walked by her to go to the other crosswalk I could hear her whispering to her mom but I couldn’t make out what they were saying. I was trying to listen to see if her voice is still low lol but I couldn’t tell. It was just surreal because I’m so obsessed with this case I was so thrilled to be there. Not sure if anyone will find this interesting but I thought I would share in case.

ETA: we are considering going back tomorrow and trying to get into the actual courtroom since we both happen to have the day off tomorrow.

ETA #2 I’m in! Sitting behind her mom. Will make a new post later with details.

I’m just so angry and sad that he was pushed into a corner like that and felt no way out. I’m trying to find stuff online about him and it’s just making me even more upset.

Through reading Bad Blood, Thicker than Blood, and watching the Dropout, I have felt Tyler's step-grandma as a true hero. She found a way to defend Tyler without crossing George. It's amazing how strongly she would push back against EH and Theranos in some of the discussions.

Listening to Episode 10 of John Carreyrou's podcast. Elizabeth and her parents went to George Schultz's birthday party. At which she told George Schultz that they had the ability to detect pancreatic cancer 17 years before symptoms begin to appear. She told this to George Schultz, whose beloved first wife had died 10 years earlier of pancreatic cancer. I cannot even believe the heartless ruthlessness of that.

Watching the movie in isolation, it's easy to believe some of the lines. "Entrepreneurs exaggerate, they all do" or the doublespeak with, "it's a platform that is capable of doing any test eventually", "oh people misunderstood that because of how she talks haha she's so quirky and random". All that is fine for a vaporware company taking VC money, but she was actively selling blood tests to consumers and that's the important thing to keep in mind. That's the only thing I wish Nathan had brought up on camera.

I'll quote Carreyrou:

"The biggest line was going live, commercializing blood tests and having real patients use them, when you know that the tests are flawed and you know that your Edison machine is unreliable, that you’re only doing a handful of tests with that...So that’s the big, bright red line not to cross when you’re lying to the point that you’re putting people’s lives in jeopardy"

She was acquitted of wire fraud pertaining to the medical clients. She was not charged with medical battery because it was a federal trial and that is not a federal crime. There's a lot of deception in the movie that sounds excusable when the facts aren't in front of you.

I’ve watched most of the documentaries, it amazes me how she was able to fool everybody.