The fall and rise of an ambitious woman

Bad Blood is the story of Elizabeth Holmes and her meteoric rise to wealth and influence and her just as speedy downfall. It’s written by investigative journalist John Carreyrou who broke the original story and the audio version which I listened to was narrated by Will Damron.

Elizabeth Holmes was a dreamer and very ambitious. She left university without getting a degree because she had a vision of developing and producing a small unit which would be able to run diagnostic tests on just a finger prick of blood. The idea was that this unit might be kept at home or in doctor’s offices or even in pharmacies and that it would quickly be able to give results of a raft of tests without blood having to be taken by a technician and sent to a lab. There were a number of units on the market but none of them could use such a small sample of blood.

The machine was soon under construction and this start-up company raised millions of dollars for development. Soon they had contracts with the military and had the machines placed in wellness centres in supermarkets. Elizabeth was feted and admired and her product was endorsed by celebrities and senior figures in public life. There was only one problem. It didn’t work.

The people who knew that the machine couldn’t do what was promised were the employees of the company but they were bound by confidentiality and non-disclosure agreements even if they left. The lack of results was covered up and tests were even secretly run on the machines of competitors to present to the patient. There was no doubt that Elizabeth knew about the cover up and the pretence and eventually the truth was uncovered, the company closed and Elizabeth went to jail for fraud.

I remember this story when it was in the news and I found this book fascinating, especially when the author tries to uncover Elizabeth’s motives and why she became sucked into such amazing dishonesty. It is also shocking to see the money that Elizabeth could get for her start-up without any clear evidence of her success other than her fame. This is a story of hubris but it’s also a story of the betrayal of employees who found themselves in a position where they had to lie to retain their jobs and livelihoods.  An excellent read.