Now, she had envisioned technology that was capable of eliminating all those deaths. One hundred million Americans die each year from adverse drug reactions. This imagined device was supposed to usher humanity into an era in which drugs would be minutely tailored to individuals thanks to permanent blood-monitoring technology. Holmes enjoyed highlighting these few facts during her interviews with the prospective engineers. So, we’re talking about a revolutionary device here – one that could effectively democratize the world of medicine, giving poor Americans (finally!) access to cheap medical care. Holmes didn’t stop there: in her mind, the patch was supposed to be cheap and quite effective, optimized to test one’s blood for hundreds of ailments, thus allowing ordinary people to predict their diagnoses early – and independently from any doctor.

Possibly because of this, at the tender age of 19, Holmes came up with a wonderful idea: a wearable patch that could draw very little blood after pricking by no more than a few microneedles. So, get ready to hear “a cautionary tale of what happens when Silicon Valley’s ‘fake it till you make it’ mentality meets public health,” and prepare to discover how and why John Carreyrou exposed a multibillion-dollar blood-testing company as “a massive fraud.” Elizabeth Holmes’ brilliant ideaĮlizabeth Holmes inherited from her mother a phobia of needles: apparently, Noel Holmes would faint at the mere sight of a syringe. The author also paints a damning portrait of the company’s founder, Elizabeth Holmes – a Steve Jobs wannabe – which Forbes named the youngest and wealthiest self-made billionaire in 2015, only to earn a place the following year in Fortune’s infamous list of the “world’s most disappointing leaders.” In “Bad Blood,” acclaimed French American investigative journalist John Carreyrou unveils the unimaginably dark secrets of Theranos – until recently, one of the breakthrough technology corporations of the past decade. Set in the Silicon Valley – the place where future is manufactured – it features a charismatic female turtleneck-wearing protagonist, a bunch of hoodwinked FoMO-fraught investors (an acronym to the “Fear of Missing Out”), and a revolutionary medical device valued at no less than $9 billion – that is impossible to make. Just like all the best true stories out there, this one’s stranger than fiction as well.

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