John Carreyrou: Theranos scandal is a cautionary tale

John Carreyrou broke the Theranos story in the Wall Street Journal and wrote "Bad Blood," a book about the scandal. He talks with CNN's Julia Chatterley about the rise and fall of the biotech startup.

[Punisherall]

Am I the only one that does not think Holmes was charismatic? She seemed creepy with her big non-blinking eyes and her fake deep voice. I don't get a sense of charm from her, I get a sense of creepiness.

[mr.perfect]

Long ago I worked in a blood lab, as a lowly tech, so I'm not some PhD on the subject. I use to draw several tubes of blood from patients. Here's the thing. Most of the time you only have one needle puncture and the equipment is designed so you can easily fill the tubes without any change in the needle. The location of most needle punctures are in the crook of the arm which isn't sensitive, it's also less "dirty" generally speaking and you don't need to use that punctured spot later to do your daily business. A finger puncture is going to hurt more, you can't get it as clean, and a puncture is a puncture, it is now an open wound on your digit that you use to wipe your butt with, get the picture? The blood flow is lousy in a finger prick too. It made little sense to me to go around praising the finger prick as some sort of scientific improvement. You can lose a lot of blood and not be bothered by it, it's silly to make a big deal out of a few ml of blood. I'd much rather go to a competent lab and have a puncture in my elbow crook than poke holes in myself at some random piece of machinery the general public is sneezing all over.

[pragyapradhan]

This guy is tired answering the same questions to 100 different interviews.

[uooby]

Older men falling for a young maiden....it works in every time period

[colico]

The dislikes are from Elizabeth, Sunny, David Bois, and their family members.

[JimBo-hoqw]

Silicon Valley leaders loved that woman. They wanted it to be true so bad that they ignored the red flags for years. The success of a young woman in a CEO tech position takes a hell of a lot of pressure off everyone who doesn't have many women in engineering and management positions. They would sell their souls for a female Steve Jobs, which is who she modeled herself after. She played them like a fiddle. But she's a criminal and deserves jail time for putting so many lives at risk.

[yourbestsecretary]

The lesson of this story is the same as all lessons from all stories of fraud (Enron included): If it's too good to be true, it probably is. Rupert Murdoch could have killed this article but he didn't, which shows that he really knows the business of journalism, and he knows when and where he should cut his losses as a businessman.

[k.chriscaldwell]

Once, for a year, I worked under a woman that behaved just like Holmes. She too had the fake _"brightface, "_ the faked little to no blinking eyes, and affected deep voice. She was a conniving psychopath. So I knew the first time I saw Holmes' TedMed talk in 2014 that she was a conniving psychopath. It was _"elementary, my dear Watson."_


_"Ignorance is Strength." I'm weak._

[asianlivesmatter]

They were messing with human beings who needed help

[Sobchak]

"..doctors have not been able to achieve that". If she means medical doctors, no, they will never achieve that. It is normally chemists, biologists and engineers who design this type of medical devices.

[Mwoods]

I don't have a problem with getting money for a start up to invent a machine for blood testing. It's when she started to acquire funds for a machine that didn't work and telling people it did work.

[ImadeIyamu]

To be honest, whoever was CEO at Walgreens also needs to be sanctioned. They were the platform for endangering people.

[fikhanmd]

She made a fool of Clinton Gupta Schultz Murdoch. She is indeed a genius an evil genius lol

[pete]

It was a perfect storm of factors that allowed this scam to be so huge. It’s shocking that it went on for so long and fooled so many people, but when you learn the story, there were so many different factors and elements that came together to allow it to happen. Elizabeth should have never made it past her first investor pitch. I think it would be extremely difficult for something like this to ever happen again

[hishamshahar]

I think what she has done wrong is she keep on piling up her business problems and solved it with lies and excuses to buy time instead of being transparent. In the end, the mountain of piled problem burst and she has run out of answers and excuses to buy more time. This is a classical sci-fi movies storyline. I think her story is the best lesson for people that want to dive into startup. Solve your problem one by one as fast as possible. Don't create new problem to cover up your previous problem. Be transparent with your investors. Hire the best genius people in the field that you can afford. When things not working out the way you originally plan, take a pivot and adjust your product. Lastly, do not go too big too soon. I think that's the moral of the story.

[DaPrettyT]

Silicon Valley is still the wild Wild West. Anyone can get caught slipping.

[willsweat]

I don't get how folks think she was so brilliant! She is, no question, smart but she was an untrained person with one year of college and no medical experience. Her interviews, IMO, are just a regurgitation of buzz-words and hopeful language. She isn't even close to the brilliance and technical understanding of a Jobs.

[dcamron]

The interviewer interrupts, and also doesn't seem to really pay attention to his response...why does she keep looking back at the camera while the dude is looking at her trying to answer her question...

[FrankGutowski-lsjt]

The host thinks MDs know about blood testing. Not really. Interpreting results, yes. The science and methods underlying clinical chemistry, not so much.

Holmes was both charismatic and evasive. Listening to her interviews, the latter was inescapable.

[equalogist]

In fact, there is an existing company this going EXACTLY the same route as Theranos. It is called uBeam and it will be exposed soon too, hopefully