Theranos' Elizabeth Holmes Is Back & She's At It Again

recently the New York Times published what appears to be a glowing profile of Elizabeth Holmes who Liz Holmes wants you to forget about Elizabeth the black turtlenecks are gone so is the voice as the convicted theranos founder awaits prison she's adopted a new persona devouted mother with the help of the New York Times there's a very famous saying that a lot of us have probably already heard by now fake it till you make it and while many of us may swear by it it may have worked for us before this mini series of sorts that I'm starting today will demonstrate to you just how dangerous that phrase can be the story of Elizabeth Holmes is one that has long captivated me and yes I am wearing a black turtleneck on purpose but I've been intrigued ever since I first came across the story back in 2018 and it's a story that I'm sure many of you have already heard of by now if not in detail at least in passing in fact long-term members of this channel may recall that I impersonated Elizabeth Holmes in a podcast back in 2021 although I must confess Elizabeth has fallen off my radar these past last couple of years as other problematic and dishonest women stole the Limelight but a very recent New York Times article about Elizabeth changed all of that we'll go through that article towards the end of the video because to understand the implications of that article and the Uproar surrounding it we must first delve into a synopsis of Elizabeth's lies if there is one important fact that you must know about Elizabeth Holmes it's that she is stubborn some would argue to the point of delusion delusional about her dreams her Ambitions her goals and her capabilities and while this delusion was sort of evident from a very early age it was seen as charming and endearing you know children say things all the time and the adult response is usually that's nice dear and Elizabeth would say certain things such as I'm going to be a billionaire and I'm going to restore my family name to its former glory because apparently her ancestors were part of the old money Clan but none of that raised alarm bells in the minds of anyone listening to her grandiose dreams but once she enrolled at Stanford University she came across her first big hurdle women despite telling the world that she is a trained engineer Elizabeth actually barely spent a year at Stanford she ended up dropping out to pursue her dreams of becoming an entrepreneur and starting up her own business or perhaps some would say to cosplay Steve Jobs during her short stay at Stanford as an engineering student not a medical student mind you this is an important point and keep it in mind Elizabeth came up with a few ideas you know she fancied herself as an inventor of sorts and she believed that one of those ideas were good enough to pitch to Dr Phyllis Gardner a professor of medicine at Stanford who had lots of experience in not only the medical field but also in business she wanted to incorporate microfluetics and nanotechnology into a patch where you could sample the blood and detect an infection and then in that point deliver antibiotics to it foreign ly for Elizabeth it turned out that her idea was pretty much a work of Science Fiction but Elizabeth just wouldn't take no for an answer and you see you know hints of her stubbornness and her persistence her resilience to the point of delusion coming through in her interactions with Dr Gardner so after repeated failed attempts with Dr Gardner the professor finally pointed her to someone whom she thought could potentially help her the head of the faculty of science at Stanford Channing Robertson who unlike Dr Gardner was immediately taken by the young Elizabeth so not only did he listen to her he ended up taking her under his wing and leaving his post his position at Stanford University to work for her I watched a 60-minute special on Elizabeth very recently and I learned that she had tried her look with another older experienced professional woman a woman of science a scientist in 2006. her name was Ann coffsel and she too turned down Elizabeth's offer to work for her theranos because she thought that Elizabeth's ideas just didn't seem scientifically viable now the way I see it these two polar opposite experiences were a light bulb moment for Elizabeth because they showed her that women particularly older experienced women who were Professionals in their field were naturally not susceptible to Elizabeth's womanly charms whereas men particularly older experienced men who were Professionals in their fields were and this experience with Channing Robertson paved the way for Elizabeth to enthrall a long line of older men very impressive high-ranking men who are willing to not only work for her but to invest hundreds of millions into her vision theranos a play on the words therapy and diagnosis was set up if you believe Elizabeth to invent an integrated solution where every person gets access to this wealth of information from Tiny droplets of blood and then see how they change over time and she aimed to do this by effectively decentralizing the medical system by removing the middleman being your doctor and giving patients direct access to not only order a blood test but to receive the results as well in fact she was so convincing that she successfully lobbied the State of Arizona to pass a law that would allow for this to happen and let me tell you the older men in particular were very taken by her you are magnificent and there isn't a question any of us could ever ask that you haven't answered 20 or 30 times before so this was the official public version of theranosis it could have been the truth but then something went so terribly wrong down the line or you could argue that this was a full-on scam from the get-go with this vision and Elizabeth's knack for convincing people you know casting them under some sort of spell she quickly managed to employ over 800 people at theranos and successfully managed to get theranos valued at over 1 billion US Dollars making it what Silicon Valley call a unicorn company and also also making Elizabeth one of the youngest billionaires of our time when she was 30 years old in 2014. but how did she exactly manage to accomplish such a feat in a relatively short period of time after all she was a Stanford Dropout with absolutely zero medical experience and yet she managed to convince the likes of George Schultz who was Secretary of State for Ronald Reagan Apple co-founder Avi tavanian an oracle's founder Larry Ellison to work for her for theranos in addition to convincing powerhouses like Rupert Murdoch and the DeVos family to invest hundreds of millions of dollars into her company the answer to this seemingly incredible feat may be simpler but more confounding than you think by using her own story her Ambitions her dreams relaying that emotional aspect to these people and did these men these experienced men men who have worked for an advised presidents men who have served at the highest levels of government and the military did they even bother to maybe audit theranos or to ask for data-driven results to corroborate Elizabeth's Fantastical claims because it's important to stress here although I'm no scientist what she set out to do was not scientifically viable but of course none of these men were men of science apart from Channing Robertson and so it looked like the only criteria that they needed to be persuaded by or should I say enthralled by was a pretty young woman with blonde hair and big blue eyes and an unshakable conviction in herself and in her vision which many have described as contagious and by the way I learned something in my research on this topic apparently it's actually the norm for investors to be drawn in by emotion the storytelling aspect is what convinces them rather than the data but regardless of how they were reeled in when you look at this incredibly impressive board of directors that Elizabeth was able to recruit it becomes easier to understand exactly how theranos managed to blow up in the way that it did but of course none of that would have been possible without the assistance of the very gullible media foreign what's so interesting and in equal measure disappointing is how ready the media is to put someone on a pedestal especially if they're young and beautiful not necessarily female but that does help as well and they do this seemingly out of the blue you know without fact checking them or investigating the legitimacy of their claims and that's exactly what happened with Elizabeth the media just couldn't get enough of her and her story what's interesting is that she didn't operate alone and then 49 year old Ramesh Sunny balwani the chief operating officer at theranos was not only her right hand man but her lover despite the almost 20-year age gap which Elizabeth will use for her benefit later down the line at trial but again we'll get to that it's also worth pointing out because it will be relevant later that despite this 20-year age Gap Elizabeth was the dominant figure in that relationship by all accounts he was 49 and she was 30. but she was a dominant figure in that relationship not to say that he was an angel you know he was described as a bully by everyone who worked there but he was also seen as someone that Elizabeth would sick at anyone who didn't fall in line according to Elizabeth standards at theranos so back to the media darling seemingly overnight Elizabeth was everywhere fronting the cover of every reputable publication and being interviewed or honored at every prestigious celebrity filled event everyone wanted a piece of this revolutionary this young woman who seemingly came out of nowhere and was set on a trajectory to change the medical world as we know it for the better but the truth was behind all of the accolades and the aplomb was a heavily guarded Secret foreign really centers on this little machine called The Edison named after the inventor Thomas Edison it was a portable automated blood testing machine which Elizabeth claimed would eliminate the need for a lab entirely when it comes to phlebotomy and which theranos claimed could perform up to 200 blood tests in mere minutes and all from a single finger prick drop of capillary blood now these Fantastical claims eventually led to a contract with Walgreens which never even bothered to verify these claims or even check the Edison machine to see if it works now it is actually quite fitting that Elizabeth chose to name this machine after Thomas Edison because he was 1878 about solving the mystery of the incandescent light bulb this lie was actually perpetuated by Edison for four years during which he put on fake demonstrations or bribe journalists to keep his Dirty Little Secret for him unlike Elizabeth however Edison finally figured out how to keep the lights on and unlike Elizabeth he wasn't playing with blood the problem with the Edison was that well firstly it was a mystery to everyone and from the looks of it it sounds like Elizabeth Holmes herself wasn't sure how it was exactly meant to work whenever she was questioned about it she was very vague about how the machine was meant to work and refused to even let anyone see it to begin with now Elizabeth of course would have you believe that she was shielding her invention to keep it a secret from her competitors who wanted to tear her down the truth however turned out to be a lot more complicated it turns out the machine in all its variations because there were several simply didn't work and Elizabeth went as far as pulling in Edison by running fake demonstrations for touring Executives who wanted to see how the machine worked and she did this by having employees take blood samples you know with a finger prick and then run off to the labs at theranos to use traditional methods of blood testing analysis you know using other third-party machines like the Siemens machine only to pretend that whatever results were received were produced by the Edison and of course the executives which included the board of directors lapped it all up and by the way this wasn't limited to just touring Executives who visited theranos oh no but it also took place at Walgreens which was only thankfully limited to Arizona and never spread any further than that eventually the finger protesting component was discarded altogether and people who showed up to these Walgreens stations were told we're going to inject a needle in your van just like the good old times you can imagine that didn't exactly go down too well with the patients who were promised to avoid that harrowing situation because many people have a fear of needles including apparently Elizabeth Holmes I was always absolutely terrified of of giving blood it's the only thing in my life I've ever been scared of and to make matters worse aside from this deception wrong and inaccurate results were obtained because of malpractice in the labs so if they were using the Edison the results were wrong if they were using blood samples collected from the finger prick which wasn't a large enough sample to put in a Siemens machine those results were wrong too which led to life-threatening situations in many instances and this wasn't the only lie Elizabeth also lied about the contracts that theranos has signed with the U.S Defense Force for example going as far as creating fake marketing material to legitimize this lie eventually a couple of employees by the name of Tyler Schultz who was George Schultz's grandson and Erica Chung had had enough of all of the deception and playing literally playing with people people's lives and long story short they decided to blow the whistle which led to the infamous Wall Street Journal expose the investigative report by investigative journalist John caribou [Music] the publication of this investigative report heralded the end of Elizabeth's Reign but being Elizabeth she wasn't going down without a fight in response to these damning and true Revelations Elizabeth went on the offensive this is what happens when you work to change things and first they think you're crazy then they fight you and then all of a sudden you change the world she even went as far as blaming her own employees her own lab technicians by claiming that she had no idea what was going on in her Labs we didn't have the right leadership in the laboratory and we didn't have the implementation of the quality system in terms of procedures and the associated documentation to ensure that we were realizing the quality standards that that we hold ourselves to now mind you this is a woman who is so controlling that she had to be present at every single job interview you could be a receptionist and she would be there sitting in because nothing and no one would get past Elizabeth Holmes so forgive me if I'm gonna call Bull on this claim of ignorance threats seemingly weren't beneath theranos either because they certainly resorted to a lot of those as well specifically focusing their energies on the two whistleblowers which they eventually found out who they were through certain information that was contained in the article that was very similar to information contained in emails that these employees would send to Elizabeth when they voiced their concerns before they quit but despite the gaslighting campaign that Elizabeth tried to wage against her former employees and the media even the mighty theranos couldn't hope to fight the truth fast forward to January of 2022 when Elizabeth was found guilty of four counts of defrauding investors and was sentenced in November of last year to 11 years in a federal prison and this was despite the dare I say pathetic campaign to derail the trial and to gain the judge and the jury's sympathy which included tactics such as getting pregnant not once but twice right before the trial initially and then again before the sentencing which is something that her defense team actually used to try to argue to keep her out of prison and then there was a sudden allegation that she was raped at Stanford and that played into why she eventually dropped out not because she wanted to be an entrepreneur nah accusing her ex-lover and co-conspirator who was also found guilty Sonny balwani of domestic violence and controlling Behavior and wait for it claiming that her beloved pet dog died my dog stepped on a bee she managed to keep herself out of prison by launching an appeal which she filed only a couple of weeks ago when she was due to finally report to prison on the 27th of April now her co-conspirator Sonny balwani tried that tactic too but his appeal was rejected and he is currently serving out his 13-year sentence for committing fraud I personally don't see how Elizabeth is going to worm her way out of this one but that doesn't mean she won't try after all she is an inventor not of actual you know technology or medical breakthroughs but an inventor of lies and a reinventor of herself cue the very recent New York Times article titled Liz Holmes wants you to forget about Elizabeth the black turtlenecks are gone so is the voice as the convicted theranos founder awaits prison she has adopted a new persona devoted mother I won't say this article received a lot of flack but after I read it I realized that the author isn't trying to Peddle this narrative she's not trying to convince us as the readers that Elizabeth isn't who we thought she was and she's this really normal Down to Earth Mother what the author tells you is how convincing she is and how even the author almost fell for it but then had to kind of reel herself back in and remember exactly who she's talking to now if you believe Elizabeth that deep contralto voice turtleneck clad unblinking young billionaire CEO that she insisted was the real her all along that was an invention a character she created and why it was all in a bid to be taken more seriously in the Cutthroat of Silicon Valley business startups you mean to say that fake voice wasn't the real thing all along sure yeah could have fooled me but like everything Elizabeth does this confession of sorts is not being bought the jury didn't buy it I'm sure she tried to play that up during her trial you know the soft-spoken unassuming mother her partner didn't buy it by the way he makes fun of her voice in the article and judging by the Uproar surrounding this article The World Isn't buying it it's fairly obvious that she is using this platform to implement yet another tactic of hers to get what she wants ten years ago what she wanted was money power and Glory yes I just quoted Alana Del Rey song and so she adopted a Persona to help her get to that goal and she was right it worked albeit temporarily but what she wants now is sympathy leniency a get out of jail card literally but what really did it for me what made this article about this new Liz you know so entirely disgusting was the fact that after everything she had done everything she had been through everything that was exposed about her and let's not forget after getting convicted she is a convicted criminal today she still sat there using this article to regurgitate her failed defense of Being Sunny balwani's controlled victim going as far as accusing him of forcing her to adopt that turtleneck clad red lipstick deep voiced Elizabeth Holmes it wasn't her choice she didn't want to cosplay and emulate Steve Jobs so there's no ownership No Remorse no admittance of wrongdoing no accountability just excuses sounds pretty familiar to another particular woman we like to cover on this channel doesn't it except in Elizabeth's case her family seems to be complicit in perpetuating this narrative and they even go as far as to you know once again of course real sexism and misogyny in their favor by claiming that this is a cautionary tale for ambitious women who dare to aim high you'll get too close to the Sun like Elizabeth did and you'll get burned well I'm sorry you know as a young woman under 30 who lives in this world that's not my perception and I'm sure many young women will agree that that hasn't been their perception or experience as well what happened to Elizabeth is all a result of Elizabeth's own actions her misdeeds her crimes she lied and defrauded billions and that's why she got burned and I think it's high time that everyone got behind the real purpose of feminism equality rather than hiding behind the really old and tired and pathetic Narrative of all women are victims because they're not it is worth noting that Mr balwani denies all of these allegations and honestly based on the extensive research I performed on this topic and just listening to the interviews of EX theranos employees in the various documentaries I've watched it was crystal clear that Elizabeth Holmes was the ringleader not only in her relationship with sunny balwani but in the entire Fiasco balwani was just an awestruck follower and of course you know he's just as bad as her in a sense because he perpetuated her crimes and was complicit but he fell under her spell much like the other older men in this case I suppose the closing thoughts here you know what I'm left with in my head is is Elizabeth Holmes actually evil you know did she once have genuine intentions to change the world and make it a better place and did something just happen to go wrong you know so terribly wrong down the line in pursuit of that Noble goal it could be possible I'm not saying that she is an evil mastermind although many people believe that she is however what plays in favor of that argument is that she didn't stop when she realized that what she was doing simply wasn't working and this wasn't some phone or some Gadget this was people's lives and so one could argue that carrying on down that trajectory was in itself evil and selfish and gluttonous whatever the case may be the fact of the matter is she took it too far she put people's lives at risk and that's no laughing matter you know I understand personally what it feels like you know to be ambitious and to want to aim high and to want to do things with your life you know I believe we have one life and I live my life as though it's going to end any minute in the sense that I want to do things with it but I'm also a huge proponent of realism and responsibility taking ownership of your mistakes admitting wrongdoing humility all things which Elizabeth Holmes severely lacks before I close off I'd also like to take this opportunity to thank all the Brave and selfless whistleblowers not just in this story but throughout history as we like to say in the Australian Army the standard you walk past is the standard you accept and it's really encouraging to see that there are people out there who live by that principle so one heck of a story I've been wanting to do this video for a very long time and I'm glad I finally got to do it and put it together but in the course of my research I came across another Elizabeth Holmes a much more recent one and you think that after Elizabeth Holmes the world and the media and you know Forbes Magazine would have learned from their mistakes perhaps would have maybe looked into someone and fact checked their claims and investigated their background but judging by this other young woman that I will be covering it looks like they haven't quite learned their lesson yet stay tuned for that one and I'll see you later I suppose thanks for tuning in to my dead dog

Channel: Lost Beyond Pluto

Views: 230,178

Keywords: elizabeth holmes, new york times, nyt, article, interview, liz holmes, theranos, fraud, trial, case, sunny balwani, lost beyond pluto

Id: AKf60ntZlN0

Length: 29min 24sec (1764 seconds)

Published: Tue May 16 2023