{"id":180911,"date":"2016-11-27T20:25:00","date_gmt":"2016-11-28T01:25:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2016\/11\/27\/she-really-needs-to-go-to-jail\/"},"modified":"2016-11-27T20:25:00","modified_gmt":"2016-11-28T01:25:00","slug":"she-really-needs-to-go-to-jail","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2016\/11\/27\/she-really-needs-to-go-to-jail\/","title":{"rendered":"She Really Needs to Go to Jail"},"content":{"rendered":"

We get some more stories about Theranos, and it sounds more like a Mafia family than it does a medical testing business<\/a>:<\/p>\n

If you think your Thanksgiving dinner conversation will be awkward and stressful this year, just be glad you and your family weren\u2019t involved with Theranos.<\/span>

<\/span>As the once highly regarded blood-testing company crumbles under technological scandals and regulatory sanctions, the death toll of relationships among neighbors, friends, families, and long-standing partners is mounting. With lawsuits, investigative reports, and new accounts from a whistleblower, the company\u2019s culture and inner-workings\u2014which Theranos worked hard to obfuscate\u2014are finally becoming clear. And what\u2019s emerged are patterns of dishonesty, callousness, and litigiousness\u2014if not outright belligerence.<\/span>

<\/span>Perhaps most startling of the recent revelations is the identity and family drama of one Theranos whistleblower: Tyler Shultz, grandson of George Shultz, the former secretary of state, who also happens to be a Theranos advisor<\/a>. An expos\u00e9 by The<\/i> Wall Street Journal<\/i><\/a> lays out how in the course of eight months, Tyler Shultz went from a bright-eyed Theranos employee to disgruntled whistleblower, personally disparaged by Theranos\u2019 then-president and desperately trying to convince his grandfather to wash his hands of the doomed company. <\/span>

<\/span>Fresh out of college, Tyler Shultz started working with Theranos\u2019 assay validation team in 2013, which was in charge of monitoring the precision of its blood test results. He noted wild inaccuracies on some tests before being moved to the company\u2019s production team, where he witnessed the company\u2019s blood testing machines failing quality controls. Both issues were flagged years later in federal inspection reports, validating Shultz\u2019s allegations. But at the time, then-president Sunny Balwani had pressured employees to ignore the problems, Shultz said. (Balwani stepped down from the company earlier this year and was banned by federal regulators from running a clinical lab for two years.) Nevertheless, Tyler Shultz e-mailed his findings and concerns directly to Elizabeth Holmes, the company’s founder and CEO.<\/span>

<\/span>Days later, Shultz got a message back\u2014from Balwani. \u201cWe saw your email to Elizabeth,\u201d Balwani wrote. \u201cBefore I get into specifics, let me share with you that had this email come from anyone else in the company, I would have already held them accountable for the arrogant and patronizing tone and reckless comments.\u201d He went on to belittle Shultz\u2019s intelligence and understanding of the company\u2019s technology. \u201cThe only reason I have taken so much time away from work to address this personally is because you are Mr. Shultz\u2019s grandson,\u201d Balwani added.<\/span>

<\/span>Shultz quit Theranos that day, intending to leave the professional drama behind. However, it was just the start of his family drama. It seems that Holmes called up the elder Shultz directly to inform him of his grandson\u2019s actions and threatened that his grandson would \u201close\u201d if he pursued the allegations. While Tyler Shultz was still gathering his things to leave Theranos, his mother called and implored him to stop \u201cwhatever you\u2019re about to do!\u201d<\/span>

<\/span>After that, Shultz said his relationship with his grandfather became strained\u2014and remains that way. Holmes made a surprising and uncomfortable appearance at his grandfather\u2019s house the following Thanksgiving. She also attended his subsequent 95th birthday. Tyler Shultz did not. Meanwhile, the younger Shultz says Theranos has had him followed by private investigators and pressured by lawyers.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It gets far worse from there.<\/p>\n

This is a company that knew that it was peddling snake oil, and used intimidation and a culture of fear to  suppress the truth.<\/p>\n

This isn’t just a bunch of people who believed their own PR.  This is conscious deliberate fraud, and Holmes and Balwani need to be in the dock.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We get some more stories about Theranos, and it sounds more like a Mafia family than it does a medical testing business: If you think your Thanksgiving dinner conversation will be awkward and stressful this year, just be glad you and your family weren\u2019t involved with Theranos.As the once highly regarded blood-testing company crumbles under …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[775,761,878],"class_list":["post-180911","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-business","tag-corruption","tag-medical"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180911"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=180911"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180911\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}