Sometimes ego can be a good thing, like when you tell your child that she just needs confidence and that she will eventually hit a homerun or get an A on a Spanish quiz. However, in the continuing Theranos saga, the ego of Elizabeth Holmes is on full display, and as an ethical look, it is rather troubling.
The Lab Issue and Steve Jobs
My eyes always wide-open as to the possibility that former Theranos COO Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani controlled Homes through the infliction “intimate partner abuse.” I suppose he could have controlled her with a Svengali-like hypnotic trance, or fed her drugs or kept her chained in a dungeon. I am not discounting anything.
However, with the testimonies provided by Holmes’ ex-employees along with the surfacing of private notes written by Holmes, she is continuing to emerge, in my opinion, as an unethical, egotistical young woman who was hell-bent on fame and fortune.
In an Associated Press article (September 28, 2021), the testimony of Adam Rosendorff was restated to readers. Rosendorff was no slouch. He is an M.D. who was in charge of the Theranos clinical laboratory for barely more than a year, from September 2013 through November 2014.
As a decent scientist Rosendorff repeatedly warned management that the Theranos “invention” of conducting something like 250 laboratory tests from a single drop of blood was unworkable. He called the results “dangerously unreliable.” He was the one, as the lab director, who faced the fire from medical professionals who found the test results to be “rampantly inaccurate.”
As Rosendorff testified:
“The number and severity of issues had reached a crescendo.”
According to the AP article: “At the same time Rosendorff was raising objections about Theranos’ blood-testing technology, Holmes sent at text to Balwani to let him know that she had completed deals securing about $150 million from Murdoch and the Walton family, which is behind Walmart.”
In other words, Holmes and Balwani were more concerned with maintaining a false front than in helping patients. Rosendorff could not justify his oath to do no harm, against the flaws in the test results produced by the faulty equipment.
From an ethical point-of-view, I need to again state that the faulty results being delivered were actual, to actual patients. Therefore, good, bad or totally inaccurate (which most were), the company was intentionally sending out fake results. Rosendorff left Theranos in protest.
Of course, the defense attempted to poke holes in Rosendorff’s testimony saying he was self-serving. The critique was rather tepid.
Then, barely a day later, the prosecution turned over leaked private notes written by Holmes. This was reported in another AP article by Sarah Jackson (September 29, 2021):
“Newly leaked messages reveal she once wrote a note to herself about ‘becoming Steve Jobs.’ CNBC obtained and published several messages on Wednesday that Holmes wrote to herself throughout 2015, including that one…She had dubbed Theranos’ blood-testing systems ‘the iPod of healthcare’ and borrowed some of Jobs’ management techniques “
She even took to wearing black turtleneck sweaters in homage to Jobs who had passed away in 2011.
Another discovered note revealed deeper ethical problems:
“Fudge it – if don’t understand – want clarified – stop – explore – reserve done – may get to it.”
And then one last note of interest, this one from Holmes to Balwani: “Total confidence in myself best business person of the year.”
The Discrepancies
While no one has debated the flaws in Steve Jobs personality, he eventually turned his genius into life-changing, world changing products. He was a harsh man to work for but people saw and shared in his vision. He made a lot of money for a lot of team members and associates.
Elizabeth Holmes was driven but not necessarily to excellence.
There will undoubtedly be strong, heartfelt arguments presented that will protest comments made about Holmes’ personality. The arguments will quickly point out that “if Holmes were a man, etc.”
No one is more pro-women in business than me. However, this is not a gender issue but many ethical arguments that are leading us down dead-ends.
Toward the end, no one wanted to work for Theranos. The technology was never life changing. It may have impressed rich investors and non-medical board members, but unlike Steve Jobs, Holmes was playing with lives. We have detailed this fact in other posts in this series. People could have died from the lab equipment experimentation that was occurring concurrent to attempting to tweak the poor technology.
Elizabeth Holmes was content to “fake it,” and put up a false front. There are too many red flags to ignore.
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