Theranos

I've recently read a book about the rise and fall of Theranos, the privately held Silicon Valley firm headed by Elizabeth Holmes.

The story that author John Carryrou tells in his book, BAD BLOOD, spans the period from the company's founding in 2003 to the lab inspection failures in 2016 that finally broke the back of investor patience with Holmes.

As the title of Carryrou's book hints, the story is about blood testing. Theranos sold itself to investors, and in time to retailers, as the manufacturer of a brilliant new machine that was small and simple enough for ordinary people to have in their own homes and use on themselves, that was capable of doing a wide range of blood tests from very small quantities of the vital liquid. It would have been a great medical breakthrough. If it had been real. It was all -- or nearly all -- a sham.

At the company's peak, two giant retail chains contracted to sell the miraculous mini-labs: Safeway and Walgreen's.

I recommend the book. There are a number of lessons in it: about the pharmaceutical industry, about "fear of missing out" as a business phenomenon, about charismatic business leadership, even about gender politics. It can also be read as a novel, with all the conflict and animosity in it that one might guess from the other side of Carryrou's gently punning title.

Just one word more. On gender politics, it does seem to me that much of the world is overly eager for stories of women who "break glass ceilings." Elizabeth Holmes was to all appearances a tech entrepreneur creating her own company around an industry-disrupting invention -- a female Steve Jobs -- and she cunningly sold herself that way. The dynamics would have played out very differently had it had an Ian Holmes at the center.

I am reminded of the way the Trump administration patted itself on its back for elevating a woman to head the CIA. Our torturer in chief now reports directly to our commander-in-chief. What a wonderful victory for womankind!!!

A con artist is somewhat higher on the moral food chain than a torturer, but neither is raised any higher than it would be otherwise by being the "first woman to" do this or pretend to do that.