An Honest Theranos Wouldn’t Have Done Much Good
Companies can now actually detect 1,000 substances in a drop of blood, but even that can’t fulfill Elizabeth Holmes’s promise to revolutionize medicine and increase human happiness.
There’s no blood test for health and happiness.
Photographer: Scott Olson/Getty ImagesBlood-testing technology has rocketed ahead in the last five years — the interval of time since it came to light that the former $9 billion startup Theranos Inc. hadn’t actually invented a way to do thousands of lifesaving blood tests using a finger stick. Today, some companies really can do thousands of tests using a single drop of blood.
But that advance hasn’t revolutionized medicine, a blood-testing fantasy promoted as science by Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes, who went on trial this week for wire fraud and conspiracy. Here’s how she put her vision in a 2014 TED talk: “We see a world in which every person has access to actionable health information at the time it matters. A world in which no one has to say, ‘If only I’d known sooner,’ a world in which no one has to say goodbye too soon.”