Bad Blood details the meteoric rise and subsequent shameful fall of Silicon Valley darling Elizabeth Holmes and her blood-testing company Theranos. It captures all the manipulations and lies that Elizabeth and Sunny, her boyfriend and second-in-command at the company, spewed in an effort to scam the public and investors into believing in a technology that doesn't exist and no current-day science has proven is even possible.
The people I feel for the most are the employees who got sucked into this web of deceit, and when they realized what was going on and tried to raise concerns, were summarily shut down and bullied into silence. They were forced to do illegal activities and make up non-existent products for the sake of getting customers, and then threatened with expulsion and lawsuits if they tried to push back.
To be honest, this book was a little sickening to read. A large part of that is due how easily investors and partners were taken in with whatever Elizabeth Holmes said and promised, even if there was not a shred of proof. These were all worldly and sophisticated people who inexplicably chose to put aside their intellect just to stick their heads in the sand. It was utterly baffling. They were also all old men interacting with a young, blond, blue-eyed woman, which makes you wonder how much of what they believed is based on her looks and youth.
While this book had a lot of interesting tidbits, I did find it to drag on a bit, especially the parts about Theranos suing this person and that person. I found all that legal wrangling to be quite boring. Even though there was an interesting story in this book, I feel I could probably have gotten the same out of just reading the author's Wall Street Journal articles.
Readaroo Rating: 3 stars
0 comments:
Post a Comment