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Answer by Tirumalai Kamala, immunologist, Ph.D. mycobacteriology:
Theranos started in 2003, yet breathless news coverage about it and Elizabeth Holmes began 10 years later, around August or September 2013. This begs the question: What was happening at Theranos between 2003 and 2013? What had Holmes and Theranos done in those 10 years? We may never fully know, but we have ample media coverage to help outline what we’ve learned about Theranos since 2013. When the news media first introduced us to Holmes, Theranos had assembled a board of political heavyweights with heft among deep-pocketed people around the world and attracted steadily increasing investment. It also announced a partnership to open Theranos Wellness Centers inside Walgreens drug stores—the first one in Palo Alto, California, in September 2013, and it expanded to several more in the Phoenix area a month later.
Between 2013 and 2015, the only news about Theranos seemed to be good news: From 2014 to 2015m, investments increased to the tune of hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars. In 2015, Arizona passed a Theranos co-authored bill that permitted patients to order any blood test they wanted without a doctor’s referral. In July 2015, the Food and Drug Administration cleared Theranos’ herpes simplex virus 1 IgG test.
Clearly, the relentless news coverage about Theranos that started in fall 2013 wasn’t happenstance or coincidental. Theranos and Holmes assiduously sought the limelight around the time they were teeing up to a series of hefty accomplishments to their name. Now that this story has turned ever so sour, it’s important to recall that Holmes and Theranos had plenty of fawning coverage when they first came to public attention.
Under the circumstances, isn’t it reasonable to expect complimentary, even adulatory coverage given the backstory of a 19-year-old Stanford University dropout who claimed to have decided to revolutionize blood testing, who then spent years in “stealth” mode, only emerging to announce her company was offering hundreds of cheaper, more accurate tests from just a drop of blood, using a proprietary microfluidics-based system it developed from scratch? Given such a singular arc, doesn’t it seem reasonable that coverage would be flattering, regardless of the person’s gender? And indeed, given the steady stream of cover stories, flattering coverage it was.
How could it be otherwise with awards following in short order, culminating in Holmes being named one of Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential people in 2015? Maybe gender added some additional mystique since there are so few self-made female billionaires, but surely the early anointing had more to do with the imprimatur that came with the big money and political heavyweights associated with the Theranos brand. Back then, wouldn’t it have seemed reasonable to assume that surely such investors and luminaries associating with Theranos meant its technology was solid, especially given the 10-year-long “stealth” mode development phase?
John Carreyrou’s first explosive Wall Street Journal exposé came out in October when the FDA had already inspected Theranos and subsequently informed it that its proprietary “nanotainers” were unapproved medical devices that it should stop using. In other words, first major negative news of Theranos came when U.S. federal regulators had already started probing its operations and even shackled its capacity to use its proprietary technology. This implies behind-the-scenes action of some duration that we just weren’t and aren’t privy to. When did such scrutiny start? What triggered it? Carreyrou’s reports suggest some former employees got the ball rolling by filing complaints with federal regulators.
Two months later, in January, another U.S. federal regulator, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, announced it was considering putting the screws on Theranos. However Theranos chose to address this regulator’s concerns, it obviously didn’t work, because in July, CMS announced it was yanking Theranos’ CLIA certificate (ability to operate a clinical blood testing lab) and banning Holmes for two years from operating labs. Presumably, these federal regulators weren’t motivated by gender bias, but rather by their mandate to safeguard patient safety. Isn’t that a good thing?
If news coverage of Holmes turned steadily rancorous with the steady drip-drip of bad news about it, was it to do with her gender or rather the more crucial matter at hand—that Theranos’ tests weren’t working as promised, the regulator’s concerns even going so far as to suggest patients’ lives may have been exposed to jeopardy? Yes, when Theranos seemed to be on the up and up, some may have cheered her on because Holmes is a woman, and yes, when her narrative started to fray, some may have had their pitchforks out at the ready because Holmes is a woman. Whichever pair of those jaundiced eyeglasses we may choose to don, we’ll likely find a narrative in news coverage to fit our bias. However, does the person’s gender matter when it’s about patient safety? Doesn’t accountability matter when it’s about patient safety, regardless of the person’s gender? Shouldn’t that be the issue we choose to keep front and center about this story?
How has Elizabeth Holmes’ gender impacted coverage and public opinion of the issues at Theranos? originally appeared on Quora. More questions on Quora:
