Theranos, we can perform all of our lab tests on a sample 1/₁,₀₀₀ the
size of a typical blood draw.” In the new version of the banner, the
words “all of” were gone. Lower down on the same page was the claim
Kate had pushed back against months earlier. Under the heading
“Unrivaled accuracy,” it cited the statistic about 93 percent of lab
errors being caused by humans and inferred from it that “no other
laboratory is more accurate than Theranos.” Sure enough, that was
walked back too.
—
THE LAST-MINUTE REVISIONS only served to reinforce Kate and Mike’s
suspicions. Elizabeth had wanted all those sweeping claims to be true,
but just because you badly wanted something to be real didn’t make it
so, Mike thought. He and Kate were beginning to question whether
Theranos had any technology at all. Did its vaunted “black box,” as
people at Chiat\Day referred to the Theranos device, even exist?
They shared their mounting doubts with Stan, whose own
interactions with Sunny were becoming increasingly unpleasant. Every
quarter, Stan was having to chase Sunny around for money. Sunny
kept asking him to justify the bills the agency submitted. Stan spent
hours going over them with him point by point. Sunny would put him
on speaker and pace around his office. When Stan asked him to move
closer to the phone so he could make out what he was saying, Sunny’s
temper would flare.
Not everyone at Chiat\Day was souring on Theranos, however. The
L.A. office’s two higher-ups, Carisa and Patrick, remained smitten with
Elizabeth. Patrick idolized Lee Clow and the marketing magic he had
conjured up for Apple. It was clear he thought Theranos had the
potential to become his own big legacy moment. Kate voiced her
concerns to him on several occasions, but he dismissed them as Kate
just being Kate. She had a tendency to be overly dramatic, Patrick
thought. His view was that she and Mike should stop questioning
everything and just complete the work they were being asked to do. In
Patrick’s experience, all tech startups were chaotic and secretive. He