confirming what Andrew Perlman, Phyllis Gardner’s husband, had
heard from a Siemens sales representative during a flight. He revealed
something else that hadn’t come up in our first call: Theranos’s lab
was divided into two parts. One contained the commercial analyzers
and the other the Edison devices. During her inspection of the lab, a
state inspector had been shown only the part with the commercial
analyzers. Alan felt she’d been deceived.
He also mentioned that Theranos was working on a newer-
generation device code-named 4S that was supposed to supplant the
Edison and do a broader variety of blood tests, but it didn’t work at all
and was never deployed in the lab. Diluting finger-stick samples and
running them on Siemens machines was supposed to be a temporary
solution, but it had become a permanent one because the 4S had
turned into a fiasco.
It was all beginning to make sense: Holmes and her company had
overpromised and then cut corners when they couldn’t deliver. It was
one thing to do that with software or a smartphone app, but doing it
with a medical product that people relied on to make important health
decisions was unconscionable. Toward the end of this second phone
conversation, Alan mentioned something else I found of interest:
George Shultz, the former secretary of state who was a Theranos board
member, had a grandson named Tyler who had worked at the
company. Alan wasn’t sure why Tyler had left but he didn’t think it
was on good terms. I was jotting things down in the Notes app of my
iPhone and added Tyler’s name as another potential source.
—
OVER THE NEXT few weeks, I made some more progress but I also
encountered some complications. In my quest to corroborate what
Alan was telling me, I contacted more than twenty current and former
Theranos employees. Many didn’t reply to my calls and emails. The
few that I managed to get on the phone told me they had signed
ironclad confidentiality agreements and didn’t want to risk being sued
for violating them.