confidently walk the audience through her sleek slide show helped
crystallize for me how she’d gotten this far: she was an amazing
saleswoman. She never once stumbled or lost her train of thought. She
wielded both engineering and laboratory lingo effortlessly and she
showed seemingly heartfelt emotion when she spoke of sparing babies
in the NICU from blood transfusions. Like her idol Steve Jobs, she
emitted a reality distortion field that forced people to momentarily
suspend disbelief.
The spell was broken, however, during the question-and-answer
session when Stephen Master, an associate professor of pathology at
Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York and one of three panelists
invited onstage to ask Holmes questions, pointed out that the
miniLab’s capabilities fell far short of the original claims she had
made. His comment drew a burst of applause from the audience.
Reverting to the chastened persona from her Today show interview,
Holmes acknowledged that Theranos had a lot of work to do, as she
put it, to “engage” with the laboratory community. But she stopped
short again of apologizing or admitting fault.
When Dennis Lo, a pathology professor at the Chinese University of
Hong Kong, later asked her how the miniLab differed from the
technology the company had used in its laboratory on patient samples,
she dodged the question. It was a giant issue to sidestep, yet the
hundreds of assembled pathologists remained civil and respectful
despite her evasiveness. There were no boos or catcalls. The decorum
broke down only briefly when Holmes turned to leave the stage at the
end of the Q&A. “You hurt people,” a voice yelled out from the
dispersing crowd.
—
IF HOLMES HAD HOPED to rehabilitate her image and change the media
narrative by unveiling the miniLab, that hope was dashed by the flurry
of critical articles published in the wake of the event. A headline in
Wired captured the reaction best: “Theranos Had a Chance to Clear Its
Name. Instead, It Tried to Pivot.”