Acknowledgments
This book, which flowed from my work exposing the Theranos scandal
in the pages of the Wall Street Journal, would not have been possible
without the help of the confidential sources who spoke to me at great
personal peril throughout 2015 and 2016. Some, like Tyler Shultz,
have since gone on the record and appear under their real identities in
the narrative. Others appear under pseudonyms or are mentioned only
as unnamed sources. All were moved to talk to me, despite the legal
and career risks they faced, by one overriding concern: protecting the
patients who stood to suffer harm from Theranos’s faulty blood tests. I
will forever be grateful to them for their integrity and their courage.
They are the true heroes of this story.
This book would also not have been possible without the dozens of
other former Theranos employees who overcame their initial
skittishness to share their experiences with me and help me
reconstruct the company’s fifteen-year history. To a person, they were
generous with their time and incredibly supportive of this endeavor.
I’m also indebted to the laboratory experts who schooled me in the
arcane but fascinating science of blood testing. One of them, Stephen
Master of Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York, was kind enough
to review the manuscript before publication to help me avoid errors.
This book started with a tip in early 2015. I would like to thank the
person who gave me the long leash and the unflinching support I
needed to follow that tip where it led: my editor at the Journal, Mike
Siconolfi. Mike has been a mentor, not just to me but to generations of
reporters, and is a standard-bearer for the great journalistic institution
that is the Wall Street Journal. Mike wasn’t my only ally in the quest
to bring these events to light: Jason Conti, now Dow Jones & Co.’s