Saturday 30 April 2022 The Guardian •
News^21
Holmes under the hammer: Theranos
founder’s fall drives souvenir auctions
Kari Paul
More than four months after she
was convicted of defrauding inves-
tors and patients at her Silicon Valley
blood-testing company Theranos,
interest in Elizabeth Holmes shows
little sign of fading, with fans clam-
ouring to snap up a piece of the
now-defunct fi rm.
On eBay, apparently authentic
merchandise emblazoned with the
Theranos logo is now listed for sale
- and much like the company itself,
the items are going for infl ated prices.
A set of fi ve Theranos-branded
pens recently sold for $150 (£120).
A water bottle is listed for $1,500.
For $11,000, you can purchase an
“authentic” Theranos lab coat (nota-
bly “never worn”). Demand for the
items, which were designed to be
handed out at conferences and mar-
keting events, has soared following
the company’s spectacular downfall.
Holmes, the company founder,
rose to fame and power while claim-
ing its machines could run common
blood tests on a few drops from a
fi nger prick. Once valued at $9bn,
Theranos collapsed after the Wall
Street Journal published a series of
articles that suggested the devices
were fl awed and inaccurate, lead-
ing to charges being laid against her
and the Theranos president, Ramesh
“Sunny” Balwani.
Holmes was convicted in January
on four of 11 charges of fraud follow-
ing a weeks-long trial that attractedFine of £1.2m over baby feed
deaths ‘no justice’, say parents
Kevin Rawlinson and agencies
The parents of three babies who died
after being given contaminated feed
while in hospital have insisted jus-
tice has not yet been served after the
pharmaceutical company that sup-
plied the batches was fi ned £1.2m.
Relatives of the children, who
were among 19 infected with B acillus
cereus bacteraemia at nine English
hospitals , said the fi ne was a drop in
after Yousef after being transferred
to St Thomas’ from Broomfi eld hos-
pital in Chelmsford. Oscar Barker
died at the Rosie maternity hospital
in Cambridge.
The 19 children who were infected
were all given ITH Pharma’s total par-
enteral nutrition between 27 May and
2 June 2014 as nutrition directly into
their bloodstream because they were
unable to feed on their own.
Prosecutors claimed ITH Phar-
ma’s failure to carry out a proper
risk assessment led to the death of
Yousef, though TPN was not alleged
to have caused the deaths of the other
two babies. Yesterday, Judge Debo-
rah Taylor at Southwark crown court
ordered the fi rm, which had a £66.8m
annual turnover up to September2020, to pay a fi ne of £1.215m and
costs of £291,000 after it previously
pleaded guilty to three off ences.
But she said: “I did not fi nd the
causation of Yousef ’s death is proved
to the criminal standard.” She added
that, for legal purposes, the bacterae-
mia had not necessarily caused actual
harm, but the company’s processes
risked “serious harm and /or death”.Raaid Sakkijha, Yousef ’s father,
said: “The terrible memories still
haunt us and will do for ever.” He
added that Yousef ’s mother, Ghada
Sakkijha, “feels the weight of the loss
of her son” every time she looks at
their surviving child. “This company
that did this to us won’t even feel the
fi ne. It’s business as usual for them.
Is that justice?”
Arti Shah, a solicitor at Fieldfi sher,
the fi rm representing the families in
civil proceedings, said: “For eight
years, ITH Pharma has continued
operating as normal. For eight years,
Yousef ’s parents have lived in hell. ”
An ITH Pharma spokesman off ered
“deepest sympathies” to the families
and said: “We accept the fi ne imposed
by the court .”the ocean to ITH Pharma, which they
accused of carrying on as normal.
Yousef al-Kharboush was nine
days old when he died at St Thomas’
hospital in central London on 1 June
2014 , having developed sepsis. He
and his twin brother, Abdulilah, were
born by emergency caesarean section
at St Thomas’ at 32 weeks’ gestation.
While in intensive care they were
both fed intravenously. While Abduli-
lah was not aff ected, Yousef died.
Tameria Aldrich, whose twin sis-
ter, Tia, also survived, died nine daysThe fascination with Holmes has
created a micro-industry for new and
vintage Theranos merch andise, and
former employees are cashing in.
John, a seller behind one account ,
worked at the company from 2012
to 2018. “I heard people were buy-
ing stuff online, so I listed some old
clothes I had, kind of as a joke,” said
John (a pseudonym). “But they sold
for outrageous amounts of money.”
John worked in manufacturing
and – like many of his colleagues –
was largely unaware of the issues
until it was too late. “We were pretty
oblivious to what was going on,” he
said. He lost his job when Theranos
collapsed. After months of trying to
fi nd new work, he gave up and retired
early. He has made more than $1,200
reselling his old Theranos gear, but
this is little consolation. “I had stock
options, so it would have been much
better for me if the company had not
been a lie and had actually produced
something,” he said.
Solomon believes the high prices
for Theranos gear are because of
Holmes. “People were infinitely
fascinated by her as a character,”
he said. “It has become a cultural
phenomenon, and that’s never going
to change.” Indeed, Balwani is facing
a jury in the same courtroom where
Holmes stood trial , but has garnered a
substantially smaller following.
“This college dropout wearing a
black turtleneck who managed to rip
off Henry Kissinger – it’s become a
cultural obsession,” Solomon said of
Holmes. “Nobody would ever collect
Sunny Balwani merchandise.”massive attention and saw ranks
of true-crime fanatics queueing to
attend. Since then, a television dram-
atisation has seen substantial view ing
fi gures, a movie is in the works, and
the trial of Balwani is under way.“We are seeing a ton of interest fol-
lowing the Holmes trial, and I don’t
think it’s going to go away,” said Aron
Solomon, chief legal analyst for the
legal marketing fi rm Esquire Digital,
who has followed the story closely. Elizabeth
Holmes leav ing
court after
the verdict in
January. Above,
some of the
products on sale
PHOTOGRAPH: DAI
SUGANO/MEDIANEWS/
THE MERCURY NEWS/
GETTY IMAGES Amanda
Seyfried as
Elizabeth
Holmes in the
recent TV series
about Theranos,
The Dropout
PHOTOGRAPH:
MICHAEL DESMOND/
HULU‘This company that
did this to us won’t
even feel the fi ne’Raaid Sakkijha
Bereaved parent