The decade-old episode had left Phyllis skeptical that Elizabeth, who
had no medical or scientific training to speak of and a clear tendency
not to listen to people who were older and more experienced, had
really gone on to develop groundbreaking blood-testing technology.
Her suspicions had deepened when Andrew had chatted with a
Siemens sales representative during a flight and learned that Theranos
was a major purchaser of Siemens diagnostic equipment.
Fuisz too had become doubtful that Theranos could really do what it
claimed. During a visit to Palo Alto for pretrial motions in the fall of
2013, he’d called the local Walgreens and asked if he could have a
creatinine finger-stick test done there. His doctors had recently
diagnosed him with aldosteronism, a hormonal disorder that causes
high blood pressure, and wanted him to monitor his creatinine levels
for any sign of kidney damage. Creatinine is a common blood test, but
the woman who answered the phone told him the wellness center
didn’t offer it without a special approval from Theranos’s CEO. When
he added that to the company’s intense secrecy and to the fact that it
had actively discouraged Ian Gibbons from testifying before he died,
he smelled a rat.
Fuisz had introduced Phyllis to Ian’s widow, Rochelle, and the two
women had bonded over their distrust of Elizabeth. Together, the
three of them formed a little band of Theranos skeptics. The problem
was that no one else seemed to share their doubts.
That would change when, in its December 15, 2014, issue, The New
Yorker published a profile of Elizabeth. In many ways, it was just a
longer version of the Fortune story that had rocketed her to fame six
months earlier. The difference this time was that someone
knowledgeable about blood testing read it and was immediately
dubious.
That someone was Adam Clapper, a practicing pathologist in
Columbia, Missouri, who in his spare time wrote a blog about the
industry called Pathology Blawg. To Clapper, it all sounded too good
to be true, especially Theranos’s supposed ability to run dozens of tests
on just a drop of blood pricked from a finger.
The New Yorker article did strike some skeptical notes. It included