story subject of every single piece of information we had gathered in
our reporting and giving them ample time and opportunity to address
and rebut everything.
I wrote Traub back to confirm that I had a story in the works. Could
he arrange an interview with Holmes and a visit of Theranos’s
headquarters and laboratory? I asked. I told him I planned on
traveling to the San Francisco Bay Area at the beginning of May, which
was about two weeks away, and could meet with her then. He said he
would check Holmes’s schedule and get back to me.
A few days later, I was back at my desk at the Journal when a
mailroom employee handed me a thick envelope. It was from Dr.
Sundene. Inside were our lab reports from Theranos and LabCorp. As
I scanned my results, I noticed a number of discrepancies. Theranos
had flagged three of my values as abnormally high and one as
abnormally low. Yet on LabCorp’s report, all four of those values
showed up as normal. Meanwhile, LabCorp had flagged both my total
cholesterol and LDL cholesterol (otherwise known as bad cholesterol)
as high, while the Theranos report described the first as “desirable”
and the second as “near optimal.”
Those differences were mild compared to a whopper Dr. Sundene
had found in her results. According to Theranos, the amount of
cortisol in her blood was less than 1 microgram per deciliter. A value
that low was usually associated with Addison’s disease, a dangerous
condition characterized by extreme fatigue and low blood pressure
that could result in death if it went untreated. Her LabCorp report,
however, showed a cortisol level of 18.8 micrograms per deciliter,
which was within the normal range for healthy patients. Dr. Sundene
had no doubt which of the two values was the correct one.
—
WHEN I HEARD back from Traub, he told me Holmes’s schedule was
too booked up to grant me an interview on such short notice. I decided
to fly to San Francisco anyway, to meet Tyler Shultz and Rochelle
Gibbons in person. There was also another former Theranos employee