the cartridges, slot the cartridges into the readers, and see if they
tested positive for the virus.
Once again, things did not go smoothly. Frequently, the readers
flashed error messages, or the result that came back from Palo Alto
was negative for the virus when it should have been positive. Some of
the readers didn’t work at all. And Sunny continued to blame the
wireless transmission.
Chelsea grew frustrated and miserable. She questioned what she
was even doing there. Gary Frenzel and some of the other Theranos
scientists had told her that the best way to diagnose H1N1, as the
swine flu virus was called, was with a nasal swab and that testing for it
in blood was of questionable utility. She’d raised this point with
Elizabeth before leaving, but Elizabeth had brushed it off. “Don’t listen
to them,” she’d said of the scientists. “They’re always complaining.”
Chelsea and Sunny had several meetings with IMSS officials at the
Mexican health ministry to update them on their work. Sunny didn’t
speak or understand a word of Spanish, so Chelsea did all the talking.
As the meetings dragged on, Sunny’s face would betray a mixture of
annoyance and concern. Chelsea suspected he was worried she was
telling the Mexicans that the Theranos system didn’t work. She
enjoyed seeing him squirm.
Back in Palo Alto, word around the office was that Elizabeth was
negotiating a deal to sell four hundred Edison readers to the Mexican
government. The deal was supposed to bring in a much-needed influx
of cash. The $15 million Theranos had raised in its first two funding
rounds was long gone and the company had already burned through
the $32 million Henry Mosley had been instrumental in bringing in
during its Series C round in late 2006. The company was being kept
afloat with a loan Sunny had personally guaranteed.
Meanwhile, Sunny was also traveling to Thailand to set up another
swine flu testing outpost. The epidemic had spread to Asia, and the
country was one of the region’s hardest hit with tens of thousands of
cases and more than two hundred deaths. But unlike in Mexico, it
wasn’t clear that Theranos’s activities in Thailand were sanctioned by
local authorities. Rumors were circulating among employees that