[ad_1]
SAN JOSE, Calif .– The fourth week of Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes’ fraud trial lacked star power, but jurors have had their most detailed look yet at how the start’s medical tests -up of failed blood tests were flawed.
In the first few weeks of the trial, several prominent witnesses testified in the government case against Ms Holmes, who founded Theranos and turned it into a $ 9 billion company before she imploded in a way. spectacular. (She now faces 12 counts of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud.) Featured witnesses included Erika Cheung, a former Theranos employee turned whistleblower, and the former secretary of the Defense James Mattis, who once served on Theranos’ board of directors.
But this week, jurors have mostly heard complex technical accounts of problems with Theranos’ blood tests. Only two witnesses, both scientists, testified as prosecutors sought to show Ms Holmes intentionally misled investors and others about her start-up’s track record.
Here are three takeaways of the week.
A Theranos lab director emerged as the key to the prosecution.
Dr Adam Rosendorff, who joined Theranos as laboratory director in April 2013 before leaving the company in 2014, began his testimony last week and was still ongoing on Friday. His four days on the stand so far have been the longest of any witness in the trial. It will resume on Tuesday.
His testimony stood out due to his senior management position in Theranos’ lab. While previous witnesses, including Ms Cheung, have also testified to Theranos’ test failures, Dr Rosendorff provided more details on the range of problems – including how a test was so inaccurate it had “lost all of it. diagnostic value ”- and patient complaints.
He also had access to Ms Holmes and said she was aware of her concerns but continued with the commercial launch of Theranos anyway.
In his testimony, Dr Rosendorff said he had become increasingly uncomfortable with Theranos’ blood test failure rate and the volume of complaints from doctors about inaccurate test results before. to finally stop.
“The business was more about public relations and fundraising than patient care,” he said.
John Carreyrou, who exposed Theranos’ issues in 2015 while at the Wall Street Journal, revealed Tuesday that Dr Rosendorff was his “first and most important source” for breaking history.
“Hats off to his courage and his integrity”, Mr. Carreyrou wrote on Twitter.
Prosecutors pointed out that Theranos’ tests had not worked.
The prosecution’s strategy this week focused on Theranos’ machines routinely failing quality control tests and providing inaccurate results.
An email presented during Dr. Rosendorff’s testimony described a patient who had not felt “well” since she had increased her dose of anticoagulant medication in response to an erroneous Theranos test result.
Prosecutors accompanied another witness, Dr Victoria Sung, who worked as a senior scientist at pharmaceutical company Celgene while under contract with Theranos, through a slideshow of Celgene. It contained an analysis of Theranos tests which showed more unusable results and larger fluctuations than commercially available alternatives.
Ultimately, Celgene cut her contract with Theranos short.
The defense tried to blame Theranos’ testing problems on the lab director.
Lance Wade, Ms Holmes’ attorney, spent three days this week grilling Dr Rosendorff to establish that it was the lab director – not his client – who was legally responsible for what happened in the laboratory of Theranos.
Mr Wade pointed to Dr Rosendorff’s advanced scientific credentials, compared to Ms Holmes, who dropped out of Stanford University in her sophomore year. Dr Rosendorff conceded that Ms Holmes never asked him to report an inaccurate result.
But according to emails and testimony presented by the government, Dr Rosendorff had voiced concerns to Ms Holmes and other senior officials about inaccurate testing and quality control failures. Other email channels showed Dr Rosendorff had not been made aware of some patient complaints and testing decisions.
Mr Wade tried to dig holes in Dr Rosendorff’s credibility on Friday, pointing out that he was sometimes slow to respond to complaints from doctors. Mr Wade also showed the jury’s emails between Dr Rosendorff, Ms Holmes and former Theranos COO Sunny Balwani to show that they had been receptive to Dr Rosendorff’s concerns.
[ad_2]
Source link