What we learned this week from the trial of Elizabeth Holmes

This testimony came from former director of the Theranos lab, Adam Rosendorff, who has been at the helm for four days and will continue his testimony on Tuesday. Rosendorff told the podium that he “felt obligated to vouch for tests that I did not trust” and that he “felt a moral and ethical obligation” to tell the public this that was going on in the business.

Rosendorff said on Tuesday that after leaving the company he informally spoke to then-Wall Street Journal reporter John Carreyrou because he “felt a moral and ethical obligation to alert the public”. Carreyrou, who blew up the company in 2015, tweeted that Rosendorff was “my first and most important source”.

An outside scientist

The only other witness to appear this week was Victoria Sung, a scientist who interacted with Theranos while working for the biopharmaceutical company Celgene around 2009. Celgene had made a deal with Theranos at the time to perform blood tests for a medicine that it was. develop to help treat anemia, Sung said.

But the company ultimately decided not to use Theranos, she said, because compared to more established companies, its “results didn’t match, coordinate, or align as closely as we do. would like “.

An update on defending against possible Holmes abuse

Further court documents were released this week regarding the pre-trial bombshell that Holmes may claim to have been the victim of domestic violence at the hands of her ex-boyfriend and former Theranos COO, Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani. The defense argument would likely be that, because she depended on him in this context, she had no intention of deceiving.

Holmes will be able to present his expert witness regarding that defense, despite the government’s attempt to have her excluded from the trial, according to Judge Edward Davila’s order of May 2021, which was unsealed this week after Dow Jones, publisher of the Wall Street Journal. , decided to make public a wealth of documents.

More details on Holmes’ level of secrecy

Other documents released this week included notes from two interviews with former employees who spoke to the government about their knowledge of Holmes and Balwani’s relationship. One of the employees was a former personal assistant and described Holmes as “very private”.

Some sensitive items included Holmes’ food preferences. “Holmes’ food resupply lists, at his residence and at his job, have been kept private,” the employee told the government. “Holmes was secret about this because she was a vegan for a period and didn’t want it to become a big deal.”

A second former employee, whose job it was to make sure nondisclosure agreements were filed, said “everyone had to sign nondisclosure agreements when they came to Theranos, including the person who came to water the plants “.

A crucial witness

During cross-examination on Friday, Rosendorff – the former director of Theranos’ lab – emerged as one of the key witnesses in the trial. It was the fourth day of his testimony and he is expected to continue for another full day on Tuesday – the longest of all witnesses by far.

In October 2014, Rosendorff received emails from concerned doctors who wanted to talk to someone in the lab about a patient’s test results. A week had passed after the follow-up emails, and Rosendorff still had not answered the call.

In another case in October, a doctor requested a follow-up call with Rosendorff after speaking to him earlier. Rosendorff, who was responsible for answering medical questions, was slow to respond.

“I didn’t feel like I had a good explanation for the diverging testosterone levels, and I really didn’t know what to tell the doctor more than what I told him on the first phone call.” , said Rosendorff.

The defense was trying to show that Rosendorff was shirking his own responsibilities and trying to find inconsistencies in his argument that he was being kept on the sidelines, as the flaws in Theranos’ testing became more and more apparent.

“I was becoming frustrated with my inability to explain divergent results,” Rosendorff said. “It culminated on a couple of occasions with my refusal to justify the divergent results to the doctors.”

Balwani ended up responding directly to a doctor, returning a detailed response specifically addressing the issues raised. He also said every lab had unexpected results and needed to investigate any inconsistencies “which we always do.”

Rosendorff also confirmed that he had had the opportunity to meet with the management team and raise concerns.

Trying to keep a reporter out of the courtroom

Carreyrou, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who revealed Theranos’ story, is also among dozens of possible witnesses Holmes could call to testify, although he has yet to be subpoenaed.

On Friday, in a court file, his lawyers said “it is still not clear whether or why Holmes would actually want to call Carreyrou to the stand,” and they attribute this to a “ruse” to prevent Carreyrou from covering up the story through his Podcast.