Elizabeth Holmes ignored the widow of a biochemist who committed suicide to avoid destroying the company

The highly anticipated documentary of Elizabeth Holmes aired Monday night at HBO channel reviewed the tragic details of the biochemist Theranos who committed suicide rather than exposing the fact that society, with 9 billion dollars, was built around a machine that was not working.

Ian Gibbons was found near death in his bathroom after taking an overdose of pills on the morning of May 17, the same day he was to be filed in a patent lawsuit filed by a competitor against Theranos.

He died at the hospital a week later. His widow then called Theranos's office to inform Holmes of the devastating news.

Holmes did not call back, however, and instead, Gibbons' grieving woman received an e-mail asking her to hand over her husband's computer and any other confidential Theranos documents.

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Gibbons was the first experienced scientist recruited by Theranos and an expert in the field of blood tests. He patented a mechanism for mixing and diluting blood, an essential element of the company's technology.

He began working at Theranos in 2005 and the Cambridge-trained biochemist shared the rights to a number of patents with Holmes.

Most people think it's Gibbons who did all the work to get those patents, which Holmes would simply tie his name to.

Gibbons began to notice with time but Edison, the machine that Holmes said was going to revolutionize the medical sector, was not working.

This situation was further complicated by Holmes' business model, which required each department of its business to operate independently and not to share information.

Gibbons always spent time with young scientists, helping them to work and to design their experiences.

Former colleagues have described it as a "wealth of knowledge," but in 2012 he had been kept out of the fact that he did not even have an office at the company's headquarters.

"Ian had problems with Sonny and Elizabeth because there are so many problems with this technology," said his wife Rochelle.

"And is not that the goal of someone like that, tell him why it's not going to work."

In early 2013, Theranos was sued for patent and did everything in his power to prevent Gibbons from testifying.

At the time, it was thought that this was because it was likely to reveal that Edison was not working, thus breaking the foundations on which the company had been built, endowed $ 9 billion.

Gibbons learned that he had to be willing and started drinking a lot while becoming more and more depressed. Soon she was working from home.

A former employee of Theranos stated that he had been told that Holmes had asked Gibbons to stay at his home because he had continually pointed out things that did not work with the company's inventions.

"Ian asked me if I thought he was going to be fired. And I said yes, unfortunately, said Rochelle.

And that's the night he's killed.

She went to explain how much her husband was "clueless" at the time about the patent case and was worried about what he would do with the rest of his life once he was there. would have been fired from the company where he had spent the last eight years. his life.

Rochelle was then asked how the company reacted to her husband's suicide.

"I do not know because they've never talked to me except to tell me to return her affairs confidentially," Rochelle said.

"I took the documents that he had left at home and I brought them to the reception.

When asked if she had heard from Holmes in the six years since her husband's death, Rochelle said, "No.