I need a break from fiction, so I’ve gone back to one of my old standbys. Crime documentary. I have seen a few documentaries about Theranos, and followed the story loosely while it was happening1 and I do love a story about Silicon Valley nonsense.
Theranos was supposed to be a revolutionary product for healthcare: A machine that could test your blood faster and in a less cumbersome way than sending it into a lab. It was a lab that you could have in your house and allow you to check at your leisure if you are at risk for any diseases. It was, of course, a dumpster fire of a project with ethical issues2 and technical ones that were kept hidden via a veil of secrecy and terrible business and development practices.
Have I mentioned that I’ve been in tech for over a decade? I have lived parts of this.
It’s structured with a different perspective in each chapter telling the full story of the project from inception to eventual collapse. It’s interesting to see how the different perspectives from different parts of the company come together to paint the picture of something that I can 100% believe happened as told in the account. It’s a horror novel where the villain is the idea that this device could go out into the world and ruin lives where the heroes are the ones who eventually risked and were rewarded with legal threats and private investigators following them looking for any missteps that they could use against them for whistleblowing.
Overall, I enjoyed it. It was exactly the break I needed and I loved having this perspective on what happened. If you love this kind of thing too, or just need an interesting nonfiction, it’s a lot of fun.