Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes arrives in U.S. court Robert F. Peckham for opening arguments at her trial in San Jose, California on September 8, 2021.
Peter DaSilva | Reuters
SAN JOSE, CALIF. – Elizabeth Holmes was the founder and face of Theranos, but when she arrived at the company’s lab, she relied on her highly skilled scientists and lab directors.
This is the image his defense lawyers painted on Wednesday, in an attempt to discredit the testimony of a former Theranos lab associate turned complainant, Erika Cheung, who said Edison’s blood testing machines often failed. in quality control tests.
Lance Wade, Holmes’ defense attorney, examined the high qualifications of the scientists working at Theranos, including 52 doctoral scientists and ten doctors.
Wearing a black and gray heeled suit, Cheung spent six hours at the booth testifying to the high failure rate and data manipulation with the Edison, the company’s mini blood lab machine.
“You would be almost as lucky to toss a coin if the results were right or wrong,” Cheung said. “It was worrying to see that degree of failure. That wasn’t typical of a normal lab.”
Cheung, who worked at Theranos for less than a year, said his lab managers were Mark Pandori, who has a doctorate, and Adam Rosendorff, who has a degree in medicine. After leaving Theranos, Cheung became an advocate of ethics in the technology industry, launching a non-profit association called Ethics in Entrepreneurship with his former colleague and denouncing Tyler Shultz.
Holmes arrived in court in a dark green suit with a matching mask, was in the hands of his mother, Noel Holmes, who has attended all hearings since the trial began last week.
During a break, Holmes, who has pleaded guilty to a dozen counts of fraud and conspiracy, was seen hugging his mother.
During an interrogation, Wade showed Cheung several validation reports of the trials which he stated were problematic. He noted the signatures of people who passed the tests for use in the lab, including a lab director and a vice president. Holmes did not sign the document.
Cheung stated that quality control tests in the lab would routinely fail, so the company would use a “peripheral suppression” system to “choose” the best data points to pass. Cheung later confirmed to defense attorneys that quality control tests were not done on human blood samples.
Earlier in the day, Cheung stated that lab employees often manipulated data to try to make the devices work. He told the court that he finally presented his concerns to Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, Holmes ’second in command and for a time his romantic partner.
“The comments and reception I received from him were,‘ what makes you think you’re qualified to make these calls, that you’re a recent UC Berkeley graduate, what do you know about the lab diagnosis? You have no visibility in this company, ”Cheung recalled.
Balwani, who will be tried separately next year, has also pleaded not guilty.
Cheung said he brought his concerns to Shultz and his grandfather, former U.S. Secretary of State and Theranos board member George Shultz.
“I started to get very uncomfortable and very stressful for myself working at the company,” Cheung said. “I was trying to tell as many people as I could, but it just wasn’t reaching people.”
Cheung’s testimony will continue Friday.