Elizabeth Holmes, the 31-year-old co-founder of Theranos, personally responds to the WSJ article raising questions about the accuracy of its blood tests.
Unclear why anonymous anecdotes outweigh scalable statistics https://t.co/ompp4sU8Gv
— Elizabeth Holmes (@eholmes2003) October 15, 2015
Let's set the record straight: https://t.co/as2yHBlK9W
— Elizabeth Holmes (@eholmes2003) October 15, 2015
Theranos issued a press release pointedly disputing the accuracy of the Wall Street Journals reporting stating that, “Today’s Wall Street Journal story about Theranos is factually and scientifically erroneous and grounded in baseless assertions by inexperienced and disgruntled former employees and industry incumbents. Theranos presented the facts to this reporter to prove the accuracy and reliability of its tests and to directly refute these false allegations, including more than 1,000 pages of statements and documents. Disappointingly, the Journal chose to publish this article without even mentioning the facts Theranos shared that disproved the many falsehoods in the article.”
Wow.
Theranos went on to say that, “Theranos’ products and services have proven accurate and reliable for tens of thousands of satisfied customers through millions of tests and experiences and in ongoing review by our various regulators. Our focus remains on ensuring high quality, real-time, actionable information to improve diagnosis and treatment decisions. When you create innovative technology, scrutiny is to be expected. We have always welcomed that scrutiny – opening up to regulators like no lab before and voluntarily submitting all our tests for FDA review, the gold standard for quality. We received our first FDA clearance this summer based on the very proprietary systems the story is asserting don’t work, and have submitted almost 130 pre-submissions to FDA for tests run on those proprietary systems.”
Slamming the WSJ further Theranos stated:
The sources relied on in the article today were never in a position to understand Theranos’ technology and know nothing about the processes currently employed by the company. We are disappointed that, in an effort to make its story more dramatic, this reporter relied only on the views of four “anonymous” disgruntled former employees, competitors and their allies, instead of reaching out to many of the scientific, health care and business leaders who have actually seen, tested, used and examined our breakthrough technologies. The Journal even declined an opportunity to experience the technology themselves by turning down our offer to send proprietary Theranos devices to their offices so they could have a demonstration of tests conducted themselves, and compare the results to those of other testing providers.
Stories like this come along when you threaten to change things, seeded by entrenched interests that will do anything to prevent change, but in the end nothing will deter us from making our tests the best and of the highest integrity for the people we serve, and continuing to fight for transformative change in health care.
Elizabeth Holmes is the world’s youngest self made female billionaire worth a reported $4.5 billion according to Forbes.
The New York Post in an article this summer referred to Elizabeth Holmes as, “Young, rich and beautiful — not to mention insanely smart”. We agree!