Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Video Footage Emerges Of Theranos' Mysterious Second-In-Command
Stat: Theranos's Mystery Man Revealed: Footage Of Sunny Bawlani Was Hiding In Plain Sight
The day after the story came out, though, an eagle-eyed sleuth on Twitter pointed us to something better: Video footage of Balwani talking up Theranos in front of an Arizona legislative committee in March 2014. (That was around the time Theranos, then at its peak valuation of $9 billion, started opening testing centers in Walgreens pharmacies in Arizona.) Donning a dark suit and tie and a blandly corporate affect, Balwani gave an 11 1/2-minute pitch that is vintage pre-scandal Theranos: He talked about working on “something that we believe is magical.” He cited glowing testimonials from patients whose blood tests, we would later learn, were not being processed the way Theranos had promised. (Robbins, 3/20)
In other Theranos news —
Kaiser Health News: Reporter’s Notebook: The Tale Of Theranos And The Mysterious Fire Alarm
It was November 2014, and I was working on a feature story about a buzzed-about blood-testing company in Silicon Valley that promised to “disrupt” the lab industry with new technology. The company, Theranos, claimed its revolutionary finger-prick test would be a cheap and less painful way to screen for hundreds of diseases with just a few drops of blood. Old-fashioned venous blood draws, where the patient watches as vial after vial of blood is collected, would quickly become obsolete, Theranos promised. (Gold, 3/21)
