Sometimes you guys are after blood, what do you want them to say?
"We're the worst, we'll never try at anything anymore, sorry for existing."
Would that make you happy?
"We're the worst, we'll never try at anything anymore, sorry for existing."
Would that make you happy?
"Our foray into nanotainer tech was too early for the market. However, we've established that there is a market for disruptive tech in the stodgy lab biz. In terms of leadership, we're moving on from Ms. Holmes who saw this from the start, and she's agreed that the best for the stakeholders is to step aside due to the misunderstanding around her tech, but the company itself will persevere in breaking the stranglehold Big Lab has on healthcare costs, while Ms Holmes moves to an role in charge of disruptive R&D use of nanotainer and other disruptive tech in the lab/testing biz."
You should work for Monsanto (a sustainable agriculture company) :-)
Theranos fradulently conducted their business on a wide scale over a long period. Literally nothing they've said in public since the revelations (which just keep getting worse) have ever truthfully addressed the matter.
But regardless of the scale of wrongdoing, the bare minimum expected of both companies and individuals when they've done wrong is:
- An acknowledgment and admission of the wrongdoing, without equivocation or deflection. No "it was wrong but..." or any such thing. Own the wrongdoing, it's the least you can do to respect the people who you've done wrong by.
- Demonstration of self-awareness and introspection as to what led to the wrongdoing. Again, without equivocation or deflection. Neither corporation nor individual can be trusted not to commit the same wrong if they can't openly demonstrate why they did it.
- A plan to both prevent reoccurrence of the wrongdoing and, if applicable, a plan to make whole those who were harmed in the original wrongdoing. This doesn't need to be monetary, but may be (especially when businesses are involved).
These are the bare minimum prerequisites before anyone can be granted even the tiniest shred of credibility back.
This statement (like all other statements by Theranos) demonstrates literally no component of the above, so yeah, we'll keep (rightfully) raking them over the coals until they do.
or to mirror the original statement "We have been forced to close our clinical labs."
It's not that they need to grovel, it's that the phrase "we decided" is not an accurate representation of the situation.
"We decided to" devoid of any qualifiers makes it sound like it was a decision made with full autonomy, and not a decision made because you were backed into a corner.
But to the extent that it does, it should be based on an accurate representation of reality and not misdirection.
Contrast that with this, where instead of owning literally any responsibility for the farce that their product was, she continues to go on this same distortion tactic: Never say anything that's actually a lie, just say a whole lot of things that aren't the truth.
The only thing she seems to have learned is a lot of regulation that her company ran into, and how to work around it.
You have not heard from Elisabeth Holmes because of this, you've heard from the CEO of Theranos, whose name is Elisabeth Holmes. I don't know what she has/hasn't learned, but the audience for this was not HN, and she's not giving her personal experience in this letter.
Writing for yourself is completely different than writing for a company, but you know that. Come on, we can do better.