Book Review: Bad Blood – Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup

• Main Author: Emeril Santander
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: University of Ottawa 2019-05-01
• Series: University of Ottawa Journal of Medicine
• Subjects: fraud; Theranos; Carreyrou; innovation; medicine
• Online Access: https://uottawa.scholarsportal.info/ottawa/index.php/uojm-jmuo/article/view/4159

This book review appraises John Carreyrou’s non-fiction book Bad Blood. The text provides penetrating insights on Theranos, an American laboratory diagnostics company that promised to revolutionize laboratory medicine. The author’s award-winning prose relays the events leading to the eventual discovery of fraud at Theranos as well as the subsequent collapse of the company. The book can be faulted for being unripe. Publication prior to a full resolution to the Theranos affair precludes analysis of the longer-term impacts of this fraud. Notwithstanding Bad Blood’s imperfect timing, the book remains a seminal text amidst journalistic chronicles of medical innovation gone wrong.