来源：《自然》
原文刊登日期：2022年1月4日
Elizabeth Holmes founded Theranos in 2003 at the age of 19, shortly before dropping out of Stanford University. Her goal was to build a company that would make blood tests available directly to consumers. She wanted to eliminate the large needles and tubes of blood required to operate standard diagnostic devices. To that end, she claimed to have developed a machine that could run more than 200 tests on just a few drops of blood taken from a finger prick.
2003年，19岁的伊丽莎白•霍姆斯创立了Theranos，不久便从斯坦福大学退学。她的目标是建立一家直接向消费者提供血液检测的公司。她希望消除操作标准诊断设备所需的大针头和装血的大试管。为此，她声称已经开发出一种机器，只需从手指上戳出几滴血，就能进行200多项测试。
Holmes attracted more media attention to laboratory diagnostics than ever before. She also brought in high-profile advisers and investors. Former US secretaries of state Henry Kissinger and George Shultz, and former US secretaries of defence James Mattis and William Perry, all joined Theranos’s board of directors. Investors included media mogul Rupert Murdoch and the family of former US education secretary Betsy DeVos.
霍姆斯吸引了比以往更多的媒体对实验室诊断的关注。她还引入了知名顾问和投资者。美国前国务卿亨利•基辛格和乔治•舒尔茨，以及美国前国防部长詹姆斯•马蒂斯和威廉•佩里都加入了Theranos董事会。投资者包括媒体大亨鲁珀特•默多克和美国前教育部长贝齐•德沃斯的家人。
The company raised about $945 million and grew to more than 800 employees. It also inked deals with a couple of big retailers. In 2013, pharmacy chain Walgreens began putting Theranos ‘wellness centres’ in its stores in Arizona, eventually setting up 40 sites. The aim was to enable consumers to go to a local pharmacist at their convenience and order a panel of blood tests from a few drops of blood.
该公司筹集了约9.45亿美元，员工人数超过800人。它还与几家大型零售商签订了协议。2013年，连锁药店沃尔格林开始在亚利桑那州的门店中开设Theranos的“健康中心”，最终开设了40个分店。这样做的目的是让消费者可以在方便的时候去当地药剂师那里，用几滴血液就可以订购一组血液测试。
Investors and the public believed that Theranos was using its novel machines to analyse the blood samples it received. But in reality, the company could run only a few tests on its platform. The rest went through conventional blood-testing equipment developed by other companies. To meet the specifications of those instruments, the finger-prick samples had to be diluted to increase their volume, and the results proved unreliable.
投资者和公众都认为Theranos是在使用其新型机器来分析其收到的血液样本。但实际上，该公司只能在其平台上进行几项测试。其余的测试则使用了其他公司开发的传统血液检测设备。为了满足其他公司仪器的规格，必须对指刺样品进行稀释以增加其体积，结果被证明是不可靠的。
“There was a fundamental flaw in the idea of getting everything from a drop of blood, because there just aren’t enough molecules there” for detection, says Paul Yager, a diagnostics developer and researcher at the University of Washington in Seattle.
西雅图华盛顿大学的诊断开发和研究人员保罗·耶格说，“从一滴血中获取一切信息的想法存在一个根本性的缺陷，因为那里没有足够的分子”用于检测。
In 2015, Holmes’s ruse began to fall apart. The Wall Street Journal reporter John Carreyrou exposed the shortcomings of Theranos’s machines in a splashy series of news stories. The US Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services investigated, and banned Holmes from operating a medical lab for two years. Walgreens sued Theranos. And the US Securities and Exchange Commission charged Holmes with massive fraud, and barred Holmes from serving as a director or officer of a public company for a decade.
2015年，霍姆斯的诡计开始瓦解。《华尔街日报》记者约翰·卡雷鲁在一系列引人注目的新闻报道中揭露了Theranos机器的缺点。美国医疗保险和医疗补助服务中心进行了调查，并禁止霍姆斯在两年内经营医疗实验室。沃尔格林起诉了Theranos。美国证券交易委员会指控霍姆斯犯有大规模欺诈罪，并在十年内禁止霍姆斯担任上市公司的董事或高管。