Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes arrives at Robert F. Peckham U.S. Courthouse for opening arguments in her trial, in San Jose, California, September 8, 2021.
SAN JOSE, CALIF. – Elizabeth Holmes was the founder and face of Theranos, but when it came to the company's laboratory, she relied on her highly qualified lab directors and scientists.
That's the picture her defense attorneys painted on Wednesday, in an attempt to discredit the testimony of a former Theranos lab associate turned whistleblower, Erika Cheung, who said that the Edison blood-testing machines frequently failed quality control tests.
Lance Wade, a defense attorney for Holmes, ran through the high qualifications of the scientists who worked at Theranos, among them: 52 scientists with PhDs and ten medical doctors.
Wearing a black and gray dress with heels, Cheung spent six hours on the stand testifying about the high failure rate and data manipulation with the Edison, the company's mini blood-lab machine.
"You'd have about the same luck flipping a coin as to whether your results were right or wrong," Cheung said. "It was concerning to see this degree of failure, this was not typical for a normal lab."
Cheung, who worked at Theranos for less than a year, said her lab managers were Mark Pandori, who has a PhD, and Adam Rosendorff, who has a medical degree. After quitting Theranos, Cheung became an advocate for ethics in the tech industry, launching a non-profit called Ethics in Entrepreneurship with her former colleague and whistleblower Tyler Shultz.