Norah O’Donnell on 60 Minutes reports on the aftermath of the “Theranos Deception.” Theranos was founded by Elizabeth Holmes who claimed Theranos’ blood-testing machine could perform the tests of traditional labs from just a finger prick’s worth of blood. In 2015, Forbes named Holmes, then 31, the youngest self-made female billionaire in the world, based on the $9 billion valuation of Theranos. The SEC later determined that Theranos’ research wasn’t accurate and accused her of defrauding investors. The whistleblower who alerted authorities in 2014 was employee Tyler Shultz. Shultz claims Theranos doctored research and ignored failed quality-control checks, among other things. With tight security at the office, Shultz knew to use an alias when he blew his whistle.
Tyler Shultz is the grandson of George Shultz, former U.S. Secretary of State (Ronald Reagan), Secretary of Treasury and Secretary of Labor (both under Richard Nixon), and later board member of Theranos. The 97-year-old statesman from Englewood, New Jersey graduated from Princeton, served in the U.S. Marines (1942-1945), earned a Ph.D. in industrial economics from MIT. He served as Dean of the University of Chicago’s School of Business, where he was influenced by Milton Friedman and George Stigler, advocates of a free-market economy.
Note: Former Secretary of State and National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger, and Trump Secretary of Defense, General James Mattis were also on the board of Theranos. 60 Minutes airs Sundays at 7pm on CBS.
