Reading Roger Parloff’s story about a revolutionary blood diagnostics company called Theranos is like traveling to an undiscovered country: It’s a populous, prosperous place, fully advanced, and yet it has developed, in its isolation, a different way of doing things the rest of us take for granted. Someday the company may have a large impact on the rest of the world, yet few people have even heard of it. There are amazements around every corner. Parloff’s cover story “New Blood” is about a business prodigy named Elizabeth Holmes and the medical diagnostic company, Theranos, that she founded at age 19. Today Holmes is 30, and in the intervening years she: –invented a method of testing blood that is painless, cheap, and much faster than the traditional needle-in-a-vein model; –invented and built machines to analyze blood samples, manufacturing everything in-house, right down to the screws; –built a company around this technology that employs 500 people and is valued at more than $9 billion; –persuaded George Schultz, Henry Kissinger, Sam Nunn, and Bill Frist, among others, to serve on its board; –and persuaded David Boies, the nation’s most eminent trial lawyer, to serve as its legal adviser. Parloff takes the reader on a fascinating exploration of this little world. It’s a tale chock-full of discovery, beautifully told.
