CARTOON TIME! The Story of Elizabeth Holmes

 

 

The Wizard of Odd: Elizabeth's great invention

Elizabeth Holmes: bobblehead

Elizabeth Holmes pretends to agree while one of her critics rips her to shreds. Note the foreward hunch with ankle resting on her knee, one of her more irritating traits.

"A chemistry is performed": the lunatic junk science that brought down Theranos

"A chemistry is performed so that a chemical reaction occurs and generates a signal from the chemical interaction with the sample, which is translated into a result, which is then reviewed by certified laboratory personnel." - Elizabeth Holmes explains the science behind the Theranos blood testing miracle.

This is the second-most-famous Holmes quote, right next to "First they think you're crazy, then they fight you, and all of a sudden you change the world."

Elizabeth Holmes: Sugar Daddies or dirty old men?

Just when I think I've seen it all. . . I come across yet another snippet of video featuring Elizabeth Holmes in her glory days, before her Theranos empire crumbled in a heap of iniquity. This is a curious bit of business which I made into a gif, featuring that master of charming creepiness, Bill Clinton. I will resist Monica jokes (too easy), but he does seem to be quite taken with the winsome Ms. Holmes. (Don't ask me who that is on the right, but he looks both bored and uncomfortable.)

 

A closeup. Bill seems barely able to contain himself with excitement that this winsome, blonde young woman has actually accomplished something significant. The incongruous, virtually impossible mixture of blonde cuteness and billions of bucks never fails to bring out the Sugar Daddy in the rich, white, sexually predatory old men Elizabeth magnetically attracted like a bottomless resource.

Here Elizabeth speaks at a conference somewhere, and cracks a lame, dated joke that might have brought the house down in 1982: "Every time there's a glass ceiling, an iron woman is right behind it." But what is interesting is the reaction of the two men sitting on either side of her. Two presumably rich, white, slightly "sugar-ish" old men - just her style.

Head rears back, eyes roll upward, smiles broadly and mutters with a blissful look on his face, "Oh wow." He looks to be minutely blushing.

Rapidly turns his head and opens his mouth, laughs while rocking back and forth, cries "Bravo!", and claps.

Keeps her eyes very wide open except for two slow, flirtatious blinks, smiles prettily with lips wide apart, then bites off the smile by pressing her lips together, shaking her head minutely all the while she is speaking. 

.

Where Is Elizabeth Holmes Now? Inside Edition's Lisa Guerrero Tracks Her...

Yes, I KNOW I am obsessed!

This is evolving into The Elizabeth Holmes page. But really, I have never seen a case quite like this, though  others have compared her to Bernie Madoff and even Steve Jobs (whom people claim stole other people's ideas, or at least incorporated them, and mesmerized audiences into believing he had originated them). The fact she was mucking around in human blood and casually risking human life and claiming she would change the world (while everyone cheered and financial magazines put her on the cover) made this unique. She convinced so many rich, influential people to BELIEVE this twaddle that she just kept on rising, until she fell. Thank you, John Carreyrou!

Elizabeth Holmes: yeah, and this one too (and probably more!)

After quite a long draught of Elizabeth Holmes goodies, suddenly YouTube is bursting with spot-on parodies, more than half a dozen of them appearing all at once, including one (perhaps the best of them) by a man. He probably does the voice better than any of them. It's gratifying for me to see an ice-water sociopath skewered like this, but I don't think for a moment that it bothers her. She probably secretly likes the attention. I note a distinct lack of mention of her pouty-lipped rich boy friend and the dog she calls a wolf, but then, those items didn't make the deadline for the two documentaries and the podcast. Oh my God, can I ever get enough??

Elizabeth Holmes: She-wolf of Wall Street

ELIZABETH HOLMES HAS A HUSKY NAMED BALTO AND TELLS EVERYONE HE IS A WOLF 

Elizabeth Holmes, a blonde woman with an army of black turtlenecks who at least one person has described as someone who “absolutely has sociopathic tendencies,” has been known to lie. Her company Theranos—which she claimed was capable of running hundreds, if not thousands, of diagnostic medical tests with a single drop of blood—gave patients fake test results for years. Holmes deceived investors to drum up a $9 billion valuation for the company. She could not answer a number of questions in her 2017 deposition, as she was being investigated by the SEC for fraud.

She also reportedly likes to lie about what kind of dog she has. Holmes bought her Siberian husky in 2017, according to Vanity Fair, when things were really bad at Theranos. She named him Balto, as in, yes, the beloved sweet boy who saved lives during a 1925 diptheria outbreak by delivering antitoxins to a small town in Alaska. The dog was more of a brand-building exercise for Holmes than a four-legged best friend:

The metaphorical connection was obvious. In Holmes’s telling, Balto’s perseverance mirrored her own. His voyage with the life-changing drug was not so different from her ambition.

Which was extremely useful to Holmes:

In an industry full of oddballs, Holmes—a blonde WASP from the D.C. area—seemed hell-bent on cultivating a reputation as an iconoclastic weirdo. Having Balto seemed to help fortify the image.

And was even more helpful when she lied and told anyone who’d listen that Balto was a wolf:

Around this same time, Holmes says that she discovered that Balto—like most huskies—had a tiny trace of wolf origin. Henceforth, she decided that Balto wasn’t really a dog, but rather a wolf. In meetings, at cafés, whenever anyone stopped to pet the pup and ask his breed, Holmes soberly replied, “He’s a wolf.”

But we mustn’t look down on Balto for the actions of his owner, for he had no control over what Holmes said or did. He did, however, poop all over the Theranos office, and for that, we can say Balto really is a true American hero and has a nose for the morally right thing to do:

Holmes brushed it off when the scientists protested that the dog hair could contaminate samples [...] Accustomed to the undomesticated life, Balto frequently urinated and defecated at will throughout Theranos headquarters.

I hope Balto has a nice life, whether that’s with Holmes (who still tells people he’s a wolf), or perhaps, I don’t know, with me, a person who would love a dog and would never dramatize aspects of their genetic background to make myself look cooler. Just saying! Godspeed, Balto.

- Frida Garza, Jezebel

Elizabeth Holmes: Her Day in Court

For Elizabeth Holmes, famous fraudster founder of phony blood-testing company Theranos, the fun is just beginning. The staring unblinking eyes, ducked head, rapid little head-shakes, and attempts to look like an innocent little girl are all part of the ruse. 

These snippets were taken from a Nightline news video and represent reaction shots. I didn't edit them terribly well, just strung them together, but you'll see a few yeses and a LOT of no's. The no's represent whether or not she knew what was going on in the company while it defrauded the public and sucked financial backing out of rich old white men to the tune of nine BILLION dollars. All the while putting the public at life-and-death risk by marketing medical equipment which did DOODLYSQUAT to test human blood with any accuracy at all.

No black turtleneck here, only a few blinks, but mostly round staring eyes that seem to indicate either extreme sleep deprivation, or a severe psychiatric disorder. To say the least, she is a creepy woman, and she is about to face the day of reckoning.

Will she do time for all this? The fact that Martha Stewart actually went to jail gives me hope. It might look more like a luxury hotel than a prison, but I doubt if black turtlenecks are going to be the standard uniform. No, Elizabeth, it's orange for you, because orange is what you deserve.

Elizabeth Holmes: BLINK!

BLOGGER'S NOTE. It was not so long ago that the media were drooling over this woman, who perpetrated one of the biggest and most protracted medical frauds in history. She was literally dealing in blood. I did not have to do too much to these gifs to reveal her extreme sociopathy - it's all there right before your eyes.

This was one of the more astonishing puff-pieces that the media spewed out, completely naive and unquestioning as the seductress eyeballed her way into untold riches (and power - need we say it?). It took nine years for the bottom to drop out, but drop out it did, to the great disappointment of everyone who longed for a "girl" to come along and succeed like Steve Jobs did (Steve Jobs being the only standard anyone cares about) - and not any girl, but a blonde, blue-eyed one who never seemed to blink. I have since found out that it's typical among cult leaders.


ICONS & INNOVATORS

The Unusual Strategy That Made This Woman a Multibillionaire

Elizabeth Holmes's growth strategy flies in the face of conventional startup wisdom.

By Larry Kim CEO of MobileMonkey, Inc.@larrykim

In each generation, an elite few entrepreneurs skyrocket to almost unimaginable heights. Among that already select group, an even more exceptional group emerges: those whose business success affects society in such a way that they become forever ingrained in the public consciousness.

Warren Buffett, Oprah Winfrey, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and now Mark Zuckerberg are a few examples of this top-tier, ultra-successful group. As self-made billionaires, they certainly experienced success, but they went on to become household names and forever cemented a place in history thanks to their innovation and ingenuity.

A young woman named Elizabeth Holmes is rapidly working her way toward this status.

Never heard of her? That's not surprising, and was actually by design.

Most entrepreneurs can't wait to get their startup in the news. You need customers to buy into your idea. You need the industry to take you seriously. You need investors to get on board and help you grow.

Looking back, Holmes was certainly a prodigy, though like many other billionaires, she dropped out of college to pursue her dream. In high school, she taught herself Mandarin and sold C compilers to Chinese universities. She went on to Stanford for chemical engineering, where she filed her first patent and traveled to Singapore to work on the SARS virus. Just ahead of her sophomore year, however, Holmes left Stanford behind and went after her dream of pioneering personalized medicine.

Her company, Theranos, was born of her desire to make the greatest change she could in the world, Holmes recently told the San Jose Mercury News.

She has spent the last 11 years developing a revolutionary blood-testing technology to run diagnostic tests with a single drop of blood, drawn by a painless fingerprick. Imagine completely accessible diagnostic testing available across the country, capable of running hundreds of tests with a tiny amount of blood--and at a fraction of the current cost.

It will fundamentally change health care, in America and around the world.

Blood testing hasn't evolved since the 1960s and Holmes saw a unique way to shake up the industry, while doing social good.

But she kept it quiet.

Contrary to the strategy of the vast majority of startups, Holmes hasn't been shouting her idea from the rooftops. There's no PR team behind the curtain orchestrating speaking engagements and media coverage. In fact, until Holmes landed on Forbes's "40 Under 40" list and the cover of Fortune magazine this year, she was virtually unknown.

(Holmes was featured in Inc.com's "30 Under 30" list in 2006 but still managed to stay unusually under the radar.)

Holmes had a vision so significant, she didn't want her competitors to catch on until she had the creation of an entirely new market--consumer health technology--well under way.

And her competitors are huge; think Quest, LabCorp, and other well-established players in the $70 billion U.S. blood-testing industry. Yet instead of coming out of the gates with barrels blazing, Holmes quietly worked away at her startup for a decade before beginning to increase her public presence. In that time, she built a business that now has about 500 employees and counts Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle, and venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson among its investors.

In the age of selfies, YouTube stars, and "breaking the Internet," isn't it refreshing to discover a young entrepreneur focused more on her business and doing social good than on her public persona? At just 30 years old and as 50% owner of her $9 billion company, Holmes only now seems to be making a concerted effort to come into the limelight.

It's an unusual growth strategy, to work away diligently, largely out of the public eye, but it's one that has served Elizabeth Holmes, the world's youngest self-made female billionaire, incredibly well.

Nefarious motives: the eyes of Elizabeth Holmes

Excerpt from: Body Language Analysis №4195: Elizabeth Holmes, Theranos, and Red Flags — Nonverbal and Emotional Intelligence

Three years ago, Elizabeth Holmes was the newest Golden Child of Silicon Valley. Her company, which she started when she was just 19 after dropping out of Stanford University, had claimed to have revolutionized the practice of medicine by being able to perform testing on just a few drops of blood — from only a finger prick (only 1/100 to 1/1000 of that typically needed with conventional methods). Such a discovery would also dramatically decrease the costs of blood tests. Ms. Holmes also had quite a knack for convincing investors to bankroll her company — which they did to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.

But in October of 2015, based on the work of John Carreyrou of The Wall Street Journal, deep concerns as to the credibility of Theranos’ technology were raised — and the facade failed.

What follows is a partial nonverbal analysis of Ms. Holmes from this April 2015 CBS interview.





The aberrant behavior of Elizabeth Holmes’ eyelids is striking. Note how widely they’re opened. The “whites of her eyes” (sclera) are visible 360º around the colored portions (irides or irises) of both eyes.





Moreover, her eyelids are open to this extreme — not just for a second or two — but nearly continuously throughout this interview. This is extremely unusual.

Additionally, in the image immediately above (2:25), Ms. Holmes is also displaying a component of Disgust (note her tightened and forward-vectored mid and lower face — along with her nostril flaring and tightened lips).





You may have also noticed that Elizabeth Holmes blinks much less frequently than normal. This should immediately jump out to you as unnatural. This red flag is a behavior correlated with nefarious motives — so much so, that it’s even been used in animations for decades.





Now, you may say that maybe Elizabeth Holmes’ forehead had been treated with Botox — and you’d be correct. But although her forehead activity is somewhat diminished due to Botox — the dynamic movement captured here (3:48) proves that it is still quite functional. Concave-up furrows are clearly visible on her forehead and her eyebrows are also momentarily elevated.

It’s profoundly important to stress — that when a person’s eyelids are opened wide during moments of verbal emphasis — there is almost always a simultaneous contraction and elevation of their forehead muscles too — as was imaged in this last example.

But the fact that such forehead contribution was rarely seen throughout this interview — that her eyelids were opened wide with a relaxed forehead — and this display was virtually continuous — is a tremendous red flag. It screams of deception. It also signals psychological pathology.

Intriguingly, although the frequency of Ms. Holmes’ voice is quite deep — witnesses have documented that she’s feigning. It’s another affectation.

Jennifer Lawrence will be playing Elizabeth Holmes in a 2019 film version of this fall from grace. It’s to be titled Bad Blood and will be directed by Adam McKay (The Big Short).

SUMMARY: In the absence of a few medical conditions (such as Thyroid eye disease), when the eyelids are opened so widely, with such high frequency and long duration — coupled with a relaxed forehead (e.g., as is demonstrated in the first three images and during almost this entire interview), there’s a very high correlation with:

• Deception
• Antisocial Personality Disorder (commonly referred to as Sociopath Behavior)

Dr. Jack Brown

Body Language/Nonverbal Communication Expert and Physician
May 29

BLOGGER'S OBSERVATIONS. So why do I keep on posting stuff about Elizabeth Holmes? She is one of the more fascinating criminals of the 21st century, maybe of the last 100 years. It is said that she created a niche for herself by ascertaining a yearning, need, or even a guilt or shame in society that ached for redemption. She WAS that redemption: a supernaturally-blue-eyed blonde (hair color as natural as that alabaster stone forehead), a barely-in-her-20s wunderkind, a self-proclaimed genius who was - gasp - female! An actual live woman, doing the Steve Jobs bit, bucking the trend, breaking the mold (but not really, because that's not how you create and fulfill a need. You slip very slimily INTO the mold, thus easing and filling the hollow howling ache in the collective consciousness, redeeming and forgiving the meanness of our faith in womankind and their ability to create and transform.)

But oh, woe. How could we miss this? She wasn't a genius at all (even though she TOLD us she was, damn it! That's just not fair.) She was this sour little bundle of megalomaniacal greed, not smart at all but merely crafty, wily, manipulative, supremely egotistical, and so Antarctically indifferent in her icy core that she could actually feign warmth with that froggy adenoidal voice of hers. She could produce a dizzying facsimile of deep interest in her victims by allowing her sclera to show 360  degrees all around her irises. No kidding, that is how she did it - that, and not blinking, not ever, probably practicing it in front of the mirror or, perhaps, watching old videos of Marshall Applewhite.

Elizabeth was a cult, a shiny blonde one-woman cult, and people fell into line, but they fell into line largely due to a burning, almost unbearable hope that Some Day, Some Woman would come along, someone so glowingly and world-beatingly successful  that they could bow down and worship, lift her up, put her on magazine covers like Forbes, and thus tell themselves and the world, SEE, see how we're acting, we don't discriminate, and we DO think women can do all kinds of swell things and be blonde and blue-eyed at the same time!

But oh. No! Now those blinded worshippers have been knocked on their asses, and sit there stunned and blinking. Wait! How could a GIRL. . .But that's the thing. Didn't we already know women could be ruthless and heartless and utterly-self-servingly-sociopathic? Look at Cruella de Ville. That chick in Fatal Attraction. The Sunset Boulevard lady. (Never mind that they're all fictional.) But Elizabeth had so much confidence, she seemed to know something, and there is nothing more seductive than a woman who seems to know something. So here was this mega-billion-dollar phenom who turned out to be crass, tin-plated, shallow, and utterly uninformed about ANY aspect of medicine or science (and if you saw transcripts of some of her interviews, undazzled by those icy ever-open scleral globes, you'd recognize her laughable ignorance at once). She was all show and no go, and the vaporware she didn't produce wasn't just another talking vibrator or a refrigerator that anticipates your grocery needs. It was all about blood - human blood -  literally, about sucking blood out of people's fingers with some ludicrous thing called a "nanotainer".

The old videos, the early 2015 ones (which is really not so long ago) are now embarrassing to watch, with rich old men (board members, mostly) grabbing their scrotums every time she told a lame joke or made a ridiculous globally-transformative prediction.  Well, she did change the world, sort of. She knocked a whole lot of people on their asses, but for all the wrong reasons.

The one question that lingers in my mind is: since it took nine years for her bubble to burst, and since she couldn't have spent ALL that time grasping the scrotums of rich old men, what did she DO all day? How did she fill her time? Doing eyeball exercises, having her forehead frozen and her hair foiled?  Getting voice lessons for that dull drone she used, or was that just Steve Jobs-style steroids?

Like Martha Stewart, Elizabeth may rise again. But those crazy eyes disturb me. Something is just not right there. They have a feverish quality. a shininess that is unnatural.  Madness can, if turned just the right way, change the world. We've seen it. But the ideal of blonde and blue-eyed has had its share of bad press.