Overview of Really Bad Blood: The Self-Inflicted Wounds of Elizabeth Holmes
In this episode of Chameleon, host Josh Dean revisits a lead he passed along in 2014, when Theranos was at the height of its hype. He speaks with Joe Fuisz about how Elizabeth Holmes’s lawsuit against the Fuisz family exposed skeptics, helped connect whistleblower Adam Rosendorff with The Wall Street Journal, and became one of several decisions that contributed to Theranos’s unraveling.
The tip that Josh Dean passed on
In 2014, inventor and entrepreneur Richard Fuisz told Dean that Theranos’s blood-testing technology did not work. Fuisz knew Holmes’s family from their years as neighbors in Washington, D.C., and had a personal stake in the matter: Theranos was suing his family over a patent.
Dean considered the story too risky and technically complex to pursue alone, so he passed the tip to an editor. About ten months later, John Carreyrou’s Wall Street Journal investigation reported that Theranos was struggling with its blood tests. Fuisz later became one of Carreyrou’s important sources.
How the lawsuit created a path to the truth
Theranos accused the Fuisz family of using confidential documents, allegedly obtained by Richard’s son John through his work as a patent attorney, to file a patent. The family denied the allegations. Joe Fuisz said the patent was a speculative filing with little relevance to Theranos’s business, and expected the dispute to settle quickly.
Instead, Holmes’s legal team, led by David Boies, pursued an aggressive case that dragged on for years. As the Fuiszes investigated and spoke with people connected to Theranos, they found other skeptics:
- Stanford professor Phyllis Gardner was deeply doubtful of Holmes and the company.
- Rochelle Gibbons, widow of Theranos chief scientist Ian Gibbons, shared concerns about the company.
- Former lab director Adam Rosendorff eventually told the Fuiszes that tests were producing unreliable results and that Theranos was forcing their validation.
Joe Fuisz said he and Gardner urged Rosendorff to speak up because of his responsibility to patients. Rosendorff then helped Carreyrou’s reporting withstand legal scrutiny. The lawsuit ultimately ended in a walkaway settlement, with no money exchanged, and Theranos agreed to abandon the patent.
Warning signs behind the public image
Joe Fuisz recounts several details that deepened the family’s suspicions, including early patent filings that appeared to list Holmes and Sunny Balwani at the same residential address, and Theranos’s efforts to restrict what the Fuiszes could see during litigation.
The episode also describes other warning signs: Gardner’s skepticism, Gibbons’s reported belief that the technology did not work, and a call Richard Fuisz made to a Theranos testing location that left him convinced something was wrong. At the time, however, Theranos was gaining attention and a multibillion-dollar valuation. Joe says a major laboratory company declined his offer to take over the patent dispute, believing Theranos would collapse on its own.
Holmes’s confidence and refusal to acknowledge wrongdoing
Joe Fuisz remembers Holmes as unusually comfortable around powerful older men, including former Secretary of State George Shultz and Boies. The episode explores how her confidence and carefully cultivated public image helped attract prominent supporters.
The conversation turns to Holmes’s later claims that she had never lied. Whistleblower Tyler Shultz disputes her account of the Theranos devices, saying the device shown in the film discussed in the episode was not the one used to test patients. Joe Fuisz also recalls Holmes’s lawyers making claims about her relationship with Balwani that he says were untrue.
Joe argues that Holmes may rationalize her actions rather than accept that she lied. He and Dean suggest that her refusal to acknowledge any wrongdoing has made it harder for the public to sympathize with her.
The episode’s central takeaway
The Fuisz lawsuit may have been a self-inflicted wound: according to Joe, Holmes could likely have resolved the patent dispute cheaply, but instead spent heavily on litigation and created relationships that helped expose Theranos. The episode also reflects on the difficulty of investigative reporting against a powerful company willing to threaten legal action—and on how a reporter’s decision to pass on a lead can become part of the story.