July 11, 2022 • 47 mins
You can follow the show on Instagram @DrMayaShankar.
Erika Cheung’s first job out of college was as a scientist at the now infamous biotech company, Theranos. Erika realized early on that the company’s proprietary technology was not delivering accurate blood results to patients. And even though she had so much to lose by speaking out, she saw no other option.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
Pushkin. Hey, just a heads up. There's a brief mention
of sexual assault at around seven minutes into this episode.
Please take care while listening. I had only worked at
(00:40):
the company for seven months, So now I'm going to
call my father and I'm going to tell him I
need to quit a job that I only lasted seven months,
And at that point I was making more money than
my dad had made working ten years at the same company.
You know, I had made more money at that job
than my mom has ever made in her lifetime. So
you have to explain to them, you know, is it
(01:02):
the case that I'm just a quitter? Like am I
just basically throwing my hands up and saying like I
can't handle this. That's Erica Chung, a former scientist at
the now infamous biotech company Tharonos. Erica realized early on
that the company's proprietary technology was not delivering accurate blood
results to patients, but when she raised her concerns to
(01:24):
company leadership, she was silenced, and so Erica decided to
not only quit her job at Tharonos, but also to
report the company to government regulators. This carried huge personal risk.
She had signed an NDA when she first joined the company,
and so she feared litigation and criminal charges, but Erica
saw no other option. Honestly, Maya the idea of knowing
(01:48):
what I knew and having not done anything, and knowing
that there was something that I could have done about
it and I didn't do anything, Like that's the real prison, right,
Like that's the real purgatory. On today's episode, a Tharonos
whistleblower shares her story, I'm Maya Shunker, and this is
(02:11):
a slight change of plans, a show about who we
are and who we become in the face of a
big change. In twenty thirteen, Erica Chung was twenty three
and a senior at UC Berkeley studying molecular and cell biology.
She wasn't quite sure what she wanted her first job
(02:31):
to be, but she did know she wanted to do
something in the sciences that could have a big impact
on people's lives. So she went to a campus career
fair and that's where she spotted a booth for the
company Tharanos. By that time, Pharaonos was making waves in
the biotech world with its new proprietary technology technology that
could run a range of blood tests from just one
(02:54):
single fingerprick of blood and in turn revolutionize access to
healthcare worldwide, or at least that's the story Elizabeth Holmes,
the founder and CEO of Tharanos, was telling the world.
Tharonos had already started to roll its devices for use
by patients and providers in clinical settings by the time
Erica showed up at the job fair that day. Erica
(03:16):
was so excited by the idea of working at Saranos
and decided to apply. And when they invite you to
come in for an interview, it is with Elizabeth Holmes herself, right,
and Sonny Bowani, the CEO of the company, Which is
pretty extraordinary, right for someone coming out of college to
have an interview with the CEO and founder of the company.
(03:37):
What do you remember from meeting both of them? The
first interview was with Sonny and I remember, just right
off the gate, him looking at my resume and at
this point, I'm really eager to get this job, and
him just really tearing into my resume and kind of
being a little stern and straightforward with me, and I'm like,
(03:57):
how am I going to turn this around? Like, I
don't know if I'm going to get this job with
the way that this person's questioning me. But then I
kind of just said, you know, I'm really excited to
work with Saranos. I've been very press with Elizabeth Holmes
and what she's managed to accomplish at such a young age,
and it was amazing seeing his demeanor just shift really quickly.
And from that moment then he's like, Okay, you know,
(04:21):
it sounds like you'll be a good addition to our team,
and I want you to meet one other person. And
so after that I was able to then start speaking
with Elizabeth. And so what was it like to meet
Elizabeth Holmes? So initially when she came in, I think
I was so starstruck. I had gotten so immersed in
the very little of her world that I knew, but
everything that was at least on the Internet at the time,
(04:42):
which was very sparse, was really impressive. So I saw her,
I was, you know, surprised that she was going to
be the person that I'd be talking to in order
to get this job. And I remember asking her questions
about the technology and what we would be working on,
and she said, well, when you work for the company,
you know, I'll be able to disclose that, but for now,
(05:04):
that's guarded under trade secrets. But yeah, I was really
starstruck and just enthusiastic and excited the fact that I
got to work on what seemed to be cool technology
with a mission that I really cared about, and for
a founder at that time that I seemed to be
very impressed by by the amount of work that, at
least on the surface, they seemed to accomplish already. You know,
(05:27):
it's putting myself in your shoes. I can't imagine how
exciting it must be to get a job offer from
one of the hottest startups at the time. I'm curious
to know what this job offer means to you and
your family at this point in time. I think for
me personally, it was my journey to even get into college,
(05:49):
let alone go through college, was very challenging, and so
I really saw Farness as my own personal kind of
redemption story to show people like I was confident, I
was capable, that I had this great, amazing opportunity to
make an impact working for a great person and everything else.
And so when I had gotten this job offer, my
parents were proud, you know, they were excited for me
(06:11):
that this was my first in road to my career.
He mentioned having a tough time before all of this
team mind sharing. Yeah, so, you know, I grew up
in a humble beginnings. I grew up in a low
income neighborhood. I lived with my mom and my dad
(06:32):
and my three other siblings and a one bedroom trailer.
It was clear to us that it may be difficult
to get into a great school. I really wanted to
go to Berkeley. Not being able to afford the same
access to good schools, so I was homeschooled. So my
parents invested a lot in my education. Both my parents
(06:54):
were really hard workers, but you know, we struggled, especially
in the early days of trying to just figure out
how to build up a life, especially because my parents
had me really young. And Yeah, when I got to Berkeley,
it was this like huge accomplishment because it wasn't very
clear if I was going to be able to do that.
(07:16):
And when I got there, it was one of the
most beautiful experiences of my life. But I had a
lot of challenges within the first year of attending UC Berkeley.
So the first year that I was there, I ended
up falling victim to a series of crimes. I was
(07:38):
sexually assaulted by a group of men. I got robbed
at gunpoint, and then I was raped, and it hit
probably with all in a year time span, and I
largely kept its secret from people because I didn't want
to be a burden and I was uncomfortable and I
was just scared and felt very threatened. I didn't really
talk to anyone about it, and about a year in
(08:01):
I was really having a lot of problems just with
panic attacks and what later would be diagnosed as PTSD,
but but we weren't very clear on what it was
at the time because I wasn't really communicating with people
that these things had happened to me when I was eighteen.
(08:24):
Well sorry, I'm just taking that in and so, so
you're struggling with panic attacks, and I'm assuming what that
means is a certain point, you're not sure that you're
going to be able to graduate from Berkeley. Yeah, so essentially,
I'm I'm having panic attacks. I'm definitely not in the
(08:46):
strongest mental state. My grades are really suffering. I wasn't
sure if I'd be cut out for the sciences because
I was like, Okay, you're having such a tough time
doing simple things like getting to class, on time. How
are you gonna, you know, accomplish doing some sort of
complicated chemistry class. But I told myself, you know what,
(09:06):
if they kick you out, then they kick you out.
But for now, you just need to try and see
this through and see where you get with things. I
want to be able to study the sciences as something
I'm passionate about. And luckily I saw it through. And
I wasn't the best student, and I failed more classes
than anyone would ever want to, but I made it.
(09:27):
I repeated those classes. I stuck to my commitments. I said, okay,
let's just try and see this through. And so when
I say Parados was this redemption story for me. It
was my opportunity to say, Okay, you didn't do so
well when you're at university, but you know, you can
start new here and you can be a good scientist
and a good researcher if you just apply yourself and
(09:48):
work for a great company that has a lot of
opportunities for you. And that's kind of where that was
coming from. Was Okay, here we go. Set the scene
for me about what your first day at Parados is. Like,
I mean, against everything you've just described, I was so excited.
I was so excited. It's it's hard to put into words,
(10:10):
like that dream like state that you're in when you
finally made it, you know, where you feel at least
that you finally made it. And I remember because Baroness
had so many blockades from going into certain rooms, so
you couldn't see from the external what the office building
was like or what the laboratories were like. So I
remember when I got and did the entry interview and
(10:31):
I got my badge where I could open all of
these doors where I could see Sonny and Elizabeth in
their glass offices, or I could go down into the
laboratory and swipe in and be able to see all
the different machinery of everything. It was. I had so
much enthusiasm and so much excitement, and yeah, you're getting
the key to this private club, this exclusive club, right exactly,
(10:53):
this exclusive club, and yeah, I just had so much excitement. Really,
at the early days of Tharoness, I really anticipated that
this was a company in a project that I could
easily see myself spending the next decade working on. Like
that's how much I really was invested in the problem,
how much I loved the field of blood testing, like
(11:14):
I really was thinking that this was going to be
like a next huge chapter of my life. So about
a month into your time at Tharanos, the Huneymoon period
starts coming to an end. Right, you start to notice
significant ethical problems with the way that Tharanos is conducting
(11:36):
its scientific research. And I'm wondering if you could tell
me a bit more about some of those red flags.
So initially, when I started at Tharanos, I worked in
the research and development lab as a lab associate, and
then they were trying to integrate me into a clinical
setting where you actively process patient samples. And so one
day on Thanksgiving, I was asked to work and we
(11:58):
managed to get a patient from Walgreens who came in.
And so, prior to running a patient sample, you have
to do something called quality control testing. And quality control
testing is essentially I have a sample where I know
what the value is. So let's say the value is ten,
and I'll run it on my machine and ideally it
(12:20):
comes out something close to ten. So prior to running
this Thanksgiving patient sample, I ran this sample and it
was coming out like one hundred and fifty and it
was coming out like twenty and thirty five and I
had ran it like three separate times and it was
all variable results. And so I contacted this helpline called
(12:42):
Normandy nine one one, which was an internal helpline that
we had that contacted Elizabeth Sonny all of the upper scientists,
and we were trying to figure out what was the problem,
why was this failing? And sometimes when the THEREINOS devices
weren't showing good accuracy, people would start doing this process
(13:02):
called deleting outliers, like, oh, well, delete that one and
see what the accuracy rate looks like. And I was
like okay, and then oh no, delete that one, or
excision that one. I mean, they were essentially defining an
outlier as something that didn't conform to their desired outcome. Yes,
which is insane, and that's not what an outlier is.
So that is good science. One on one, dude, science
(13:27):
one on one. You keep oh it, just keep the data,
just keep it there. Yes. And so the solution that
they came up with was essentially to get another lower
level lab associate who had about maybe a year more
experience to me. She looked at the data and she
deleted the outliers for this and managed to get the
quality controls the past, she ran the patient sample and
(13:49):
then they sent it out. And I'm looking at this
practice and I keep trying to ask people, like, what
is this process of outlier deletion? Because everything in my
mind tells me when it comes to running experiments, you
keep everything, even if it makes it the case that
the accuracy isn't good or whatever else. They are very
very very rare occasions that you delete things. You just
(14:13):
maintain the integrity of the data, because that's again, that's
the beauty of science, right is to be objective with
the information and to be able to see the true
reality of what it's what's going on. And that was
a practice that was very concerning to me because I
(14:33):
realized that once you start doing that, you start making
things appear to be one thing when that might not
actually be the truth. And these results are being sent
to patients and providers, it is actually informing care. It's
informing what medications you give a patient, it's it's informing
(14:54):
their entire treatment process, it's informing their psychological well being
exactly right when they think they have something and they don't,
or vice versa, exactly. To give you an example of
the distress that sometimes getting a bad result. There was
a colleague of mine and she did a total testosterone
test and for women, they tend to have lowered sstone levels,
and so she had done one on the Edison devices,
(15:15):
which was Thereinosa's proprietary machine, and it came out extremely high.
She was in her early twenties. She's looking at this.
Of course, she goes on the internet what does this mean?
And it means potentially she could be infertile. So imagine
you're in your early twenties, it's before you're even thinking
about having children at this point, you're just starting your career.
You get this blood test and it's telling you you're
(15:35):
potentially infertile, and the sort of like shock that that
could be that now you have this whole consideration about,
well do I have to start thinking about having kids
tomorrow or freezing my eggs in like the next year
because of this test. And so there were real consequences
to basically getting this information that was false, and so
(15:58):
it was it was quite scary because again I'm no
longer a scientist at my lab bench, just tinkering around
trying to troubleshoot figure things out as I go, I'm
actively now testing on patients, and that is just such
a different responsibility and different perspective. And so I think
(16:22):
for me, it really made me uncomfortable because I was like,
this isn't ready, This isn't ready to start testing on patients.
There's just too many issues and the stakes are a
bit too high. So Erica, I mean, you're bold. You
do not hold back when it comes to vocalizing to
your higher ups repeatedly right that you don't believe patient
(16:45):
blood sample should be run on the Tharnis device. And Sonny,
who is Elizabeth's second in command, he gets wind of
your resistance and one day confronts you in his office
about it. Yeah, how does that conversation unfold? So initially
he invites me into his office and he asked me
the simple question like how do you like working at
the Ainos? And I was like, you know, I really
(17:08):
love the mission of this company. I like what we're
trying to accomplish, but I see a lot of problems.
We're having problems with these quality control failures, but we're
still testing patients. And after I finished saying that, he says, well,
what makes you qualified to say that you're a recent
graduate from UC Berkeley, and you have no visibility in
(17:30):
this company. Why do you think that's true? And have
you ever taken a statist sixth class? And you need
to essentially make a decision by tomorrow. You need to
tell me do you still want to work for this
company or not? And if you want to work for
this company, you need to test patient samples without question
and do the job that I pay you to do.
(17:52):
And I was shocked at this point. I was like,
I can't even believe this, right because at this point
in the company, I was operating with a sense of
good faith. Maybe it was the case that there was
some sort of miscommunication between what was happening at the
operational floor in the executive level management, and somehow they
weren't seeing what everyone all the operators were seeing. And
(18:16):
at that moment I realized, oh no, there's something different
going on here. And it was so weird too, when
I think the other thing that was very scary about
it is like I was on their team. You know,
I work for this company, I'm working sixteen hour days,
I'm sleeping in my car sometimes, and the fact that
someone who is on your team that you are going
to attack when they tell you, I'm bringing this problem
(18:40):
to you because it needs to be fixed. I'm not
bringing this problem to you because of anything adversarial. And
I think that also completely changed the dynamic for me
of oh, there's not much you can do here right now,
it's the case that this person sees you as a villain,
as a competitor, as something else, when it's like, I've
(19:02):
done nothing but show that I want to see this
work too, but not at this cost, not at the
cost of potential actually violating even our own internal standard,
which is to provide quality care to patients. Right Like,
there's just no way. It just doesn't make sense at
all to me. So I think from that perspective, it
(19:22):
was just so jarring, right, it was so jarring to
watch someone act like outside of the own interests of
the organization. Even at that point. You're twenty three at
the time that you're having this conversation with Sonny, and
I just want to enter your psychology for a bit,
because on the one hand, the scientific integrity alarm bells
(19:44):
are out of control. But then on the other hand,
when you are young and relatively inexperienced and there's this
big chorus that's singing the company's praises and is validating
the work that's happening behind the scenes. It's so easy
to second guess yourself, right, Like in another environment, things
(20:04):
that are so obviously true, things that are so obviously wrong.
In this case, you might get confused about and so
did you go through any do you have to face
any of those insecurities or second guessing all the time?
You know, all the time, because I was very conscious
of the fact that I was young and that I
may not have been seeing the full picture, or that
(20:24):
I didn't have this background. And I think, honestly, the
beauty even of that doubt is it really made me
put a lot of effort into running experiments where it's
like you can't fight the numbers. Sometimes you really can't
fight the evidence, you know. I wish in retrospect that
I had a little more confidence in myself, but I
think that also comes with age. Right, this was my
(20:45):
first job out of college, Like, it's very hard to
think that you know everything. I do want to challenge
that a little bit, Erica, because I actually think a
hallmark of a good scientist is someone who does question themselves,
who approaches what they do with a profound amount of humility.
I mean, it's kind of what's required to be good
at this. So yes, do I hope you are like
blindly confident. Sure, but it made your psychological journey easier.
(21:09):
But then you wouldn't have been a scientist at heart,
which is like wanting to generate evidence, wanting to build
the empirical case. Yeah, thank you Maya for pointing that
that is very true. That is very true, and I
think that led to some of the frustration of working
for Sarinos, was the fact anytime you challenged everything, it
became something that was in an attack, and it's like,
(21:30):
this isn't an attack, this is the process, this is
the scientific process totally. So Erica, you're you leave this
meeting with Sonny, You've now had this realization that there
actually is no chasm between what's happening in the labs
and what the company executives know. They know full well
what's happening, and they're actually just trying to intimidate you
(21:52):
out of being honest about what's going on behind the scenes.
They're trying to discourage you from being a critical thinker
who's trying to actually improve the end product, and and
then you end up calling your dad later that day
to tell him, my dad, you know, I'm uncomfortable working
at Farnos. Like, here's what's going on. And given what
(22:15):
you've already shared about your upbringing in what this job
meant for your family, what was it like to have
that call? Erica? It was hard. It was hard. It
was hard for so many reasons. Right, it was hard
because I had only worked at the company for seven months.
So now I'm going to call my father and I'm
going to tell him I need to quit a job
that I only lasted seven months, and at that point,
(22:38):
I was making more money than my dad had made
working ten years at the same company. You know, I
had made more money at that job than my mom
has ever made in her lifetime. So you have to
explain to them, you know, is it the case that
I'm just a quitter? Like am I just basically throwing
my hands up and saying like I can't handle this?
(22:59):
And not only that, but it just yeah, it was
just difficult to know how to navigate the situation because
it was so bizarre, Right, it was strange, Like, there's
no not a lot of people could fundamentally understand what
it's like to be in an organization that treats you
this way, and you're in such a toxic culture that
(23:20):
it's hard to even think normally at that point because
it's so bizarre to be in that context. And so
luckily my dad responded with like the best thing he
could have possibly said, and he said, Erica, you're a
smart girl. I trust you, you'll figure it out. And
that was it. And he's a man of very few words,
(23:41):
but that was probably exactly the words I needed to
hear in that moment. And so from that point I
knew I would be okay, I'd I'd work it out,
and so what do you do the next day? Yeah,
So at this point I was at this point, I
was pretty I was pretty depressed. I was like, okay,
(24:04):
what are you what are you going to do here?
And one of the things amongst all of this, because
I was really fuse, like do you try and change
things internally or do you try you just move on
and go somewhere else. And I think it was very
hard for me to figure out, but I essentially I
decided to quit the company, a company that around that
(24:25):
time was valued at nearly nine billion dollars. After the break,
we'll hear from Erica about the fallout after she left Tharanos.
We'll be back in a moment with a slight change
of plans. Erica Chung was twenty three when she quit
(24:49):
her job at Tharanos. She had witnessed unconscionable and fraudulent
practices that were negatively impacting real patients lives. But after
Erica left, she was disoriented by the fact Tharinos and
its founder, Elizabeth Holmes were continuing on this meteoric ascent.
Elizabeth was gracing the cover of magazines like Forbes and Fortune,
(25:11):
and she was being called the next Steve Jobs. Henry Kissinger,
a former US Secretary of State and Tharonos board member,
took it one step further when he suggested that actually
Steve Jobs was just an earlier version of Elizabeth. Erica
began to wonder if maybe she had just missed something
all along, But then a journalist from the Wall Street
(25:33):
Journal named John Carrirew contacted her. He had been investigating
Tharonos for some time, and he asked Erica to be
a source for his upcoming expose of the company. I
mean it was scary initially because Saronos made it very
clear that we signed nondisclosure agreements and that they would
retaliate against us if we said anything to external figures.
So there was that fear of there could be really
(25:57):
big consequences to speaking to a journalist. But then also
it was a bit of a sigh of relief. It
was like, Okay, here is another door, another opportunity to
get the truth out in exposing what they're doing in
the patient testing realm. And so I was actually like, Okay,
this is a great channel to sort of let people
(26:18):
know what's going on here. And yeah, I became one
of his sources off the record, of course, and a
lot of people didn't know that I was talking to him,
But yeah, and what is your interaction with Aaronos like
at this time, if at all. So essentially, as John
(26:40):
is doing his investigative reporting, he had to give Tharonos
the opportunity to rebut his investigative peace. And at that point,
essentially Tharonos went on this giant which hunt to sort
of figure out and identify who were the former employees
that were sources for his reporting. So there was there
(27:05):
was one one night I was working late at my
new employ lawyer's office, and my colleagues come up to
me and they said, Erica, you need to pack up
your stuff because I usually work late, and you need
to leave with us because there's been a man in
the parking lot all day and we don't want you
to leave the building alone. So I pack up my
stuff and I walk out the door, and immediately this
(27:27):
guy and this like tinted ASUV, jumps out and he
hands me this letter and I look at it and
it's a letter from David Boys, who at that time
is one of the top corporate lawyers in the US,
and it's addressed to me, but it has an address
on there that is essentially my colleague's address, because I
(27:49):
had just moved out of my apartment and was sleeping
on her couch. So at this point I was really
freaked out because what it had suggested to me that
they were following me. They were following me. I was
now under the prospect of being sued, but also they
had private investigators following me. Before we talk about how
(28:12):
you responded to the content in the letter, I want
to know what kind of psychological toll this takes on you.
I mean to know that you're being followed an it's
an unbelievable invasion of privacy and it's very very scary. Yeah,
it's it's terrifying. Right, I'm twenty three years old at
this point, and I'm wondering, like you just feel so powerless.
(28:32):
You're like, Okay, What's what's going to happen to me?
How do I even not only is there the fear
that I'm going to be embroiled in debt because of
all the litigation or potentially there might be some sort
of criminal charges that are placed upon me, but even
my personal safety. You know, what am I going to do?
(28:53):
You're talking about a company who has people backing them,
who are ex Secretary of States. You know, if people
are following me, and what's going to happen to me?
They have way more money, they have way more resources,
they may have way more political out they have way
more power than I do than It was very very terrifying. Yeah,
(29:17):
So how do you you have this letter from David Boyce,
who Thereinos has hired to be their their lawyer, and
like you said, he's one of the top lawyers in
the country. How do you act on this letter? What
do you what do you do next? So luckily I
reach out to my network and I contact a bunch
of people and I get in conversation basically with a lawyer,
(29:43):
and they say, hey, you know, a potential opportunity is
that you can report to regulators. And you know, this
was an option that wasn't super clear to me, Like
people said, well, you can be a whistleblower, but it's
not very clear what being a whistleblower is. If you
if you're just a normal person who's living their life, yes, exactly, exactly.
(30:09):
You know, I realized at that moment, in order for
Parinos to test on patient samples, they had to maintain
their certification with the Center of Medicaid and Medicare Services,
which is the regulatory body that essentially allows people to
test on patients. And so from that point, I was like, oh, okay,
(30:30):
you can report to CMS, which is the abbreviation for
that the Center of Medicaid and Medicare Services, And yeah,
so that's what I ended up doing. I ended up
almost immediately. It's funny. I immediately decided to drive to
San Francisco to go to the office to report. But
(30:50):
I was so terrified about being followed that I ended
up just like crying and circling all over downtown San Francisco,
not knowing what to do because I just didn't I
felt like I was being tracked. So I ended up
going and buying a burner phone and contacted the regulatory
body and figured out about the process in order to
(31:10):
write a report and a complaint. And when you write
to a regulatory body like this like CMS, are you
does it carry legal protections? Right? Are you granted whistle
blower status? So is that? What was? Is that why?
You thought? Okay, so how do that? So you'd actually yeah,
so you'd actually be surprised. There are very few protections
for people who report that work for private companies. I
(31:34):
just thought, okay, we're going to file this complaint because
again I was operating with they need to stop testing
on patients. You can't essentially treat people like lab rats.
And that's what their nose was doing, right, it was
essentially experimenting on the public live and telling them that
they had quality test when that wasn't that wasn't the case. Okay, Eric,
(31:59):
I need to stop you here because what I'm hearing
is extraordinary, which is that you get confronted in a
dark parking lot outside of your new office building, and
it's revealed to you that there are people following you
on a regular basis, and that leads you to double
down and make the choice to go even further with
(32:21):
your efforts and to contact a regulatory body. That is stunning.
I need you to unpack that. For me. I would
just let me tell you what I would have done
gotten a letter, I would have been like, can I
move back home with my parents? Can I just reduce
all connection with this company forevermore? And just like buried
(32:41):
my head. Hey, I don't get it. It's so hard.
It's so hard to be self aware of it, because
for me, it makes sense. For me, it makes total
sense of why I would do this. It's kind of
one of those things like again, I just wanted them
to stop processing patient samples, and when that new door
(33:03):
opened for me, that was just an opportunity that I
couldn't imagine not taking, right, I couldn't imagine not taking.
And honestly, I'll talk to people about this, like, yes,
there were moments where I thought, wow, Okay, if they
go through with the litigation, you know you're gonna probably
go bankrupt. And I was like, okay, well your recent
(33:25):
grad like you're almost there, so you're not so okay,
you know, fair play or there was a possibility that
you that I would have gotten some sort of criminal charges,
and I was like pragmatic with myself and said, okay, well,
you love being alone, so maybe you'll spend a couple
of years being alone for a while in a prison cell.
(33:46):
A prison cell, okay, But honestly, the idea of knowing
what I knew and having not done anything, and knowing
that there was something that I could have done about
it and I didn't do anything, like that's the real
prison right, Like that would have been so hard for
me to live with myself knowing the things that I
(34:06):
knew and having not done anything. That's the real purgatory
right to sit with yourself and to realize that you
didn't push it forward. So it just for me that
that was a much worse reality. So you end up
buying a burner phone, you contact CMS, and then you
end up writing a formal letter right that ends up
(34:28):
instigating a formal federal investigation into Tharanos. And I just
need you to take a quick victory lab here Erica,
because your letter results in significant consequences for Tharanos. So
after I sent the letter, a CMS went in and
they the regulators went in and they conducted an investigation
(34:54):
and they found serious deficiencies and Thoranos's lab and basically
barred them from operating a patient testing lab from that
point forward, So it shut down their ability to test
on patients. What was it like when you got that news.
When I got that news, it was an absolute relief.
It was nice to kind of be able to finally
(35:17):
be able to rest a bit. I think for me
it was funny. My Parahos saga really ended there in
a way like I stopped paying attention. Your job is done.
My job is done, and that was it. So it
was it was a big relief. And I know, while
all of this is unfolding, you make this decision to
move to Hong Kong, to really get away from it,
(35:38):
even geographically right. Just an eagerness I can so resonate
with that. Just an eagerness to make Pharaonos a definitive
part of your past. Exactly. I walked into my new
boss's office and I just looked at him and I said,
I want to move to Hong Kong and he's like, okay.
And I had no plan, no nothing, but I knew
(36:00):
that I just needed to go. I just needed to
just go do something for myself. And then I packed
my bags and I left in two thousand and seen
to move to Hong Kong. So we're going to fast
forward a few years. You're continuing to live in Hong
Kong and it's twenty nineteen and you're traveling to the
(36:20):
US and you're in an airport in the US and
you're confronted by a member of the FBI. Yeah. So
I'm essentially sitting in an airport. I'm about to board
a plane, and as I'm starting to go into the
plane boarding process, this man comes up to me as
I'm packing away my laptop and he's like, are you
Erica Chung And I'm like yes, And he's like, Okay,
(36:44):
don't be nervous. But I'm with the FBI and here's
a subpoena. You're going to testify in the criminal case
against Elizabeth Holmes and Sonny Batwani. I mean, don't be nervous. Comma,
I'm an FBI agent. Should be said by no FBI
agent moving forward, but I appreciate the light empathy he
(37:05):
was showing you that moment. So then so the trial
keeps getting delayed, right, there's COVID, Elizabeth Holmes gets pregnant.
But then finally there's a date September twenty twenty one.
You're asked to finally testify. And what is that like, Erica?
(37:27):
I mean, what is it like to see Elizabeth Holmes again?
I didn't know what to expect. I had no idea
what that was going to be like, and was very
nervous going into that courtroom. But what was amazing is
like once I actually sat down and I was in
the witness stand and I looked over and I saw Elizabeth.
I was like, oh, yeah, that's right, Erica, You're on
(37:49):
this side of the table, like you didn't do anything wrong. Here,
you didn't do anything wrong. And so it was actually
a bit relaxing at that point. Still stressful, still stressful,
but at least it was like again I knew what
I needed to do and what I needed to get done,
and even though I waited a long time to do
(38:13):
the trial, I was going to be able to walk
out of there in three days time. And that was it,
that was it. I know you've said that while you
did feel a certain kind of calm descend upon you,
the other side of this was that it led to
a severe relapse of PTSD. Yeah, you know, there was
a trial in the final relief and the realization of
(38:37):
the fact that like, yeah, I get a walk out
of here in three days, But the build up for
that was just so severe. It was funny when you're
suffering from PTSD and people are telling you these things
like you're courageous, you're brave, you're a hero. Gosh, I
can't even go to the grocery store without having a
panic attack, right, And and that like positioning of the
(39:03):
fact of like, oh my god, is this what like
is this what being a hero feels like? Because this
shit's terrible, right, It's just so hard on your body
and everything. Basically, from that point that I received the
subpoena and from the fact that I had now been
more publicly on the record as being a whistleblower, I
(39:27):
couldn't quite figure out what was wrong with me. But
as time went on and I moved back to the US,
it started to become more and more clear that I
was having a really difficult time managing my hyper vigilance.
I was having panic attacks again. I was paranoid about
(39:50):
people following me. I was having nightmares every other day,
and it came to the surface that I was having
another big relapse in PTSD. And in a way, it
was good that the trial had gotten pushed because it
allowed me to sort of take the energy in focus on,
you know, really fronting a lot of the things that
(40:11):
I had avoided. You know, I had moved to Hong Kong,
I had built this whole new life for myself. I
really had detached myself from everything their nose. Like when
people in Hong Kong figure it out that I reported
their nose, they were shocked because it was something I
never talked about. No one had any idea, and I
(40:31):
didn't realize like when someone has PTSD, a big portion
of it is avoidance. It is trying to not bring
up anything that reminds you of the traumatic event. And
I think I spent years in that state of just
wanting to push all of this as far away as
(40:54):
possible from myself. And when I had moved back to
the States and the subpoena was happening, and I was
sort of thrust upon this world. It really caused this
huge relapse for me, and so I think that build
up it was exhausting and very trying, but also maybe
(41:18):
a good thing, because I was really forced to just
sit with myself and really process and develop a better
coping system for the things that happened to me. I
really resonate with the sentiment around extreme avoidance when it
(41:41):
comes to past pain and trauma and at times where
I've been, you know, really anxious in the past, like
I will go to the ends of the earth to
try to avoid engaging just to feel safe, right. I mean,
I think that's just like a very instinctive human response.
(42:01):
And I do wonder whether I mean this therein as
Saga forced upon you a kind of exposure therapy of
sorts that you might have never yourself instigated, right, because
it is so painful to have to revisit every single
detail and to have to like re engage with that world.
(42:24):
And I do wonder if maybe there's one silver lining here,
which is that it empowered you to engage differently with
past traumas, to maybe be less avoidant with those past
traumas and to maybe revisit them in a different way. Yeah, yeah,
I think that's exactly true. Like it's it's amazing how
much it brought to a head my need to be
(42:48):
vulnerable and to be able to confront things head on
going on with myself. I feel like I needed to
just sit with myself and come to a greater sense
of like compassion in a way with myself. And yeah,
(43:11):
it did. It did help. It was weird that that
sort of instigated the process of the healing of so
many things that happened. It was so extended soon beyond
what happened it there, nos right, it extended from what
happened to me when I was a kid or when
I was in college. And I think because of that
just in your face kind of you will deal with
(43:33):
this whether you like it or not nature of being
In this case, like I'm stronger because of it and
having it had an immense amount of growth, And in
a way, I'm almost grateful for that because it's it's
interesting with this case because like this was my first
job out of college and now my I have the
(43:57):
rest of my life ahead of me. Like I'm really
when you think about it, professionally, just getting started and
the fact that now I can have a sense of
just almost freedom in a way that I trust myself
that I have the right tools and the right abilities
to be able to be resilient, and to just have
(44:20):
that sense of security in myself is nice. So even
there's always silver linings to things, and even though there's
like post traumatic stress disorder, there's also post traumatic growth,
and I think I'm starting to see to see that
side of this whole experience, which I'm i think, in
(44:40):
the grand scheme of things, going to be very very
grateful for. In the years following Erica's letter to federal regulators,
a slew of civil and criminal charges were filed against Saranos,
CEO Elizabeth Holnes and COOO Senni Bolani. Saronos's valuation plummeted
(45:02):
to zero. Elizabeth and Sonny were both found guilty of
fraud and two separate criminal trials this year. Elizabeth was
convicted of four counts of fraud and Sonny was convicted
of twelve counts of fraud. They will both be sentenced
later this year and could face decades in prison. That's
(45:24):
a wrap on this season of a slight change of plans.
We hope you enjoyed it. We'll be back in September
with more episodes. Until then, have a great summer break.
A Slight Change of Plans is created, written an executive
produced by me Maya Shunker. The Slight Change family includes
Tyler Greene, our senior producer, Emily Rosteck, our producer and
(45:47):
fact checker, Jan Guera, our senior editor, Neil LaBelle, our
executive producer, and our engineering team which includes Ben Holliday,
Jay Korski, Sarah Bruger and Andrew Vastola. Louis Skara wrote
our theme song and Ginger Smith helped arrange the vocals.
A Slight Change of Plans is a production of Pushkin Industries,
(46:08):
so big thanks to everyone there, and of course a
very special thanks to Jimmy Lee. You can follow A
Slight Change of Plans on Instagram at doctor Maya Shunker.
And So, the Edison Devices, which was theirinosa's actual proprietary machine,
(46:32):
could only do twelve of those tests. They couldn't even
do as many as people had anticipated. And from what
I understand, Erica, even the twelve tests that the Edison
could run weren't generating reliable results. That is right, That
is right? Yeah, wow, Okay, so literally just mean it
was capable of generating a result, not even like the
(46:53):
correct result, an accurate result. Yeah, it's like, great, I
have a device that it's a great bar for laboratories
to have. It doesn't break, no, exactly, well, it spits
out a number
Pushkin. Hey, just a heads up. There's a brief mention
of sexual assault at around seven minutes into this episode.
Please take care while listening. I had only worked at
(00:40):
the company for seven months, So now I'm going to
call my father and I'm going to tell him I
need to quit a job that I only lasted seven months,
And at that point I was making more money than
my dad had made working ten years at the same company.
You know, I had made more money at that job
than my mom has ever made in her lifetime. So
you have to explain to them, you know, is it
(01:02):
the case that I'm just a quitter? Like am I
just basically throwing my hands up and saying like I
can't handle this. That's Erica Chung, a former scientist at
the now infamous biotech company Tharonos. Erica realized early on
that the company's proprietary technology was not delivering accurate blood
results to patients, but when she raised her concerns to
(01:24):
company leadership, she was silenced, and so Erica decided to
not only quit her job at Tharonos, but also to
report the company to government regulators. This carried huge personal risk.
She had signed an NDA when she first joined the company,
and so she feared litigation and criminal charges, but Erica
saw no other option. Honestly, Maya the idea of knowing
(01:48):
what I knew and having not done anything, and knowing
that there was something that I could have done about
it and I didn't do anything, Like that's the real prison, right,
Like that's the real purgatory. On today's episode, a Tharonos
whistleblower shares her story, I'm Maya Shunker, and this is
(02:11):
a slight change of plans, a show about who we
are and who we become in the face of a
big change. In twenty thirteen, Erica Chung was twenty three
and a senior at UC Berkeley studying molecular and cell biology.
She wasn't quite sure what she wanted her first job
(02:31):
to be, but she did know she wanted to do
something in the sciences that could have a big impact
on people's lives. So she went to a campus career
fair and that's where she spotted a booth for the
company Tharanos. By that time, Pharaonos was making waves in
the biotech world with its new proprietary technology technology that
could run a range of blood tests from just one
(02:54):
single fingerprick of blood and in turn revolutionize access to
healthcare worldwide, or at least that's the story Elizabeth Holmes,
the founder and CEO of Tharanos, was telling the world.
Tharonos had already started to roll its devices for use
by patients and providers in clinical settings by the time
Erica showed up at the job fair that day. Erica
(03:16):
was so excited by the idea of working at Saranos
and decided to apply. And when they invite you to
come in for an interview, it is with Elizabeth Holmes herself, right,
and Sonny Bowani, the CEO of the company, Which is
pretty extraordinary, right for someone coming out of college to
have an interview with the CEO and founder of the company.
(03:37):
What do you remember from meeting both of them? The
first interview was with Sonny and I remember, just right
off the gate, him looking at my resume and at
this point, I'm really eager to get this job, and
him just really tearing into my resume and kind of
being a little stern and straightforward with me, and I'm like,
(03:57):
how am I going to turn this around? Like, I
don't know if I'm going to get this job with
the way that this person's questioning me. But then I
kind of just said, you know, I'm really excited to
work with Saranos. I've been very press with Elizabeth Holmes
and what she's managed to accomplish at such a young age,
and it was amazing seeing his demeanor just shift really quickly.
And from that moment then he's like, Okay, you know,
(04:21):
it sounds like you'll be a good addition to our team,
and I want you to meet one other person. And
so after that I was able to then start speaking
with Elizabeth. And so what was it like to meet
Elizabeth Holmes? So initially when she came in, I think
I was so starstruck. I had gotten so immersed in
the very little of her world that I knew, but
everything that was at least on the Internet at the time,
(04:42):
which was very sparse, was really impressive. So I saw her,
I was, you know, surprised that she was going to
be the person that I'd be talking to in order
to get this job. And I remember asking her questions
about the technology and what we would be working on,
and she said, well, when you work for the company,
you know, I'll be able to disclose that, but for now,
(05:04):
that's guarded under trade secrets. But yeah, I was really
starstruck and just enthusiastic and excited the fact that I
got to work on what seemed to be cool technology
with a mission that I really cared about, and for
a founder at that time that I seemed to be
very impressed by by the amount of work that, at
least on the surface, they seemed to accomplish already. You know,
(05:27):
it's putting myself in your shoes. I can't imagine how
exciting it must be to get a job offer from
one of the hottest startups at the time. I'm curious
to know what this job offer means to you and
your family at this point in time. I think for
me personally, it was my journey to even get into college,
(05:49):
let alone go through college, was very challenging, and so
I really saw Farness as my own personal kind of
redemption story to show people like I was confident, I
was capable, that I had this great, amazing opportunity to
make an impact working for a great person and everything else.
And so when I had gotten this job offer, my
parents were proud, you know, they were excited for me
(06:11):
that this was my first in road to my career.
He mentioned having a tough time before all of this
team mind sharing. Yeah, so, you know, I grew up
in a humble beginnings. I grew up in a low
income neighborhood. I lived with my mom and my dad
(06:32):
and my three other siblings and a one bedroom trailer.
It was clear to us that it may be difficult
to get into a great school. I really wanted to
go to Berkeley. Not being able to afford the same
access to good schools, so I was homeschooled. So my
parents invested a lot in my education. Both my parents
(06:54):
were really hard workers, but you know, we struggled, especially
in the early days of trying to just figure out
how to build up a life, especially because my parents
had me really young. And Yeah, when I got to Berkeley,
it was this like huge accomplishment because it wasn't very
clear if I was going to be able to do that.
(07:16):
And when I got there, it was one of the
most beautiful experiences of my life. But I had a
lot of challenges within the first year of attending UC Berkeley.
So the first year that I was there, I ended
up falling victim to a series of crimes. I was
(07:38):
sexually assaulted by a group of men. I got robbed
at gunpoint, and then I was raped, and it hit
probably with all in a year time span, and I
largely kept its secret from people because I didn't want
to be a burden and I was uncomfortable and I
was just scared and felt very threatened. I didn't really
talk to anyone about it, and about a year in
(08:01):
I was really having a lot of problems just with
panic attacks and what later would be diagnosed as PTSD,
but but we weren't very clear on what it was
at the time because I wasn't really communicating with people
that these things had happened to me when I was eighteen.
(08:24):
Well sorry, I'm just taking that in and so, so
you're struggling with panic attacks, and I'm assuming what that
means is a certain point, you're not sure that you're
going to be able to graduate from Berkeley. Yeah, so essentially,
I'm I'm having panic attacks. I'm definitely not in the
(08:46):
strongest mental state. My grades are really suffering. I wasn't
sure if I'd be cut out for the sciences because
I was like, Okay, you're having such a tough time
doing simple things like getting to class, on time. How
are you gonna, you know, accomplish doing some sort of
complicated chemistry class. But I told myself, you know what,
(09:06):
if they kick you out, then they kick you out.
But for now, you just need to try and see
this through and see where you get with things. I
want to be able to study the sciences as something
I'm passionate about. And luckily I saw it through. And
I wasn't the best student, and I failed more classes
than anyone would ever want to, but I made it.
(09:27):
I repeated those classes. I stuck to my commitments. I said, okay,
let's just try and see this through. And so when
I say Parados was this redemption story for me. It
was my opportunity to say, Okay, you didn't do so
well when you're at university, but you know, you can
start new here and you can be a good scientist
and a good researcher if you just apply yourself and
(09:48):
work for a great company that has a lot of
opportunities for you. And that's kind of where that was
coming from. Was Okay, here we go. Set the scene
for me about what your first day at Parados is. Like,
I mean, against everything you've just described, I was so excited.
I was so excited. It's it's hard to put into words,
(10:10):
like that dream like state that you're in when you
finally made it, you know, where you feel at least
that you finally made it. And I remember because Baroness
had so many blockades from going into certain rooms, so
you couldn't see from the external what the office building
was like or what the laboratories were like. So I
remember when I got and did the entry interview and
(10:31):
I got my badge where I could open all of
these doors where I could see Sonny and Elizabeth in
their glass offices, or I could go down into the
laboratory and swipe in and be able to see all
the different machinery of everything. It was. I had so
much enthusiasm and so much excitement, and yeah, you're getting
the key to this private club, this exclusive club, right exactly,
(10:53):
this exclusive club, and yeah, I just had so much excitement. Really,
at the early days of Tharoness, I really anticipated that
this was a company in a project that I could
easily see myself spending the next decade working on. Like
that's how much I really was invested in the problem,
how much I loved the field of blood testing, like
(11:14):
I really was thinking that this was going to be
like a next huge chapter of my life. So about
a month into your time at Tharanos, the Huneymoon period
starts coming to an end. Right, you start to notice
significant ethical problems with the way that Tharanos is conducting
(11:36):
its scientific research. And I'm wondering if you could tell
me a bit more about some of those red flags.
So initially, when I started at Tharanos, I worked in
the research and development lab as a lab associate, and
then they were trying to integrate me into a clinical
setting where you actively process patient samples. And so one
day on Thanksgiving, I was asked to work and we
(11:58):
managed to get a patient from Walgreens who came in.
And so, prior to running a patient sample, you have
to do something called quality control testing. And quality control
testing is essentially I have a sample where I know
what the value is. So let's say the value is ten,
and I'll run it on my machine and ideally it
(12:20):
comes out something close to ten. So prior to running
this Thanksgiving patient sample, I ran this sample and it
was coming out like one hundred and fifty and it
was coming out like twenty and thirty five and I
had ran it like three separate times and it was
all variable results. And so I contacted this helpline called
(12:42):
Normandy nine one one, which was an internal helpline that
we had that contacted Elizabeth Sonny all of the upper scientists,
and we were trying to figure out what was the problem,
why was this failing? And sometimes when the THEREINOS devices
weren't showing good accuracy, people would start doing this process
(13:02):
called deleting outliers, like, oh, well, delete that one and
see what the accuracy rate looks like. And I was
like okay, and then oh no, delete that one, or
excision that one. I mean, they were essentially defining an
outlier as something that didn't conform to their desired outcome. Yes,
which is insane, and that's not what an outlier is.
So that is good science. One on one, dude, science
(13:27):
one on one. You keep oh it, just keep the data,
just keep it there. Yes. And so the solution that
they came up with was essentially to get another lower
level lab associate who had about maybe a year more
experience to me. She looked at the data and she
deleted the outliers for this and managed to get the
quality controls the past, she ran the patient sample and
(13:49):
then they sent it out. And I'm looking at this
practice and I keep trying to ask people, like, what
is this process of outlier deletion? Because everything in my
mind tells me when it comes to running experiments, you
keep everything, even if it makes it the case that
the accuracy isn't good or whatever else. They are very
very very rare occasions that you delete things. You just
(14:13):
maintain the integrity of the data, because that's again, that's
the beauty of science, right is to be objective with
the information and to be able to see the true
reality of what it's what's going on. And that was
a practice that was very concerning to me because I
(14:33):
realized that once you start doing that, you start making
things appear to be one thing when that might not
actually be the truth. And these results are being sent
to patients and providers, it is actually informing care. It's
informing what medications you give a patient, it's it's informing
(14:54):
their entire treatment process, it's informing their psychological well being
exactly right when they think they have something and they don't,
or vice versa, exactly. To give you an example of
the distress that sometimes getting a bad result. There was
a colleague of mine and she did a total testosterone
test and for women, they tend to have lowered sstone levels,
and so she had done one on the Edison devices,
(15:15):
which was Thereinosa's proprietary machine, and it came out extremely high.
She was in her early twenties. She's looking at this.
Of course, she goes on the internet what does this mean?
And it means potentially she could be infertile. So imagine
you're in your early twenties, it's before you're even thinking
about having children at this point, you're just starting your career.
You get this blood test and it's telling you you're
(15:35):
potentially infertile, and the sort of like shock that that
could be that now you have this whole consideration about,
well do I have to start thinking about having kids
tomorrow or freezing my eggs in like the next year
because of this test. And so there were real consequences
to basically getting this information that was false, and so
(15:58):
it was it was quite scary because again I'm no
longer a scientist at my lab bench, just tinkering around
trying to troubleshoot figure things out as I go, I'm
actively now testing on patients, and that is just such
a different responsibility and different perspective. And so I think
(16:22):
for me, it really made me uncomfortable because I was like,
this isn't ready, This isn't ready to start testing on patients.
There's just too many issues and the stakes are a
bit too high. So Erica, I mean, you're bold. You
do not hold back when it comes to vocalizing to
your higher ups repeatedly right that you don't believe patient
(16:45):
blood sample should be run on the Tharnis device. And Sonny,
who is Elizabeth's second in command, he gets wind of
your resistance and one day confronts you in his office
about it. Yeah, how does that conversation unfold? So initially
he invites me into his office and he asked me
the simple question like how do you like working at
the Ainos? And I was like, you know, I really
(17:08):
love the mission of this company. I like what we're
trying to accomplish, but I see a lot of problems.
We're having problems with these quality control failures, but we're
still testing patients. And after I finished saying that, he says, well,
what makes you qualified to say that you're a recent
graduate from UC Berkeley, and you have no visibility in
(17:30):
this company. Why do you think that's true? And have
you ever taken a statist sixth class? And you need
to essentially make a decision by tomorrow. You need to
tell me do you still want to work for this
company or not? And if you want to work for
this company, you need to test patient samples without question
and do the job that I pay you to do.
(17:52):
And I was shocked at this point. I was like,
I can't even believe this, right because at this point
in the company, I was operating with a sense of
good faith. Maybe it was the case that there was
some sort of miscommunication between what was happening at the
operational floor in the executive level management, and somehow they
weren't seeing what everyone all the operators were seeing. And
(18:16):
at that moment I realized, oh no, there's something different
going on here. And it was so weird too, when
I think the other thing that was very scary about
it is like I was on their team. You know,
I work for this company, I'm working sixteen hour days,
I'm sleeping in my car sometimes, and the fact that
someone who is on your team that you are going
to attack when they tell you, I'm bringing this problem
(18:40):
to you because it needs to be fixed. I'm not
bringing this problem to you because of anything adversarial. And
I think that also completely changed the dynamic for me
of oh, there's not much you can do here right now,
it's the case that this person sees you as a villain,
as a competitor, as something else, when it's like, I've
(19:02):
done nothing but show that I want to see this
work too, but not at this cost, not at the
cost of potential actually violating even our own internal standard,
which is to provide quality care to patients. Right Like,
there's just no way. It just doesn't make sense at
all to me. So I think from that perspective, it
(19:22):
was just so jarring, right, it was so jarring to
watch someone act like outside of the own interests of
the organization. Even at that point. You're twenty three at
the time that you're having this conversation with Sonny, and
I just want to enter your psychology for a bit,
because on the one hand, the scientific integrity alarm bells
(19:44):
are out of control. But then on the other hand,
when you are young and relatively inexperienced and there's this
big chorus that's singing the company's praises and is validating
the work that's happening behind the scenes. It's so easy
to second guess yourself, right, Like in another environment, things
(20:04):
that are so obviously true, things that are so obviously wrong.
In this case, you might get confused about and so
did you go through any do you have to face
any of those insecurities or second guessing all the time?
You know, all the time, because I was very conscious
of the fact that I was young and that I
may not have been seeing the full picture, or that
(20:24):
I didn't have this background. And I think, honestly, the
beauty even of that doubt is it really made me
put a lot of effort into running experiments where it's
like you can't fight the numbers. Sometimes you really can't
fight the evidence, you know. I wish in retrospect that
I had a little more confidence in myself, but I
think that also comes with age. Right, this was my
(20:45):
first job out of college, Like, it's very hard to
think that you know everything. I do want to challenge
that a little bit, Erica, because I actually think a
hallmark of a good scientist is someone who does question themselves,
who approaches what they do with a profound amount of humility.
I mean, it's kind of what's required to be good
at this. So yes, do I hope you are like
blindly confident. Sure, but it made your psychological journey easier.
(21:09):
But then you wouldn't have been a scientist at heart,
which is like wanting to generate evidence, wanting to build
the empirical case. Yeah, thank you Maya for pointing that
that is very true. That is very true, and I
think that led to some of the frustration of working
for Sarinos, was the fact anytime you challenged everything, it
became something that was in an attack, and it's like,
(21:30):
this isn't an attack, this is the process, this is
the scientific process totally. So Erica, you're you leave this
meeting with Sonny, You've now had this realization that there
actually is no chasm between what's happening in the labs
and what the company executives know. They know full well
what's happening, and they're actually just trying to intimidate you
(21:52):
out of being honest about what's going on behind the scenes.
They're trying to discourage you from being a critical thinker
who's trying to actually improve the end product, and and
then you end up calling your dad later that day
to tell him, my dad, you know, I'm uncomfortable working
at Farnos. Like, here's what's going on. And given what
(22:15):
you've already shared about your upbringing in what this job
meant for your family, what was it like to have
that call? Erica? It was hard. It was hard. It
was hard for so many reasons. Right, it was hard
because I had only worked at the company for seven months.
So now I'm going to call my father and I'm
going to tell him I need to quit a job
that I only lasted seven months, and at that point,
(22:38):
I was making more money than my dad had made
working ten years at the same company. You know, I
had made more money at that job than my mom
has ever made in her lifetime. So you have to
explain to them, you know, is it the case that
I'm just a quitter? Like am I just basically throwing
my hands up and saying like I can't handle this?
(22:59):
And not only that, but it just yeah, it was
just difficult to know how to navigate the situation because
it was so bizarre, Right, it was strange, Like, there's
no not a lot of people could fundamentally understand what
it's like to be in an organization that treats you
this way, and you're in such a toxic culture that
(23:20):
it's hard to even think normally at that point because
it's so bizarre to be in that context. And so
luckily my dad responded with like the best thing he
could have possibly said, and he said, Erica, you're a
smart girl. I trust you, you'll figure it out. And
that was it. And he's a man of very few words,
(23:41):
but that was probably exactly the words I needed to
hear in that moment. And so from that point I
knew I would be okay, I'd I'd work it out,
and so what do you do the next day? Yeah,
So at this point I was at this point, I
was pretty I was pretty depressed. I was like, okay,
(24:04):
what are you what are you going to do here?
And one of the things amongst all of this, because
I was really fuse, like do you try and change
things internally or do you try you just move on
and go somewhere else. And I think it was very
hard for me to figure out, but I essentially I
decided to quit the company, a company that around that
(24:25):
time was valued at nearly nine billion dollars. After the break,
we'll hear from Erica about the fallout after she left Tharanos.
We'll be back in a moment with a slight change
of plans. Erica Chung was twenty three when she quit
(24:49):
her job at Tharanos. She had witnessed unconscionable and fraudulent
practices that were negatively impacting real patients lives. But after
Erica left, she was disoriented by the fact Tharinos and
its founder, Elizabeth Holmes were continuing on this meteoric ascent.
Elizabeth was gracing the cover of magazines like Forbes and Fortune,
(25:11):
and she was being called the next Steve Jobs. Henry Kissinger,
a former US Secretary of State and Tharonos board member,
took it one step further when he suggested that actually
Steve Jobs was just an earlier version of Elizabeth. Erica
began to wonder if maybe she had just missed something
all along, But then a journalist from the Wall Street
(25:33):
Journal named John Carrirew contacted her. He had been investigating
Tharonos for some time, and he asked Erica to be
a source for his upcoming expose of the company. I
mean it was scary initially because Saronos made it very
clear that we signed nondisclosure agreements and that they would
retaliate against us if we said anything to external figures.
So there was that fear of there could be really
(25:57):
big consequences to speaking to a journalist. But then also
it was a bit of a sigh of relief. It
was like, Okay, here is another door, another opportunity to
get the truth out in exposing what they're doing in
the patient testing realm. And so I was actually like, Okay,
this is a great channel to sort of let people
(26:18):
know what's going on here. And yeah, I became one
of his sources off the record, of course, and a
lot of people didn't know that I was talking to him,
But yeah, and what is your interaction with Aaronos like
at this time, if at all. So essentially, as John
(26:40):
is doing his investigative reporting, he had to give Tharonos
the opportunity to rebut his investigative peace. And at that point,
essentially Tharonos went on this giant which hunt to sort
of figure out and identify who were the former employees
that were sources for his reporting. So there was there
(27:05):
was one one night I was working late at my
new employ lawyer's office, and my colleagues come up to
me and they said, Erica, you need to pack up
your stuff because I usually work late, and you need
to leave with us because there's been a man in
the parking lot all day and we don't want you
to leave the building alone. So I pack up my
stuff and I walk out the door, and immediately this
(27:27):
guy and this like tinted ASUV, jumps out and he
hands me this letter and I look at it and
it's a letter from David Boys, who at that time
is one of the top corporate lawyers in the US,
and it's addressed to me, but it has an address
on there that is essentially my colleague's address, because I
(27:49):
had just moved out of my apartment and was sleeping
on her couch. So at this point I was really
freaked out because what it had suggested to me that
they were following me. They were following me. I was
now under the prospect of being sued, but also they
had private investigators following me. Before we talk about how
(28:12):
you responded to the content in the letter, I want
to know what kind of psychological toll this takes on you.
I mean to know that you're being followed an it's
an unbelievable invasion of privacy and it's very very scary. Yeah,
it's it's terrifying. Right, I'm twenty three years old at
this point, and I'm wondering, like you just feel so powerless.
(28:32):
You're like, Okay, What's what's going to happen to me?
How do I even not only is there the fear
that I'm going to be embroiled in debt because of
all the litigation or potentially there might be some sort
of criminal charges that are placed upon me, but even
my personal safety. You know, what am I going to do?
(28:53):
You're talking about a company who has people backing them,
who are ex Secretary of States. You know, if people
are following me, and what's going to happen to me?
They have way more money, they have way more resources,
they may have way more political out they have way
more power than I do than It was very very terrifying. Yeah,
(29:17):
So how do you you have this letter from David Boyce,
who Thereinos has hired to be their their lawyer, and
like you said, he's one of the top lawyers in
the country. How do you act on this letter? What
do you what do you do next? So luckily I
reach out to my network and I contact a bunch
of people and I get in conversation basically with a lawyer,
(29:43):
and they say, hey, you know, a potential opportunity is
that you can report to regulators. And you know, this
was an option that wasn't super clear to me, Like
people said, well, you can be a whistleblower, but it's
not very clear what being a whistleblower is. If you
if you're just a normal person who's living their life, yes, exactly, exactly.
(30:09):
You know, I realized at that moment, in order for
Parinos to test on patient samples, they had to maintain
their certification with the Center of Medicaid and Medicare Services,
which is the regulatory body that essentially allows people to
test on patients. And so from that point, I was like, oh, okay,
(30:30):
you can report to CMS, which is the abbreviation for
that the Center of Medicaid and Medicare Services, And yeah,
so that's what I ended up doing. I ended up
almost immediately. It's funny. I immediately decided to drive to
San Francisco to go to the office to report. But
(30:50):
I was so terrified about being followed that I ended
up just like crying and circling all over downtown San Francisco,
not knowing what to do because I just didn't I
felt like I was being tracked. So I ended up
going and buying a burner phone and contacted the regulatory
body and figured out about the process in order to
(31:10):
write a report and a complaint. And when you write
to a regulatory body like this like CMS, are you
does it carry legal protections? Right? Are you granted whistle
blower status? So is that? What was? Is that why?
You thought? Okay, so how do that? So you'd actually yeah,
so you'd actually be surprised. There are very few protections
for people who report that work for private companies. I
(31:34):
just thought, okay, we're going to file this complaint because
again I was operating with they need to stop testing
on patients. You can't essentially treat people like lab rats.
And that's what their nose was doing, right, it was
essentially experimenting on the public live and telling them that
they had quality test when that wasn't that wasn't the case. Okay, Eric,
(31:59):
I need to stop you here because what I'm hearing
is extraordinary, which is that you get confronted in a
dark parking lot outside of your new office building, and
it's revealed to you that there are people following you
on a regular basis, and that leads you to double
down and make the choice to go even further with
(32:21):
your efforts and to contact a regulatory body. That is stunning.
I need you to unpack that. For me. I would
just let me tell you what I would have done
gotten a letter, I would have been like, can I
move back home with my parents? Can I just reduce
all connection with this company forevermore? And just like buried
(32:41):
my head. Hey, I don't get it. It's so hard.
It's so hard to be self aware of it, because
for me, it makes sense. For me, it makes total
sense of why I would do this. It's kind of
one of those things like again, I just wanted them
to stop processing patient samples, and when that new door
(33:03):
opened for me, that was just an opportunity that I
couldn't imagine not taking, right, I couldn't imagine not taking.
And honestly, I'll talk to people about this, like, yes,
there were moments where I thought, wow, Okay, if they
go through with the litigation, you know you're gonna probably
go bankrupt. And I was like, okay, well your recent
(33:25):
grad like you're almost there, so you're not so okay,
you know, fair play or there was a possibility that
you that I would have gotten some sort of criminal charges,
and I was like pragmatic with myself and said, okay, well,
you love being alone, so maybe you'll spend a couple
of years being alone for a while in a prison cell.
(33:46):
A prison cell, okay, But honestly, the idea of knowing
what I knew and having not done anything, and knowing
that there was something that I could have done about
it and I didn't do anything, like that's the real
prison right, Like that would have been so hard for
me to live with myself knowing the things that I
(34:06):
knew and having not done anything. That's the real purgatory
right to sit with yourself and to realize that you
didn't push it forward. So it just for me that
that was a much worse reality. So you end up
buying a burner phone, you contact CMS, and then you
end up writing a formal letter right that ends up
(34:28):
instigating a formal federal investigation into Tharanos. And I just
need you to take a quick victory lab here Erica,
because your letter results in significant consequences for Tharanos. So
after I sent the letter, a CMS went in and
they the regulators went in and they conducted an investigation
(34:54):
and they found serious deficiencies and Thoranos's lab and basically
barred them from operating a patient testing lab from that
point forward, So it shut down their ability to test
on patients. What was it like when you got that news.
When I got that news, it was an absolute relief.
It was nice to kind of be able to finally
(35:17):
be able to rest a bit. I think for me
it was funny. My Parahos saga really ended there in
a way like I stopped paying attention. Your job is done.
My job is done, and that was it. So it
was it was a big relief. And I know, while
all of this is unfolding, you make this decision to
move to Hong Kong, to really get away from it,
(35:38):
even geographically right. Just an eagerness I can so resonate
with that. Just an eagerness to make Pharaonos a definitive
part of your past. Exactly. I walked into my new
boss's office and I just looked at him and I said,
I want to move to Hong Kong and he's like, okay.
And I had no plan, no nothing, but I knew
(36:00):
that I just needed to go. I just needed to
just go do something for myself. And then I packed
my bags and I left in two thousand and seen
to move to Hong Kong. So we're going to fast
forward a few years. You're continuing to live in Hong
Kong and it's twenty nineteen and you're traveling to the
(36:20):
US and you're in an airport in the US and
you're confronted by a member of the FBI. Yeah. So
I'm essentially sitting in an airport. I'm about to board
a plane, and as I'm starting to go into the
plane boarding process, this man comes up to me as
I'm packing away my laptop and he's like, are you
Erica Chung And I'm like yes, And he's like, Okay,
(36:44):
don't be nervous. But I'm with the FBI and here's
a subpoena. You're going to testify in the criminal case
against Elizabeth Holmes and Sonny Batwani. I mean, don't be nervous. Comma,
I'm an FBI agent. Should be said by no FBI
agent moving forward, but I appreciate the light empathy he
(37:05):
was showing you that moment. So then so the trial
keeps getting delayed, right, there's COVID, Elizabeth Holmes gets pregnant.
But then finally there's a date September twenty twenty one.
You're asked to finally testify. And what is that like, Erica?
(37:27):
I mean, what is it like to see Elizabeth Holmes again?
I didn't know what to expect. I had no idea
what that was going to be like, and was very
nervous going into that courtroom. But what was amazing is
like once I actually sat down and I was in
the witness stand and I looked over and I saw Elizabeth.
I was like, oh, yeah, that's right, Erica, You're on
(37:49):
this side of the table, like you didn't do anything wrong. Here,
you didn't do anything wrong. And so it was actually
a bit relaxing at that point. Still stressful, still stressful,
but at least it was like again I knew what
I needed to do and what I needed to get done,
and even though I waited a long time to do
(38:13):
the trial, I was going to be able to walk
out of there in three days time. And that was it,
that was it. I know you've said that while you
did feel a certain kind of calm descend upon you,
the other side of this was that it led to
a severe relapse of PTSD. Yeah, you know, there was
a trial in the final relief and the realization of
(38:37):
the fact that like, yeah, I get a walk out
of here in three days, But the build up for
that was just so severe. It was funny when you're
suffering from PTSD and people are telling you these things
like you're courageous, you're brave, you're a hero. Gosh, I
can't even go to the grocery store without having a
panic attack, right, And and that like positioning of the
(39:03):
fact of like, oh my god, is this what like
is this what being a hero feels like? Because this
shit's terrible, right, It's just so hard on your body
and everything. Basically, from that point that I received the
subpoena and from the fact that I had now been
more publicly on the record as being a whistleblower, I
(39:27):
couldn't quite figure out what was wrong with me. But
as time went on and I moved back to the US,
it started to become more and more clear that I
was having a really difficult time managing my hyper vigilance.
I was having panic attacks again. I was paranoid about
(39:50):
people following me. I was having nightmares every other day,
and it came to the surface that I was having
another big relapse in PTSD. And in a way, it
was good that the trial had gotten pushed because it
allowed me to sort of take the energy in focus on,
you know, really fronting a lot of the things that
(40:11):
I had avoided. You know, I had moved to Hong Kong,
I had built this whole new life for myself. I
really had detached myself from everything their nose. Like when
people in Hong Kong figure it out that I reported
their nose, they were shocked because it was something I
never talked about. No one had any idea, and I
(40:31):
didn't realize like when someone has PTSD, a big portion
of it is avoidance. It is trying to not bring
up anything that reminds you of the traumatic event. And
I think I spent years in that state of just
wanting to push all of this as far away as
(40:54):
possible from myself. And when I had moved back to
the States and the subpoena was happening, and I was
sort of thrust upon this world. It really caused this
huge relapse for me, and so I think that build
up it was exhausting and very trying, but also maybe
(41:18):
a good thing, because I was really forced to just
sit with myself and really process and develop a better
coping system for the things that happened to me. I
really resonate with the sentiment around extreme avoidance when it
(41:41):
comes to past pain and trauma and at times where
I've been, you know, really anxious in the past, like
I will go to the ends of the earth to
try to avoid engaging just to feel safe, right. I mean,
I think that's just like a very instinctive human response.
(42:01):
And I do wonder whether I mean this therein as
Saga forced upon you a kind of exposure therapy of
sorts that you might have never yourself instigated, right, because
it is so painful to have to revisit every single
detail and to have to like re engage with that world.
(42:24):
And I do wonder if maybe there's one silver lining here,
which is that it empowered you to engage differently with
past traumas, to maybe be less avoidant with those past
traumas and to maybe revisit them in a different way. Yeah, yeah,
I think that's exactly true. Like it's it's amazing how
much it brought to a head my need to be
(42:48):
vulnerable and to be able to confront things head on
going on with myself. I feel like I needed to
just sit with myself and come to a greater sense
of like compassion in a way with myself. And yeah,
(43:11):
it did. It did help. It was weird that that
sort of instigated the process of the healing of so
many things that happened. It was so extended soon beyond
what happened it there, nos right, it extended from what
happened to me when I was a kid or when
I was in college. And I think because of that
just in your face kind of you will deal with
(43:33):
this whether you like it or not nature of being
In this case, like I'm stronger because of it and
having it had an immense amount of growth, And in
a way, I'm almost grateful for that because it's it's
interesting with this case because like this was my first
job out of college and now my I have the
(43:57):
rest of my life ahead of me. Like I'm really
when you think about it, professionally, just getting started and
the fact that now I can have a sense of
just almost freedom in a way that I trust myself
that I have the right tools and the right abilities
to be able to be resilient, and to just have
(44:20):
that sense of security in myself is nice. So even
there's always silver linings to things, and even though there's
like post traumatic stress disorder, there's also post traumatic growth,
and I think I'm starting to see to see that
side of this whole experience, which I'm i think, in
(44:40):
the grand scheme of things, going to be very very
grateful for. In the years following Erica's letter to federal regulators,
a slew of civil and criminal charges were filed against Saranos,
CEO Elizabeth Holnes and COOO Senni Bolani. Saronos's valuation plummeted
(45:02):
to zero. Elizabeth and Sonny were both found guilty of
fraud and two separate criminal trials this year. Elizabeth was
convicted of four counts of fraud and Sonny was convicted
of twelve counts of fraud. They will both be sentenced
later this year and could face decades in prison. That's
(45:24):
a wrap on this season of a slight change of plans.
We hope you enjoyed it. We'll be back in September
with more episodes. Until then, have a great summer break.
A Slight Change of Plans is created, written an executive
produced by me Maya Shunker. The Slight Change family includes
Tyler Greene, our senior producer, Emily Rosteck, our producer and
(45:47):
fact checker, Jan Guera, our senior editor, Neil LaBelle, our
executive producer, and our engineering team which includes Ben Holliday,
Jay Korski, Sarah Bruger and Andrew Vastola. Louis Skara wrote
our theme song and Ginger Smith helped arrange the vocals.
A Slight Change of Plans is a production of Pushkin Industries,
(46:08):
so big thanks to everyone there, and of course a
very special thanks to Jimmy Lee. You can follow A
Slight Change of Plans on Instagram at doctor Maya Shunker.
And So, the Edison Devices, which was theirinosa's actual proprietary machine,
(46:32):
could only do twelve of those tests. They couldn't even
do as many as people had anticipated. And from what
I understand, Erica, even the twelve tests that the Edison
could run weren't generating reliable results. That is right, That
is right? Yeah, wow, Okay, so literally just mean it
was capable of generating a result, not even like the
(46:53):
correct result, an accurate result. Yeah, it's like, great, I
have a device that it's a great bar for laboratories
to have. It doesn't break, no, exactly, well, it spits
out a number
Host
Dr. Maya Shankar
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