Theranos Strikes Back against WSJ at WSJ Event

Although $9B blood-testing firm Theranos has entered a "pause period" after a pair of Wall Street Journal articles questioned its technology, the company's founder Elizabeth Holmes is seeking to restore the firm's credibility by defending its technology and attacking the quality of the WSJ's reporting.

Brian Buntz

Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of Theranos, was slated to speak at a Wall Street Journal digital event known as WSJDLive held in Laguna Beach, and despite speculation to the contrary, decided not to cancel her appearance.

Instead, Holmes used the opportunity to attack the Journal's reporting, stating that the paper cited one employee who worked for Theranos for two months in 2005. "The others are very clearly confused," she said. "We've done 3.5 million tests; we have tens of thousands of people who have rated our service and it is 4.8 out of 5."

"I read what was written in the article," Holmes she also said. "We disagree with it. We think it was false. And we think it was misleading."

"Just because some guy reports false stuff about us doesn't change our business," she said at the WSJDLive event.

She took issue with the Journal's reporting about its Edison technology. Although the paper reported that the company was only using its proprietary finger-stick technology for 1 to 15 tests depending on the time period, Holmes said that "Edison" was an outdated code name for a technology the company no longer uses. Holmes insists that the company uses proprietary technology for all of its fingerstick blood tests rather than conventional lab machines. 

After going silent since the weekend, the company took to Twitter to defend its technology's accuracy on Wednesday. Holmes also stated that the company plans to release a 16-page point-by-point rebuttal of the WSJ articles.

On October 22, Theranos stated in an email to Qmed "there has been a lot of inaccurate information in media coverage to date. We have posted detailed information on our technology, finger-stick test, accuracy, and conversations with The Wall Street Journal on our website: https://www.theranos.com/news/posts/custom/theranos-facts.

The WSJ also released a statement, albeit a day earlier. Its statement said in part:

Nothing said at the conference by Ms. Holmes refutes the accuracy of the reporting done by John Carreyrou or of the articles, which were subject to the Journal's rigorous and careful editing process. Contrary to Ms. Holmes's claims, the Journal shared all facts and anecdotes published in the articles with Theranos before publication, in accordance with our longstanding editorial practice and principles. The company was given plenty of opportunity to respond. Ms. Holmes declined interview requests from the Journal for more than five months, but the general counsel and outside counsel of Theranos provided significant input, which was fairly reflected in the articles.

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