Journal 10 - You Can See Everything

I have just returned from the Elizabeth Holmes documentary and agree with some of what was discussed in class. It was an interesting movie. The friend I went with had watched Nathan's Youtube content with her family during Covid, so she let me know about his comedic approach. After the movie, she told me about how one of his skits was to say he had gone to Harvard and help people with their businesses. However, he had gone to Harvard College not University and was giving them terrible ideas for the purpose of comedy. I think that intentional misdirection explained why he was fitting for this documentary. I am just going to kind of blurt out my perception of different things as my friend and I were talking about it for the last half hour. I do not think Nathan fell in love with Liz, but I do think he grew protective of her. Billy seemed really manipulative. I do not believe that he did not know who she was when he met her, especially considering he was in a similar field to her and was about to rent out her office space. It feels like he is using her, although it is hard to know exactly how it plays into a larger plan. I disagree with the rest of the class that it is strange for her to have had children. I think considering her age, she saw it as her window to have a biological family. Her children may be part of her appeal to people's humanity, but I also think it may be tied to a larger life desire. Back to Billy, I think Sunny was predatory and that maybe he saw Elizabeth as this perfect spokesperson. Her parents seemed scared of Billy even more than Sunny. I think Sunny had power over Elizabeth, but Billy has power over her, her image, and her children. Additionally, I think that Liz is not innocent in terms of Theranos. I do not believe she is a supergenius like others in class were saying. She seemed to be reading off a script when describing the device. My friend, who is a biochemistry major and doing chemistry research, and I, a biology major doing virology research, thought the product was flawed from its conception. The science did not make sense. It is one of those things where you dream about curing cancer and then realize it cannot be done in one year and all on your own. Nobody in the documentary seemed to understand biology or medicine. She also said that she did not hurt those three patients, but my friend was telling me that Theranos was actually being used in Walgreens and people got false negatives for things like diabetes. Also, apparently when pitching it to investors, they would distract them while using different technology to run the tests but say it was done by Theranos. Liz, or others, had this grand idea and really wanted it to work, but it did not pan out. I also think everyone is kind of feeding into her saying that she is super smart which is creating this big illusion. She did seem awkward throughout the documentary and maybe that is due to its production. I haven't seen anything of her outside of it. However, society has this tendency to associate genius with neurodivergence as seen in Young Sheldon. I wonder if Sunny, Billy, and others have used that as a form of manipulation with investors. The documentary left me with many questions, but I feel confident in two things: I do not trust Theranos (there seems to be a massive lack of understanding of science throughout its construction) and Elizabeth Holmes did commit fraud with the company.

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