So latest metadocumentary (is that even a word?) film is "You Can See Everything".
You Can See Everything - Wikipedia
"You Can See Everything is a 2026 American metadocumentary film directed by Nathan Fielder (in his feature directorial debut) and Lance Oppenheim. It follows Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of the defunct health technology company Theranos, and her partner Billy Evans, who invited a film crew to document them beginning in the weeks before Holmes began serving a United States federal prison sentence for defrauding investors.["
No, I'm not going to waste any time on this movie. I read the book by John Carryrou, "Bad Blood", in 2019 Amazon.com: Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup (Audible Audio Edition): John Carreyrou, Will Damron, Random House Audio: Books
"In 2014, Theranos founder and CEO Elizabeth Holmes was widely seen as the next Steve Jobs: a brilliant Stanford dropout whose startup “unicorn” promised to revolutionize the medical industry with its breakthrough device, which performed the whole range of laboratory tests from a single drop of blood. Backed by investors such as Larry Ellison and Tim Draper, Theranos sold shares in a fundraising round that valued the company at more than $9 billion, putting Holmes’s worth at an estimated $4.5 billion. There was just one problem: The technology didn’t work. Erroneous results put patients in danger, leading to misdiagnoses and unnecessary treatments. All the while, Holmes and her partner, Sunny Balwani, worked to silence anyone who voiced misgivings—from journalists to their own employees."
Carryrou at the time worked for The Wall Street Journal. He now writes for the New York Times. His book was a masterful work of journalism.
I don't know what the purpose of Nathan Fielder's movie is, basically he is an actor in his own story. And Elizabeth Holmes and her husband, Billy Evans, were actors in their own reality show. And like most reality shows, it sounds like more show than reality. Holmes is playing to an audience of one, namely herself, though the movie is being hyped as the greatest thing.
Holmes is an odd character, she claimed to have never told a lie, and that she believed her own story; that a college dropout could invent a medical device that could run a whole panoply of medical tests on a single drop of blood. Most medical people, even most medical lab technicians, would say that is impossible. A drop isn't a representative sample. But that didn't keep her from selling her idea to investors (who appear not to have done due dilligence). She is said to have a charming personality. But in spite of what she claimed, she was found guilty of fraud and sentenced to prison. And having put patients at risk with the phony numbers generated by her equipment.
Holmes is effectively barred from working in the U.S. medical field in any capacity that involves federal health programs or funding for the next 90 years.
However, Billy Evans has incorporated a company, Haemanthus, in 2024. Evans has a degree in economics, but not in any medical field or in medical engineering.
From Wikipedia: "The company says that it is developing a device which will test blood, urine and saliva samples for disease, similar to the Theranos false claims about the "Edison" device. Haemanthus intends to first test pets and later humans, for which the company says it will make a wearable device to do the testing.[2] The company claims to use Raman spectroscopy, a technique that can be used to characterize the chemical composition of a sample using its response to laser light. The company has one patent, filed in January 2025."
Sounds to me like the pair aren't done scamming yet.
These people need to be banished along with Musk, Zuckerberg, Martin Shkreli, and the rest of our billionaire overlords with 100-yard stares and reptilian brains. They cannot be rewired to live with normal people without scamming them.
ReplyDeleteI think you may be right, unfortunately.
DeleteWhat I don't understand, if they were really so brilliant, and were interested in the field of medical engineering, why wouldn't they finish the degrees, and actually understand what they wanted to do?
Yah, it's weird. Combination of greed and arrogance, I guess. I think Holmes also enjoyed honing her image as a tech genius with the messy hair, Steve Jobs turtlenecks, red lipstick, and altered voice. Some kind of weird Dale Carnegie thing going on where they think they can will themselves into fame and fortune.
DeleteCon artists not worth the time to read about or watch a documentary.
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