As a 19-year-old sophomore at Stanford, Elizabeth Holmes started a company that would merge the delivery of health care with the monitoring of its effects. Particularly, she developed a patent for a wearable patch that would deliver a drug and monitor its impact. The delivery dosage could then be adjusted based upon the results that are stored and relayed to pre-chosen locations such as a doctor’s office, a patient’s cell phone, or a government database, potentially.
Holmes, the CEO of Theranos, claims altruism as her motivation. Fortune magazine reported that Holmes told her college instructor that she is interested in “helping humanity at all levels regardless of geography or ethnicity or age or gender.” Her instructor was not the only one optimistic about the young entrepreneur’s giving spirit.
Former Secretary of State George Shultz told Fortune that he joined the board of directors at Theranos after being convinced by Holmes’ “purity of motivation.” Shultz coincidentally neither confirmed nor denied that this was also his reason for joining the Reagan administration.
The board of directors at Theranos has caused some critical researchers to doubt the motivations of both Holmes and the board.
Joining Shultz at Theranos are leaders of the militaristic globalists that have controlled America’s foreign policy for decades: former Secretary of State and National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger, former Secretary of Defense Bill Perry, former Senator Bill Frist (R-TN), Ret. U.S. Navy Admiral Gary Roughead, Ret. U.S. Marine Corp General James Mattis, and the former CEOs of both Wells Fargo and engineering firm Bechtel Group, which Shultz had also helmed.
Rounding out the predominantly military-laded board is former Senator Sam Nunn (D-GA), a hawkish, neoconservative Democrat who has long been discussed by political insiders from both major parties as a prospective candidate for Secretary of Defense.
If Holmes is truly a kind soul tirelessly engaged in improving access to health care for those so structurally disadvantaged by the inequalities of their own impoverished existence, then one has to question her decision to court the military-industrial complex in her endeavor.
These are, after all, the same staples of globalism that have favored the destruction of sovereignty for a myriad of third world countries by tying these failed states to the un-resolvable debts of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
These are the same men who have orchestrated the selling off of a country’s limited natural resources to Western corporations at the expense of the same people Holmes professes a heartfelt desire to help.
Knowing these things – and we should assume someone as bright as Holmes has at least a passing knowledge of world history and a slight interest in geopolitics (she did actively recruit Shultz, after all) – Holmes’ motivation, and that of her board, has to be in question.
The Fortune article compared her to Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, pioneers of their industries and leaders who were present at the creation of a vital, world-changing technological revolution. If Holmes is a pioneer in the de-privatization and pro-militarization of an individual’s health care information, then we hope it is an industry short-lived.