You Can See Everything: A Refresher on the Real Theranos Patients Impacted by Elizabeth Holmes’s Blood-Testing Scandal

This weekend, a surprise Elizabeth Holmes documentary called You Can See Everything premiered at the Telluride Film Festival, and if you are also currently going down a rabbit hole to refresh your memory on all things Elizabeth Holmes, you’re not alone.

Holmes founded Theranos, a company that was sold to investors on the premise that it would revolutionize blood testing in medicine, with technology the company claimed could run hundreds of medical tests with a single drop of blood. But the company eventually collapsed, in part because reporting that the technology didn’t work. Investors were misled, and real people got inaccurate and alarming blood test results.

This new documentary, from Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim, follows Holmes for three years, including the 34 days before she went to prison. Unlike previous fictional interpretations of her story, Holmes actually participated in this doc, and it gives unprecedented access to her life, providing a portrait of the person rather than a fact-by-fact retelling of what happened.

Here’s a refresher on how Theranos patients were impacted by the company.

People testified that Theranos tests gave them inaccurate medical results.

In the trial against Holmes in 2021, three different people gave testimonies about getting false medical results from Theranos devices. One woman testified she received a result that indicated she was having a miscarriage when her pregnancy was perfectly healthy, according to two blood tests she did through a different lab after getting the Theranos diagnosis. Another woman testified that a Theranos test misdiagnosed her as having HIV antibodies, but she took two tests after that through different labs where she tested negative for HIV both times. A third person, a man, testified that a 2015 blood test he'd taken through Theranos gave him inaccurate results. The test told him that his blood wasn't clotting like normal, and he stopped taking his blood thinners as a result of the false diagnosis.

One of the above patients also testified that she called Theranos to try to ask about her results and when she got someone from customer service on the phone, they told her they “couldn’t transfer me and that was about it.” She couldn't get a real doctor or scientist on the phone.

Was Holmes found guilty?

Holmes was found guilty on three counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, according to The New York Times. She was acquitted on four counts related to defrauding patients. Holmes was later sentenced to 11 years in federal prison, and the days leading up to her going to prison are covered in the new documentary.