Bad Blood wins FT Business Book of 2018

In Bad Blood John Carreyrou takes readers through the breathtaking rise and fall of Theranos, a Silicon Valley start-up that promised a ground-breaking development in the medical industry by making blood testing simpler and faster. The only problem was that the technology they claimed would do this didn't work. 

For years, Elizabeth Holmes Theranos' founder, had been misleading investors, FDA officials, and her own employees. When Carreyrou, working at the Wall Street Journal, got a tip from a former Theranos employee and started asking questions, both Carreyrou and the Journal were threatened with lawsuits. Undaunted, the newspaper ran the first of dozens of Theranos’ articles in late 2015. By early 2017, the company’s value was zero and Holmes faced potential legal action from the government and her investors.

Lionel Barber, FT editor and chair of the judging panel, called Bad Blood “a brilliant piece of enterprise journalism” that “reads at times like a thriller”. Congratulation John Carreyrou! 

FT Bad Blood Winner Announcement