[U –Denied.] Holmes’ Felonies Trial: More FBI Interview Notes… Coming Up This Week — In San Jose

UPDATED: Judge Davila ruled this B.B. testimony about platelets cannot come in. But testimony about false pregnancy results, and false HIV positive results… already has, so the central truth of the below… remains. End, update.

I will just let you read about this 2015 experience of a patient in Arizona — through the Walgreens demonstration project efforts.

It is… appalling. And it was… absolutely avoidable, if Ms. Holmes had just followed the law (and the novel device regulations) of the FDA — for reporting adverse events, from her intrepid “medical” device — in anything resembling a timely and comprehensive manner. The “Edison” would definitely have been mothballed years earlier, and nearly a billion dollars NOT burnt up.

She does need to be… in jail.

These are humans, not software glitches. This isn’t my iPhone throwing a blank screen occasionally, in a game I’m playing. We already know about a false HIV+ result, a false pregnancy result… and now way off the mark platelet results.

In real live humans, all of whom needed to rely on this information, to make treatment (and in some cases, more long-term, gut-wrenching life-) decisions.

To paint her as no different than the Silicon Valley bro culture… is preposterous.

Yeh… I generally hate those Chad-guys, too — but let’s be clear — they aren’t (in the main) ruining peoples’ longer-term health outcomes (either by gross indifference, or willful prevarications). Updated @ 6:30 PM EDT: To honor a sense of balance, I will link Team Holmes’ arguments to exclude the above. [Note though that there is no dispute about whether this witness’s accounting is… genuine.]

Out.

Mr. Parloff Will Be Allowed To Testify To Holmes’ Inconsistent Statements…

The response from the government is in, and it has the better of the argument.
The reporter, Roger Parloff (then for the WSJ) may testify that Ms. Holmes made wildly contradictory claims to him, over time — about the device and the company. A bit, then:

“…In particular, Defendant made statements to Parloff relating to, among other things: (1) the number of tests Theranos could conduct on a single drop of blood; (2) the range and number of assays that Theranos’s analyzer could perform; (3) Theranos’s ability to conduct blood tests on a fingerstick sample without the need for venipuncture; (4) Theranos’s use of its own analyzers as opposed to third-party devices; (5) the accuracy and reliability of Theranos’s tests; and (6) the nature of the company’s work with the U.S. military.

Defendant’s deceptive statements resulted in inaccurate or misleading information on those topics appearing in Parloff’s June 2014 article. Parloff recorded Defendant’s statements during interviews, sometimes with an audio recording device—used with Defendant’s consent—and at other times through detailed contemporaneous notes. At trial, Parloff may testify regarding specific statements made to him by Defendant and provide context necessary to the jury’s understanding of the significance of those statements….”

And much more, if Holmes’ lawyers decide to cross examine him about his own truthfulness.

That’s called opening the door — and I expect the Holmes team will now NOT call him, in their defense case, at all. [The next trial day is Tuesday in this one, the issue was a water main break that affected water levels at the courthouse, I gather.]

Onward — grinning.

[Tangent — Power Alley:] Update On Pricing Of Merck’s Molnupiravir — In Developing-World Nations

This is just as we’ve previously predicted (repeatedly).

Here — for the record — is the proof of it.

Indeed, it is the right thing to do… in over 100 less developed nations, the COVID-19 pill will be available at very low cost.

But I’ll offer little/no fanfare — as there is much more to do, to reform the way the world distributes vital medicines (like this one — and the vaccines). Onward, smiling just the same….

नमस्ते

This 10.26.21 Holmes Trial Log Includes TV Clips And Henry Kissinger / Theranos Correspondence… So I’ll Load It.

While the daily onslaught of emails, live testimony and television interview clips pile up a likely insurmountable mountain of evidence of Ms. Holmes’ guilt… I thought I’d link this last trial summary — for its “star appeal”.

Besides Kissinger, it features email interactions with the DeVos family group (about investing), which would include the now former Tangerine era US Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos (who in 2019, famously fell off her own super-yacht, in a drunken stupor at her private Michigan dockside) — and one Erik Prince, the mercenary killer behind BlackWater [since renamed; but think of the murder of 17 civilians in Nisour Square, Iraq (by his Blackwater contractors, who were paid over a billion dollars by the Cheney-Bush administration, in the second Gulf War)].

Where was… I?

Oh. Right — anyway, Ms. Holmes has been buried by all this evidence. Here is yesterday’s trial summary — with the jury again seated for another trial day, in San Jose at 9 AM Pacific. I don’t know — nor much care — whether the DeVos group invested, and thus lost money on Theranos. But if they did — I am happy.

Onward, grinning.

[Tangent:] Signatures Of Biologically-Pure Carbon, Embedded In Nearly 3 Billion Year Old Ruby — Discovered In Greenland: Ore Geology Reviews Vol. 138

Do read this geology / ore journal / paper. . . or. . . more than likely — you won’t. Heh. It is thick with all the usual science jargon. The punchline though, is that the kind of carbon embedded in this ruby likely could only have formed in a biological (microbial) process. While life is thought by many scientists to have existed even over 3 billion years ago, that notion is debated — mostly for lack of more concrete evidence.

This paper would seem to put the debate largely to rest. This carbon finding, assuming that there are no subsequent problems with the dating of the ruby ore itself, is pretty good evidence of life — more than 2.5 billion years in the past, in what became Greenland. Here is a popular magazine’s take on it all:

. . .The planet’s oldest rubies, sparkling red gemstones made up of a transparent red mineral called corundum, are found in Greenland. While searching for rubies in the North Atlantic Craton of southern Greenland, a group of researchers discovered a hidden surprise in one of them: graphite, a pure form of carbon, that may be the remains of ancient microbial life.

“The graphite inside this ruby is really unique,” Chris Yakymchuk, a professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, said in a statement. “It’s the first time we’ve seen evidence of ancient life in ruby-bearing rocks. . . .”

Onward, grinning: “life, life, life. . . isn’t it. . . grand?” — as the boyish miner in me returns to the under-belly of the high Rockies, in memories as thick as milk-weed seeds, on a fall morning. . . .

नमस्ते

Trivia: Another Juror Bounced From Holmes’ Felony Matter, In San Jose — Now Down To Two Alternates…

According to Inner City Press, a long running and erstwhile “one man band” sort of US Courts / reporter website, the latest juror was let go for playing Sodoku during key parts of the testimony, on cross-examination.

The involved juror told the able USDC Judge Davila she hadn’t missed any part of the trial — and that she is able to do two things at once — as she has always been… fidgety, when sitting for long periods. [The defense should heed that message, and shorten the tenor, and up the tempo, on its interminable crosses.]

In any event, the defense rightly asked that she be let go. And… she was.

That’s the end of my Saturday trivia time, now on both coasts… grin.

Holmes Felonies Matter: Today, The Government’s Briefing, Opposing Severance, Was Made Public…

This is a 60 some page treasure trove of what all the government, back in January of 2020, intended to prove — and in large measure (so far, at least) has in fact proved — at trial. It is redacted in many parts, but even so — what is there… is pretty compelling advocacy.

It is required reading for Holmes-a-philes.

In it we learn that Holmes did not show any of her deceptive MSM interviews to her treating mental health professional — and was thus not candid (at pages 15-17), even with her — and we learn that there were only 14 one hour sessions, with the expert (pages 3-4), all held not in a doctors’ offices, but at the DC offices of a law firm, Williams & Connolly. To be certain, that alone shouldn’t be enough to be skeptical… but it certainly does suggest the crafting of a mental health defense, by the lawyers… rather than an organic, self-initiated “treatment plan” — sought out, by Ms. Holmes for trauma — prior to the time it became clear she would be tried by the AUSAs — for numerous felonies.

The papers also reveal that she repeatedly said to the public that she was in control and in charge of… everything, at Theranos. [All of which severely undercuts her (later-appearing) “Sunny held all the real power, as a Wizard of Oz, behind some magical curtains” claims. After all, which to believe — the real time on camera declarations of a CEO running a revolutionary life science device company, or the much later bleatings to a hired psych professional, as her legal defense is being crafted — to felony charges?]

Anyway — Hey Billy, these 60 some pages… are your bed-time reading. Enjoy.

Out, grinning… for the family-traditional annual pumpkin carving (and chili-eating) contest, with baby-girl — come Sunday evening. Be excellent to one another.

[Tangent:] “Time… And Tide” Department: A Transgenic Pig Kidney Has Functioned For Three Days, Normally — In A Brain-Dead Human Host.

Many, many moons ago, as a youngster — I worked closely with a pan-national team of dedicated, highly ethical bio-scientists — a team that ultimately failed in animal models, at Duke University. [I file this one, as filler — as we await any habeas corpus petition — for Martin’s would-be transfer to the Brooklyn MDC in December 2021. . . I predict it will never be filed.] Back to the story, then:

As did every one before it, and every one. . . after it. [The involved company ultimately donated one of its research facilities in Boulder, Colorado to Mayo.] But apparently, this morning. . . one attempt has at least partially succeeded in an ethical end of life trial:

. ..For the first time, a pig kidney has been transplanted into a human without triggering immediate rejection by the recipient’s immune system, a potentially major advance that could eventually help alleviate a dire shortage of human organs for transplant.

The procedure done at NYU Langone Health in New York City involved the use of a pig whose genes had been altered so that its tissues no longer contained a molecule known to trigger almost immediate rejection.

The recipient was a brain-dead patient with signs of kidney dysfunction whose family consented to the experiment before she was due to be taken off life support, researchers told Reuters. . . .

Now you know. Onward, smiling just ever so slightly. . . life. . . finds a way.

नमस्ते

Here Is One “Motion To Exclude” That Ms. Holmes May Actually… Win.

The government has been batting almost .986 on its efforts to introduce documentary evidence against Ms. Holmes (and, come January 2022 — Mr. Balwani will see much the same).

But overnight, her lawyers suggested that the AUSAs in San Jose may try as early as today to introduce a bevy of Pfizer-generated (internal to Pfizer) review documents — ones that harshly criticize the truthfulness and credibility of management of Theranos, and the state of the engineering developments on what would come to be called the Edison device.

But her lawyers claim there is no proof that Ms. Holmes ever saw (or was even aware of) that Pfizer set of documents. That is thus called… a lack of foundation.

So these papers may well be… inadmissable. With one possible caveat: if Ms. Holmes takes the stand during her defense case and offers any hint that various pharma companies were favorable on the device (as she and Balwani have elsewhere falsely claimed in writing), the AUSAs — on cross examination — could ask her directly whether she ever saw or heard about the Pfizer internal review documents. That, if she lies about it, might open the door to direct admission, or at least impeachment. There is some evidence already in that Ms. Holmes was told by phone that Pfizer’s review was scathing. [We shall see — but that’s yet another reason not to take the stand, if you are Elizabeth.]

In any event, here is the overnight defense motion — and the exhibit primarily at issue.

To be clear — I do not see how it gets in, at this point, unless the AUSAs can provide a witness who places it in Holmes’ hands.

[Segue.]

Now, here’s an off topic space science link — a la “Armageddon” (the old movie) — and apropos of… nothing, really.

Onward, grinning. Ever… grinning.

The Last Of The Daily Holmes Court Trial Log Summaries…

So… the Holmes felonies trial… is a tangent — to the main narrative arc here.

And it is clear beyond peradventure now that if the jury does its job, she will be convicted — and the able USDC Judge Davila will sentence her to some significant jail time.

In truth, if one is not a lawyer — looking at each exhibit in real time as it is admitted, these daily summaries don’t add much to the narrative. They will presumably continue to be published, but I don’t really feel the information justifies the PACER charges for downloading them, and the data-limits charges at WordPress, for storing them. So this, from yesterday, is likely the last of them.

Onward, grinning — and I do think you’re in the Big Easy, or thereabouts. So… hey you… at about 9:36 am on Saturday morning (after stops at most of my other properties that are still active) — ’tis lovely here, too.