Theranos

Theranos is the name of the company founded and run by Elizabeth Holmes. Its goal, according to Holmes and her very public claims, was to revolutionize health care - specifically, to simplify the process of undergoing blood tests, and thereby to ease the potential for suffering by patients. The company's practices and day-to-day functioning, as portrayed by the narrative, simultaneously involved extensive testing designed to meet those goals, and similarly extensive efforts to cover up the fact that those goals were not being met at all.

Silicon Valley

Silicon Valley is the nickname given to an area of California renowned for being an active center for the development of technology in America. The term refers to a specific geographical location and is often used as a kind of shorthand to refer to a mindset associated with ambitious, innovative, risk-taking technological development. When Elizabeth Holmes starts Theranos, she...