Corporate Misconduct: Erika Cheung on Ethical Red Flags at Theranos — Transcript

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1. 0:04and some of the things that I've learned
2. 0:06is that even if there's one activity of
3. 0:08fraudulent activity going on there's
4. 0:09actually like a whole wealth of other
5. 0:12problem areas all throughout the
6. 0:14organization
7. 0:15one of them that I'll say that was quite
8. 0:18strong was the culture of fear and
9. 0:19silence
10. 0:20so they had sort of taken this mentality
11. 0:24at first I thought oh okay the reason
12. 0:27I'm signing an NDA when I go to
13. 0:29interview for this company is I don't
14. 0:32know I honestly didn't know but I was
15. 0:34young and I was like sure I'll sign
16. 0:36whatever you want I want to work here
17. 0:38but then when I realized they had me
18. 0:40sign an NDA when I interviewed for the
19. 0:42company when I started working for the
20. 0:43company in the middle of working as a
21. 0:45company and definitely at the end every
22. 0:47day and was reminded constantly that if
23. 0:50I said anything that they would pursue
24. 0:52litigation against me
25. 0:54um and that the reason I couldn't put it
26. 0:56on my LinkedIn that I worked for the
27. 0:59organization or any of my roles and
28. 1:01responsibilities is because of the
29. 1:03threat of competitors so they kind of
30. 1:05really Foster this sort of air of you
31. 1:08can't say anything don't tell anyone
32. 1:10what we're doing don't reveal any Trade
33. 1:13Secrets which is this like Broad
34. 1:16uh definition of basically don't say
35. 1:19anything even to your own uh significant
36. 1:22other like any role that you do
37. 1:25um was was a was a key red flag now I
38. 1:30realize it's a red flag it's not because
39. 1:31we have a military culture we have
40. 1:33specialty you know confidential
41. 1:35contracts because it wasn't like we had
42. 1:38clearance for anything it was just that
43. 1:41was the culture
44. 1:43um and in addition to that like the
45. 1:45siloing the now it got to the point
46. 1:48where that culture of trying to protect
47. 1:50against competitors was really how do
48. 1:53you prevent people within the
49. 1:55organization from even communicating
50. 1:57with one another so at one point we had
51. 2:00shared drives between the research team
52. 2:02and the clinical lab team because we had
53. 2:04to cross communicate because we were
54. 2:05leveraging information once we started
55. 2:08making
56. 2:09once we started raising red flags in the
57. 2:11clinical lab all of a sudden people's
58. 2:13Drive access shut
59. 2:15we are put into like a completely
60. 2:18separate lab where we are told we are
61. 2:21not allowed to talk to anyone in any
62. 2:23other department because we have
63. 2:25confidential patient information
64. 2:27stuff like that so we were slowly being
65. 2:30sequestered sort of in these different
66. 2:32areas because they didn't want people in
67. 2:34the clinical setting
68. 2:36um to to start saying anything another
69. 2:39indicator that I didn't realize when I
70. 2:41was young but now I realize is that the
71. 2:44staff was really young
72. 2:46and they didn't have any experience in
73. 2:48terms of the domain that we were in and
74. 2:52essentially for a lot of these roles
75. 2:55they didn't want to take people who had
76. 2:58worked in a hospital for a decade and
77. 3:01then would come and see the experimental
78. 3:03methodologies that we were using because
79. 3:06the moment that they would see them
80. 3:08they'd be like what is this what's going
81. 3:10on here so they took people fresh out of
82. 3:12college just like me to sort of do all
83. 3:15the dirty work and they didn't know any
84. 3:18better they had no idea what was going
85. 3:20on they had no reference of what does a
86. 3:22good laboratory look like and when
87. 3:24you're young you're like this is great
88. 3:26I'm with my peers I have like this fun
89. 3:28working environment with all these
90. 3:30people who are in the same boat as me
91. 3:32but as
92. 3:34when it does get bad that gets very
93. 3:37scary because you're the first one to go
94. 3:38you're the first one that they blame
95. 3:41um and I think now when I talk to
96. 3:43students or other people actually having
97. 3:46these really young environments where
98. 3:47you don't have a diversity of people
99. 3:50with different expertise should be a bit
100. 3:52concerning because they're going to be
101. 3:56able to have more Vantage points to ask
102. 3:58the hard questions of like is this is
103. 4:00this right actually should this be what
104. 4:02we're doing
105. 4:04um and some other things it's like if
106. 4:06if they're claiming sometimes like oh
107. 4:10we're so revolutionary you know the laws
108. 4:13just don't apply to us this was a big
109. 4:15thing that uh theranos would always
110. 4:17claim we can't be regulated because we
111. 4:19are an entirely new product and so The
112. 4:22Regulators don't even know what to do
113. 4:23with us because there's no other product
114. 4:25in this class
115. 4:26but that doesn't detract from like first
116. 4:28principles of like if you give people
117. 4:30false information about their health
118. 4:32status you could kill them if you are
119. 4:34telling your investors we have one thing
120. 4:35and it doesn't exist that's not okay so
121. 4:39uh
122. 4:41so it it was this like bizarre
123. 4:43justification of
124. 4:46um
125. 4:47of
126. 4:48what the actual behaviors in the
127. 4:51organization were right it was it wasn't
128. 4:54sort of uh saying I I don't know anytime
129. 4:58I see companies that are too adversarial
130. 5:00to regulators and not understanding
131. 5:02Regulators are there to protect the
132. 5:04public interest particularly in
133. 5:06regulated spaces there's a reason these
134. 5:09institutions exist so it doesn't have to
135. 5:12be an adversarial relationship but it
136. 5:14really should be what is what are their
137. 5:16goals what are their who are they there
138. 5:19to protect and what do we need to keep
139. 5:23in to consideration about the way that
140. 5:26we're building our business knowing that
141. 5:28they're going to be there to protect
142. 5:29those interests and that's okay because
143. 5:31that's what a what we need in order to
144. 5:34have healthy functioning societies not
145. 5:37only for you know Society to sort of
146. 5:39Thrive but also for even our
147. 5:41organization to thrive and so I think
148. 5:43now that's been a kind of another
149. 5:46indicator if it's like we're so
150. 5:48innovative like no one can touch us or
151. 5:50people just don't understand what we're
152. 5:52trying to do here and it's like no a lot
153. 5:54of people understand what you're trying
154. 5:55to do a lot of people want you to
155. 5:57succeed but that can't come at the cost
156. 6:00of of
157. 6:02um hurting hurting people or really
158. 6:05being
159. 6:06highly detrimental to sort of the public
160. 6:08interest