Question

Theranos. Considering that Holmes and Balwani are the only ones charged by the SEC and the only ones facing criminal charges, what, if any, moral responsibility should be placed on the board of directors, investors, and employees? In other words, should those that enabled Holmes to continue to lie also be held accountable for their actions? Why or why not? Be sure to include moral argumentation to support your position.

Answer 1

The investors, board of directors and employees for Theranos is unlikely to have been completely free of fault in the more than a decade long fraud. The press has called the firm 'secretive' as it struggled to find any pertinent information about the firm due to their closely guarded secrets. The firm operated a barely-there website and seemed to gag its directors, investors and others from talking to the press. These alone should have been a red flag to the investors and board. The PR person also refused interviews, neglected to answer questions about the owners/founders and turned down multiple overtures by the press to try and find out what was going on behind closed doors at Theranos. This encouraged the general perception that the firm was trying to control and minimise risk and possibly to retain an air of mystery. All of which was actually designed to hide the true workings of the firm, and this should have been questioned by all the people involved in the firm.

(Leuty, 2013)

The board as illustrious as theirs would have asked for supporting documentation and reviews for all the key aspects of the company and these would have needed to be audited periodically to ensure that the board can choose the best people in key roles and to enable good decision-making.

Investors also would have done a background check on all material aspects such as legal, ethical etc. before handing over large sums of money. The fact that Holmes and Balwani were in a relationship should have been disclosed by them however this should also have come up in any fact-finding missions conducted over time.

Employees involved in the actual fraud - falsifying results, using other tools to get the results that their tools were supposed to generate etc. were also aware of the issues with the firm likely from the very beginning.

All three groups possibly knew some or all of the aspects of the fraud and yet they did not come forward to disclose the same to the authorities or their customers as they should have. This points to a serious moral lapse amongst all three groups. They each as a group and as individuals in that group needed to take moral responsibility for the fraudulent activities being perpetrated by the couple. As the law goes, the prime players only end up being held accountable however it would have been ethically right for all parties that knew of the fraud to come forward and expose it.

Leaving aside the monetary considerations such as fleecing investors and customers alike, the products were related to the medical field, which above all others has a responsibility to maintain a higher standard of ethics. This fraud caused countless incorrect results that would have been used in medical therapies and diagnoses leading to wrong medication allocations and patient treatments. This in turn would have led to pain and anguish of the physical kind for so many patients, all of whom are the silent sufferers in this fraud.

Legally, pain and suffering cannot be quantified (just estimated) while this is the primary damage that the couple should have actually been charged with. This extremity of damage cannot be adequately presented in a court of law however and that brings us to discussing the morality of the situation. For all of the reasons stated above, the couple and everyone involved in enabling them in the fraud - the board of directors, employees and investors, should definitely be held accountable, if not in a court of law, then at least in the court of public opinion so that fraudsters like them do not get away without paying a price for their actions. All actions have consequences and their actions or lack thereof should be accounted for.  

References :

Leuty, Ron (2013) Secretive Theranos emerging (partly) from shadows. San Francisco Business Times.