The grilling of former Theranos lab director Adam Rosendorff continued Tuesday, with the defense hammering Dr. Rosendorff about his activities there prior to his departure in August 2014, catching him on contradictions in his testimony, painting him as self-serving and, through his actions there and with later companies, essentially incompetent.
Lance Wade, the defense attorney handling today’s redirect, returned to Dr. Rosendorff’s testimony about the lower-than-normal HDL levels recorded by the Edison lab machine. Earlier, he had testified about his major issue with it, urging Ms. Holmes and COO Sunny Balwani to discontinue the test but got “pushback”. Using a long trail of emails, Mr. Wade continued what’s proving to be a theme at this trial–that the government is showing only limited information to witnesses and the jury, that Holmes and Balwani addressed problems, and that Dr. Rosendorff often used his own judgment to resolve problems without discussion with Holmes or Balwani. Dr. Rosendorff admitted, contradicting his earlier testimony, that Balwani and others “jumped” on the HDL readings right away, and that the real problem was with a Siemens machine.
Mr. Wade also got Rosendorff to admit that in a civil case, he testified that complaints about Theranos “weren’t more common than what usually sees in … some labs with high volume” and, even more specifically, that “I don’t think I had a greater number of tests that were anomalous that I had to review at Theranos than at other places I’ve been like University of Pittsburgh.”
Dr. Rosendorff, according to reports, kept commenting on his earlier testimony to reinforce that decisions made at Theranos were ‘not good solutions’, no matter what he believed or how he acted at the time. Mr. Wade tried to have these comments struck from the record, but Judge Davila ruled that both should move on.
Finally, Mr. Wade brought up as confirmation of Dr. Rosendorff’s incompetence his subsequent employment and termination at now out of business uBiome, charged with health fraud (but not fraudulent lab tests) but was not permitted to go beyond basic statements. He was permitted to ask about Dr. Rosendorff’s current employer, PerkinElmer, which has also violated CMS (Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services) regulations by the same inspectors who audited Theranos, and which may cause the loss of his license for two years. NBCBayArea, CNBC, Ars Technica
(Editor’s note: unfortunately the Mercury News, Bloomberg, and WSJ coverage are heavily paywalled after one or two views. The WSJ focused on text messages between Holmes and Balwani, and the Mercury News added color coverage of Holmes’ lifestyle with Balwani and vegan diet.)
To be continued…
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