MUCH to the dismay of global warming enthusiasts this winter Europe remained, and still is here and there, in the grip of freezing Siberian winds, biting below-zero temperatures, snowfalls and heavy rains.

The good news is that by mid April days are longer and when the sun is able to show its face now and then, it’s a fairly agreeable feeling.

The wine vintage season still months away, we are all once again together in the Loire Valley chateau of Count André de la Roche. The topic of discussion this evening is the way very young, inexperienced and openly unethical people are making fortunes using today’s satellite technologies.

Claude St Denis, an economist and internet specialist says:

“Let me tell you the story of a woman still in her early thirties but already worth nine billion dollars.”

St Denis glances amusingly at the Count and continues his story:

“Silicon Valley being very different from the Loire Valley where people work hard on vineyards for pleasure as well as in order to maintain a tradition, this American girl named Elizabeth Holmes put together a weird business, only at age nineteen, offering to provide blood analyses through internet.

“Normally when a doctor asks a patient to submit a sample, about ten milliliters of blood are extracted from a vein in the arm and collected in four or five plastic tubes. It takes the laboratory about 48 hours to return a complete dissection, property stamped and signed by a qualified expert.

“But Holmes’ laboratory, called Theranos, miraculously performed the whole task ten times more rapidly and at a much lesser cost, supposedly using computerised high tech invented by her own wonderful self.

“All you needed was to get in touch with Theranos using your smartphone. You sent a tiny pinpoint of your blood and within no time received a thorough result through email.

“Elizabeth Holmes’ business was such a gargantuan triumph that Forbes magazine gave her portrait a cover display four years ago as the youngest self-made female billionaire in the world.

“However, things suddenly fell apart last month when the US Securities and Exchange Commission sued Holmes for massive fraud. There was no such thing as an internet blood analysis technology as she had claimed.

“However, America being America, Holmes remains a free citizen after agreeing to pay half a million dollars as fine and relinquishing her voting power as Theranos chief. She is also barred from having a position of responsibility in a public company.

“Using the so called ‘social media’, Holmes attracted more and more investments with fake news that included stories of the State Department using Theranos technology on the battlefields in Afghanistan.”

“Friends, kindly allow me to end my story,” says St Denis, looking at all of us in turns, “by citing none other than the legendary American capitalist John D. Rockefeller: The best way of making money is to buy what you can when blood is running in the streets.”

At this point our journalist friend Jean Lauvergeat turns toward the Count and says: “If I remember it right, you had already predicted three years ago that Holmes was a fraud and that she would fall off the roof one day or the other. How did you know that?”

The Count lights his pipe, takes a deep draw, extends his feet by the fireplace, closes his eyes, releases smoke through his nostrils and says in English with heavy French accent: “Elementary, my dear Watson!”

The writer is a journalist based in Paris.
ZafMasud@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, April 13th, 2018