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EC Erika Cheung On Start Here

“That to me is what integrity is. It's not me being morally upright and saying I'm here to save the day. It's like, no, we said we were going to do this thing and we're not doing this thing. And worse yet, we're doing the exact opposite. We could kill people. I don't understand how you don't do anything.”

Start Here · Policy · November 2026

“That to me is what integrity is. It's not me being morally upright and saying I'm here to save the day. It's like, no, we said we were going to do this thing and we're not doing this thing. And worse yet, we're doing the exact opposite. We could kill people. I don't understand how you don't do anything.” — Erika Cheung, Start Here

Context

Asked why, at 22 and in her first job, she chose to report what she saw at Theranos, she says framing it as heroism misses the point.

Transcript

Start Here Around 14:26 into the episode
Speaker 4

…a great space to be in personally. That even though it was very hard for me, I've been able to make my peace with it and be able to build a better life for myself and other people. And I think that's the best outcome that anyone could hope from what was a horrible situation for many, many years.

Speaker 1

…You paint the picture. This was your first job. You're 22 years old. It's not like you have a big group of people who you can go to and ask, what should I do? Am I making the right choice right now? You didn't have some kind of safety net, but you still made the decision to tell the truth. Why?

Speaker 4

It's because of the patience, right? It was the simple fact. Like, honestly, this blowing up into a big case and all this, I could have never had any insight into that. For me, it was really we're testing on patients with a faulty product. This product needs to get pulled because it could kill people or could just devastate their lives. And those patients could be my sister. Those patients could be my mom. Those patients could be me. And as much as I try and rationalize for people, it's very intuitive, right? I was very genuine in I joined Theranos because I wanted to be able to make sure that people received good and affordable health care. And when what we were doing was so incongruous with that mission, it's just, I just can't help myself, right? I can't help myself but say something. Even though this whole experience was so hard, it was so easy because it was so clear that this just needed to stop. And, you know, I was so grateful, in fact, for every door that I uncovered to just get people to garner more awareness on we need to stop like that company needs to stop testing patients.…

Speaker 2

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Speaker 4

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Speaker 3

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Speaker names come from our own diarization. The position is estimated from where the line sits in the episode.

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