Theranos Whistleblower Tyler Shultz: A Tale of Courage and Ethical Duty

In the annals of corporate fraud, few stories resonate as powerfully as that of Theranos, the Silicon Valley biotech startup that promised to revolutionize blood testing but collapsed under the weight of its own deception. At the heart of this saga is Tyler Shultz, a young whistleblower whose courage exposed the company’s fraudulent practices, sparking a reckoning that reverberated across the legal, business and medical worlds. As a professional ethics CLE instructor, adjunct law professor and disciplinary investigator, I’ve spent my career exploring the ethical dilemmas that define the legal profession. Recently, I partnered with Tyler to create a two-hour on-demand ethics CLE program for Law.com’s CLE Center, titled Fraud is Not a Trade Secret: An Interview with the Theranos Whistleblower and the Lessons of Attorney Ethics. This article recounts Tyler’s extraordinary journey and invites legal professionals to explore its lessons through our CLE program, which bridges his real-world experience with the ethical obligations enshrined in the Rules of Professional Conduct.