lately one of the most exciting privately held companies in Silicon Valley has come under Fire I'm talking about thos that's the Diagnostics company with the ultra fast finger prick blood Tech testing technology that's aiming to upend the entire traditional Healthcare establishment by making it easier less expensive and much less uncomfortable for you to get tested for a whole range of conditions for the last few years thonos has been viewed as is a revolutionary Company CEO has been har his next Eve jobs company's been valued as much as $9 billion in its most recent round of fundraising but thos also has its critics and just this morning the Wall Street Journal ran a pretty scathing article about the company alleging that the company's proprietary testing devices may be inaccurate and basically accusing Theos of deceptive practices the journal sites a former employee who claimed that of the 240 tests offered by thonos only 15 are actually performed on the company's proprietary Edison diagnostic machine vast majority of the rest being done on traditional lab equipment the article was pretty brutal but hero mad money we know something we know that there are two sides to every single story which is why I think it's important that we speak to Elizabeth Holmes the founder and CEO of thonos who's coming to us this afternoon from Boston where she's attending a meeting of the board of fellows at Harvard Medical School to give her a chance to answer the charges raised in the article Miss Holmes welcome back to M money it's great to be here thank you thank you Elizabeth I have to tell you in all my years I can't recall a private company that I have to can't believe many have never heard of getting this kind of attention and scrutiny what do you think's going on here this is what happens when you work to change things and first they think you're crazy then they fight you and then all of a sudden you change the world and um I I have to say I I I personally was shocked to see that the journal would publish something like this when we had sent them over a thousand pages of documentation demonstrating that the state in their peace were false but um but we're doing things differently and we're working to make a difference and that means people raise questions and and that's okay uh but in this case it was pretty disappointing to see that after every single one of the sources that we spoke with who the journal had contacted told us that the statements that were being attributed to them were false or misleading and the only sources who were left were ones who wouldn't speak with us who on their own website say that they now do business with labor in their office or in the other case demanded in writing that we pay them in cash upfront $2,500 for an hour to talk to them about their statements to the journal Journal those things did the journal know everything that you just said before they wrote the article of of course absolutely oh okay uh at the same time pretty negative article so let me ask you you I know that you've talked to us about your partnership with Walgreens one of the best uh retailer out there great drugstore chain Cleveland Clinic one of obviously the most admired uh Health Care Facilities did he either call you today and say you know what we got to rethink our relationship absolutely not we're incredibly blessed to have Partners who have worked with us have actually seen our technology and unfortunately in this case we offered to bring our technology to the journal offices to show them the technology they were questioning running firsthand and they denied uh that uh request to show it to them but Cleveland Clinic uh Walgreens so many of the other partners that we've have have seen our technology they've worked with us they've used our systems and they understand what we're doing and they understand that when you try to change things uh people react to it all right so let me get this right you offered to bring the test to the journal so presumably you would have been comfortable with say a hundred different people at the journal taking your test matching them against Quest or Lab Corp and you were perfectly willing to have that happen absolutely we offered to bring devices to their offices and what did they say as a reason why they didn't want to do that because the story needed to get out immediately well let's talk about that even though they've been reporting on it they said uh you know again because first of all it's the Wall Street Journal this is not a national inquire here uh but they did say that they after uh tried they pursued you for an interview for for five months uh you uh declined interview request from the journal for more than 5 months last week the company said she would be available but her schedule didn't allow it before the publication of this article uh why not just sit down with them I mean what it reputable outfit why not just sit down with them months ago and and explain your side of the story sure yeah I mean the the journal actually had a member of their editorial board WR the very first piece on Theos and that person Joe Rego came out to our lab saw our systems and really got insight into our work that was about a year ago I published my oped in the journal and um unfortunately in this case the reporter focused on sources who we knew in 2004 and 2005 who were the people who um had said to me that there was no way I was going to succeed and be able to build this kind of company and and focused on uh you know questions like asking whether I could prove that I actually invented the patents that my name were on and those are not very fruitful conversations in the context of Engagement but when we had the opportunity to engage with more people in the journal we said we absolutely were ready to sit down and do that and um Unfortunately they offered a 3-day window in which we had told them I was not available before it was uh quote unquote necessary to get this published well let's talk about the substance uh of some of the charges they raised for instance here's just a uh just a outright sentence an assertion Theos also hasn't disclosed publicly that it does the vast majority of its tests with traditional machines bought from the from companies like Seaman AG true or false so this is taken completely out of context um starting when we launched our services is in 2013 we put on our website that we do Venus testing so blood dries from the arm the traditional way and starting in 2015 we announced and it was published in San Francisco paper in uh Fortune I talked about it in an interview I did with Forbes that we made a decision to expand our test menu to include all the specialty and S soteric tests that are traditionally run only very infrequently but cost to huge amount of money and we believe as part of what we do that one of our greatest Innovations is making these tests available at extremely low cost and so we expanded our test menu and made all these tests available through Venus draws we updated our website to reflect that and so yes now we have a huge number of tests that are available through our lab but instead of charging $10,000 for them we're charging $2.99 okay and this is listed on the Walgreens website we've put it in our own press and it's out there well how many tests can your device Edison do the Wall Street Journal says it can only do 15 out of 240 yes so we had communicated to the Wall Street Journal that we have submitted over 130 pre-submission to FDA with test running on our proprietary devices um and have been taking those through the FDA submission process every test that we offer in our laboratory can run on our proprietary devices we bring tests up on our proprietary Dev devices based on the frequency with which they're run so at any given point in time uh we're running the tests that are most commonly ordered um but we've also done a lot of work as part of this commitment that we've made and it's been very controversial that we've actually become the first company advocating for FDA regulation of lab developed tests and as part of that we have said that we think that every lab developed test really should go through the FDA submission process and so we've been cons with it and in fact we even just recently took our nanot tainers through the FDA clearance process and sent submissions in for those and as part of that process we're not even using our nanot tainers except for FDA cleared assays um so that every single thing that runs on our platform is getting to the point that it's going to be FDA cleared one last question uh obviously that there's some dispute here the journal doesn't make stuff up why not just have the study of hundreds of people thonos versus Quest Lab Corp just say listen we're willing to do it we're willing to do it now is Lab Corp is Quest Corp is Quest just say it right now on air Quest Lab Corp we want to do a head-to-head 200 200 300 400 patients what do it say yes we we've already done it we've already done it absolutely and it's actually even published in our FDA decision summary from this summer from a 900 patient study where we got FDA clearance of the exact system that the journal is questioning and demonstrated Venus versus finger stick across a huge number number of patients it was 889 I think for that test and we've done that over and over again for every single test excellent Elizabeth Holmes founder chair and COO of Theos thank you for coming on Mad Money and from the from the Harvard Med School good to see you good to see you too meet the journal listen to our interview you make up your mind stick with KR booah Jim Kramer here from M money thanks for watching CNBC on YouTube click here to subscribe and get the jump on my exclusives with CEOs Plus Market news investing advice and a whole lot more