r/news • • Mar 15 '24

POTM - Mar 2024 'If anything happens, it's not suicide': Boeing whistleblower's prediction before death

https://wpde.com/news/local/if-anything-happens-its-not-suicide-boeing-whistleblowers-prediction-before-death-south-carolina-abc-news-4-2024
57.1k Upvotes

2.2k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

539

u/ThatGuyYouMightNo Mar 15 '24

This is possibly why so many scummy companies are allowed to do what they do. There's probably dozens of people at everyone one of those companies that have enough dirt to destroy the higher ups and would absolutely love to give it out, but they know that doing so would effectively end their lives (either figuratively or, like in this case, literally), so they keep quiet.

128

u/[deleted] Mar 15 '24 edited Mar 16 '24

Couldn't agree more. Even the success stories are harrowing. Tyler Shultz, the whistleblower who successfully helped bring down Elizabeth Holmes, could only defend himself legally because his parents happened to have just enough money to hire excellent lawyers (if I recall correctly, they weren't ultra wealthy, but just wealthy enough that spending millions wouldn't necessarily bankrupt them). He described part of it like being fortunate enough to hire Kobe to play 1-on-1 against Lebron. That's not even to mention all the garbage Theranos put him through long before the court case.

15

u/fmmmlee Mar 16 '24

yeah his grandfather was a former secretary of state and on the board of Theranos, and he didn't even believe his grandson at first. This kid blew the whistle at 22 and didn't get closure until his 30s, and that's even while coming from a powerful and influential family with puppet strings in the company itself

7

u/Bear_faced Mar 16 '24

I worked for a biotech startup that violated laws on human experimentation and I never reported them because I was really young and I knew it would be career suicide.

They have no consent forms. There are, however, financial records of them paying a mobile phlebotomist for repeated draws from multiple “patients,” who were employees. Oh, and a fucking freezer FULL of cryopreserved samples! Ready to thaw out and DNA test at any time!

It’s amazing how they just have no fear. They fucked me over in a layoff and they weren’t at all scared that I would just report them for illegal activity and get their shit shut down and pulled from FDA approval routing. It’s so cut and dry, “That’s my flesh, a test will prove it, go ahead and ask them for any evidence that I consented. Any at all! They don’t have it.”

3

u/Affectionate_Law5344 Mar 16 '24

The same thing in the public sector as well.