Dr. Phyllis Gardner was an early critic of Holmes's business aspirations at Stanford, where she served as a Medical School Professor. In the early 2000s, before she dropped out, Holmes discussed her ideas with Gardner. At the time, her future business hinged on a patch that could detect infections in a person, and dispense antibiotics according to the diagnosis. Gardner conveyed to Holmes that, for several reasons, her idea was not realistic, but that didn't stop Holmes from pursuing her med-tech dreams and being branded "brilliant" by the media and Silicon Vally investors who'd fallen hook, line, and sinker for her cons.
"The hubris of that just drove me insane," she told Refinery29 in 2019. "Don't call her 'brilliant.' She is just a whipper-snapper kid. It was very tough for me all those years, and part of it was that women were idolizing her. I didn't like that they were idolizing a fraud... I don't want anyone to think this has anything to do with anti-woman bias. This has everything to do with anti-sociopath virus... I just am glad that she is done shamming the world and endangering patients. It drove me crazy."