FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Former AbbVie Manager Alleges “AI Whitewashing” Behind R&D “Magic Medicine-Making Machine” as Whistleblower Case Enters New Phase
CHICAGO — September 1, 2026 — As pharmaceutical companies race to cast artificial intelligence as the future of drug discovery, a federal whistleblower case against AbbVie is asking an uncomfortable question: what happens when the story about an AI platform moves faster than the platform itself?
Kathryn Born, an AbbVie Training and Communications Manager from 2018 until her September 2025 termination, calls it “AI whitewashing” — wrapping a system in the language of artificial intelligence until the impression of capability runs well beyond what the software can do. In Born v. AbbVie, Inc., No. 1:25-cv-12737 (N.D. Ill.), she alleges that is what happened around ARCH, the AbbVie R&D Convergence Hub — the analytics platform AbbVie’s public materials describe as central to its AI strategy — and that she was fired for reporting it to internal ethics (OEC).
One episode anchors the complaint. In 2024, Bio-IT World reported that AbbVie Vice President Howard Jacob and colleague Phil Hajduk had used ARCH — winner of a 2023 Bio-IT World Innovative Practices Award — to identify, in roughly four hours, two marketed drugs with potential relevance to Carney complex, a rare genetic disease. It was the “Magic Medicine Machine” in action: question in, breakthrough out.
Born’s complaint alleges a different story behind the story. Her job was to turn wins like this into training, and she alleges she could not reproduce the workflow in ARCH. When she asked Hajduk directly, the complaint alleges, he told her the platform “wasn’t there yet” — he had done the analysis himself, by hand, using conventional scientific research tools. The story kept circulating, and, Born alleges, no one tested the software against its own most famous use case. Her complaint also alleges that adoption figures shown to leadership were cumulative totals dressed up as regular use, and never independently validated.
AbbVie has not answered these allegations on the merits; it has moved to dismiss at the pleading stage, and no court has determined whether the allegations are true.
The procedural path has been unusual. Born began with counsel and has represented herself since early 2026, opposite a Goldberg Kohn defense team and AbbVie in-house counsel. On July 8, U.S. District Judge Lindsay C. Jenkins granted AbbVie’s earlier motion to dismiss without prejudice. Five days later, Born filed a rebuilt complaint asserting a single claim under the Illinois Whistleblower Act. AbbVie moved to dismiss again on August 19. Born filed her opposition on August 27.
That latest filing turns some of AbbVie’s own wording against it: AbbVie’s memorandum treats the Bio-IT World account as third-party journalism not attributable to AbbVie, though the article centers on statements by AbbVie’s own vice president.
Notably, AbbVie’s motion does not seek dismissal for any absence of alleged causation.
“We have been going back and forth in docket entries for over ten months,” Born said. “There is a great deal of debate over labels, verb tenses and the definition of the word ‘users’ or ‘belief’ — arguing about each brick, never about the wall. I reported what I believed was misconduct through company channels, I was put on a performance plan, and I was terminated weeks later while the ethics investigation was still open. While that was happening I was telling multiple people in writing that I was being retaliated against.”
The case may soon intersect with a larger industry question. Born says a one-year post-employment restriction expires in mid-September, after which she will release the HOLLY Research Whitepaper, an AI research framework she began developing inside pharmaceutical R&D. Rather than claiming a single system that “discovers medicine,” HOLLY maps what a transparent, auditable architecture would actually require to connect scientific questions, data sources, analytical tools, evidence and human expertise.
“AI can radically improve pharmaceutical research,” Born said. “But first we have to be able to tell the difference between the software we actually launched and the machine we wish we had built.”
AbbVie is contesting the case and has asked the court to dismiss it. The allegations described above are as set forth in court filings, available via PACER.
Media Contact:
Kathryn Born
Dusoma Foundation: AI for Humanity
kathryn@dusoma.com
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The 15 Page Document is here in full – https://dusoma.com/opposition-of-mtd-born-v-abbvie-aug-27-2026/
Layman’s Narrative of Case- 15 Illustrated Stories from the case documents https://dusoma.com/born-v-abbvie-pharma-whistleblower/
Press release on OpenPR- https://www.openpr.com/news/4618944/former-abbvie-manager-alleges-ai-whitewashing-as . Thank you to OpenPR, I had to find a newswire company in Europe to distribute this.