Starve Magazine · Dusoma Foundation: AI for Rapid Poverty Reduction · September 8, 2026
*By Kathryn Born*
—
This is a pitch, addressed to reporters and editors, and readers of Starve Magazine. If you are willing – forward it to media outlets you respect and ask them to overcome the challenges of publishing a story about a whistleblower in big pharma, who is in the midst of a federal case in Chicago.
If you cover big pharma, big tech, labor, whistleblowing, AI, Machine Learning and GenAI, or Chicago legal — the story is below, the documents are public, and I can walk you through them in twenty minutes.
The Pharma Whistleblower story – in one paragraph
I was the adoption manager for ARCH, AbbVie’s flagship R&D analytics platform, for four years. In 2024, Bio-IT World reported that two AbbVie vice presidents had used ARCH, the company’s award-winning platform, described in AbbVie’s own materials as central to its AI strategy, to find two marketed drugs for a rare-disease patient in four hours. My job was to turn wins like that into training. I allege that I could not reproduce the workflow in the software, and that when I asked the executive named in the article to walk me through it, he told me the platform “wasn’t there yet” and that he had done the analysis by hand. I also allege that the user figures shown to leadership were cumulative logins since 2019 presented as current use, and that my own performance plan disciplined me for saying the platform had about twenty users a month while the same document put the real number at “more than 400” at a company with roughly 12,000 R&D scientists. I reported this through AbbVie’s ethics office, was put on a performance plan, and was terminated ten days before the deadline HR had set in writing, while the ethics case was still open.
AbbVie disputes all of this. Its response is due in federal court on September 11. No court has ruled on whether any of it is true, and I am not asking anyone to take my word for it. Every sentence above has a paragraph number in *Born v. AbbVie, Inc.*, No. 1:25-cv-12737 (N.D. Ill.), and the filings are on PACER.
Why I am pitching this week
Three days from now, a company with a market capitalization in the hundreds of billions files its answer to a fired training manager who is representing themself. A single LinkedIn post about the case passed 100,000 views without a dollar behind it. LinkedIn also shows me who has read my profile since, and thirty-five of them, so far, work at AbbVie. So based on that and some other website analytics, I can see that the news has hit AbbVie and it’s being widely discussed, as there is web traffic that seems to be coming from my blog post being shared on TEAMS meeting that morning.
I want to be precise about what I am claiming here, because precision is the whole point of the case. I am not claiming the post proves anything about the merits. I am merely claiming that this is a very interesting story.
This kind of success for a pro se whistleblower plaintiff is unprecedented.
A pro se plaintiff is not supposed to survive a motion to dismiss against a Goldberg Kohn defense team, and I cannot begin to speculate what this ten-month ordeal (44 docket entries in PACER and counting) – what this case has already cost the company (and ultimately patients). Wrongful termination cases and whistleblower almost always die quietly. See my blog post “20 Catch-22s and Maddening Truths About Being a Corporate Whistleblower”(https://dusoma.com/20-catch-22s-and-maddening-truths-about-being-a-corporate-whistleblower/).
AbbVie has effectively unlimited legal resources, but they cannot sustain unlimited reputational damage. Every post I publish is something a billing attorney has to read, on the chance that I have made a mistake they can use.
But that said, IF we were talking about a settlement, it is within the realm of possibility that it would come with an NDA, a non-disclosure agreement. And that needs to be honored. But if that were the case (speaking hypothetically) than I am looking at a very short window of when I can tell this story.
As of today, 9/8/26, I have no lawyer to tell me not to talk. I have not settled. I have not signed anything. I am the rare source who can say every word of this on the record, today, with paragraph numbers, before the case is decided. That is what I am offering, and I am aware of how unusual it is.
**Kathryn Born**
Founder & Executive Director, Dusoma Foundation: AI for Rapid Poverty Reduction
Editor in Chief, Starve Magazine
Training & Communications Manager, ARCH, AbbVie R&D (2018–2025)
kathryn.born@dusoma.org
*Born v. AbbVie, Inc.*, No. 1:25-cv-12737 (N.D. Ill.), Judge Lindsay C. Jenkins — filings on PACER
Press release: https://www.openpr.com/news/4618944/
Background: [The Mythical Magic Medicine Machine](https://dusoma.com/) · [20 Catch-22s](https://dusoma.com/20-catch-22s-and-maddening-truths-about-being-a-corporate-whistleblower/)
*AbbVie disputes the allegations in this case. No court has ruled on their merits. Nothing here is legal advice.*