The ‘life’s work’ metric doesn’t say it’s wasted - it ends up folks pockets, of course, eventually. And some of that will of course also go into things which are more than ‘just’ living.

It’s what it was directed to accomplish, and if that activity produced something of equivalent value (or more) on it’s journey to that state, or dissipated into heat and noise.

Near as I can tell, Theranos was at least 99% heat and noise.