>>Rebecca Jarvis: We'll start with a little
bit of your personal life because you started
life as Martin.
>>Martine Rothblatt: That's true.
>>Rebecca Jarvis: And are now Martine.
>>Martine Rothblatt: Correct.
>>Rebecca Jarvis: Tell us a little bit about
that.
[ Laughter ]
>>Rebecca Jarvis: You've got two minutes.
Joke.
Kidding.
>>Martine Rothblatt: Well, it's -- it's just
sort of a journey of gender exploration, what
we call today being transgendered.
And generally allowing your internal gyroscope
of where you feel your gender identity is
to express itself, notwithstanding society's
efforts to shove everybody into either a male
or female box.
>>Rebecca Jarvis: And that has driven a lot
of -- of what you're working on today in terms
of thinking about science and technology and
how it can shape the world going forward?
>>Martine Rothblatt: I mean, generally, I
think that there are definitely some real
boundaries in life that people have to respect.
I look at those mostly as like the laws of
physics, but -- or the laws of society which
are created.
But within those boundaries of either the
laws of society or the laws of physics, there
are many borders that we make artificially
for ourselves.
And I think it's beautiful when people transcend
those borders, such as, you know, transmitting
energy through the air that was a border that
everybody said couldn't be passed, and we
just saw before us that that was not a boundary,
but just a border that you could walk over
and transcend.
>>Rebecca Jarvis: And you yourself have done
this multiple times.
You've constantly reinvented the work that
you're doing.
You began with Sirius satellite.
How did you come up with that idea?
>>Martine Rothblatt: So it was really a fascination
with satellite Earth stations and wondering
why the satellite dishes that we see sometimes
at cable TV headquarters are so large.
And I learned that it was because the satellites
that were transmitting to them had such weak
power.
There's no place to plug in a satellite.
There's no nuclear power sources for satellites.
And I began wondering if we could make the
satellites more and more powerful and focus
the energy on a specific part of the Earth,
such as the United States, then, in turn,
the satellite dishes could be made smaller
and smaller, and, ultimately, you can imagine
just taking a flat section of a big satellite
dish, it would be almost flat, as your section
got smaller and smaller, eventually it would
be flat.
It could fit conformally in the roof of a
car, and tada, SiriusXM.
>>Rebecca Jarvis: It's so interesting that
you talk about it that way.
So many people if they started radio in a
different form would be thinking about the
content.
They'd be thinking about that angle.
Did that part of it cross your mind?
>>Martine Rothblatt: The content part crossed
my mind, especially when I began trying to
persuade other people to invest in this project.
One of the first things that people brought
up was that, well, who's going to financially
support this?
And my response was that people would pay
for this content because the choices on the
FM and radio band were quite limited.
If you were really into, for example, Howard
stern is perhaps the iconic example, if you
were in a city that had Howard stern, great.
But if you were not, you know, there was no
Howard stern.
And by collecting people's desire to listen
to that content, people are willing to pay
14 bucks a month, and now we have, you know,
millions of listeners of Howard throughout
North America.
And that's actually the largest group of people
that come up to me and thank me for SiriusXM.
[ Laughter ]
[ Applause ]
>>Rebecca Jarvis: He should be thanking you.
It's been great for him, too.
>>Martine Rothblatt: He has.
He's been very generous.
It's been great.
>>Rebecca Jarvis: Financially, it was a wonderful
thing for you as well.
You could have, essentially, signed off on
life at that point and continued on that path.
Unfortunately, or fortunately, however you
want to look at it, your daughter came down
with a life-threatening disease.
And you decided you were going to change that,
that you were going to address that, because
there was nothing out there to address it.
>>Martine Rothblatt: Exactly, Rebecca.
She came down with pulmonary arterial hypertension.
It's a life-threatening disease between the
lungs and the heart.
She's our youngest daughter, fourth kid, so
it was quite unexpected.
Everybody else was healthy, and she was healthy
up until then.
My first thought was, I think, that doctors
are supposed to take care of this.
But the doctors told us that she would need
a lung transplant within three to four years,
and -- and that even that lung transplant
was just a short purchase of time until she
rejected it.
I thought that surely there must be a pharmaceutical
company working on something.
And I went and did research, and I found out
that nobody was working on anything because
the number of patients with this condition
was so few, it was at that time just 3,000
patients in the whole United States, that
no pharmaceutical company could make a business
on a medicine for just 3,000 patients.
So the next thing I thought of was that, well,
why don't I use some of our money from SiriusXM
to create a medical research foundation, and
we'll give grants to scientists.
And surely scientists will come up with a
cure.
That's what scientists do.
So I did that for a couple of years, and really,
progress was getting nowhere.
The people came up with kind of, you know,
very beautifully written proposals, but two
years later, Jenesis was mostly in the intensive
care ward.
That's the name of our daughter.
And the medicines that were promised were
actually not even one month closer.
They were still as far away as the day when
I gave them their first grant.
I don't fault the scientists.
You know, moving biology around is not difficult
-- is not easy.
But one of the scientists was very honest
with me, Dr. Barst from Columbia Presbyterian
Hospital.
She said, "Martine, everybody in our little
field loves your generosity, but it's not
going to produce a medicine in time for your
daughter.
There is a medicine that was developed at
Glaxo-Wellcome, but they kept it experimental
and they won't further develop it because
the number of patients is too small, and they
have a policy of only going after blockbuster
diseases, ones that will produce a billion
dollars or more in revenues.
Surely you, with all of your satellite communications
expertise, you could go to Glaxo and get that
medicine out of them and develop it for your
daughter."
I was, like, "Right."
I thought she was crazy, to tell you the truth.
I had never even taken biology in college.
The last biology course I took was in tenth
grade.
But I had no choice.
My soul mate, Bina, and I, Jenesis's mother,
you know, we'd be crying.
Jenesis herself said, "Can't you do something
for me?"
So I basically just threw myself headlong
into biology.
I got my basic college biology textbooks and
then medical textbooks and journal articles.
I would read back and forth, you know, whenever
I didn't understand anything, I went back
to the college level, then went up to the
journal level.
I went down to Glaxo.
I begged for them to license me this medicine.
At first, they said no.
Second, they said no.
But one of my favorite attitudes is that people
always say no before they say yes.
So I keep bugging -- I kept bugging them,
and I built up a credible team of people.
I got a Nobel laureate, Sir John Vane to join
my scientific advisory board.
And finally they agreed to license me the
medicine for $25,000 and 10% of revenues.
They thought this was just get Rothblatt off
our floors.
I mean, they -- they had thought there was
absolutely no prospect of this medicine ever
being developed into a drug.
And it's so funny, because we have now paid
them hundreds of millions of dollars in royalties
of their 10% royalty.
Sales are over a billion dollars a year.
The number of patients is now over 30,000.
So ten times more patients.
All of those are people who just would not
be alive without these medicines.
[ Applause ]
And I must add, as a coda, best of all is,
the inspiration for all of this, our daughter
Jenesis, she just turned 30, and she's in
charge of telepresence and digital screenage
at all of our companies, helps everybody work
together to develop better and better treatments.
[ Cheers and applause ]
>>Rebecca Jarvis: One component that I found
very interesting about United Therapeutics
is also the idea of payment.
It is a business.
>>Martine Rothblatt: Yes.
>>Rebecca Jarvis: It has to be profitable.
>>Martine Rothblatt: Yes.
>>Rebecca Jarvis: But you also are making
sure that people who come to you in need are
getting that help, regardless of their ability
to pay.
>>Martine Rothblatt: Correct.
We faced a fundamental business dilemma at
the beginning.
Glaxo was, in a sense, right, based on what
people paid for medicines in the 1990s, you
could not support the cost of drug development
for a drug that treated 3,000 patients.
But, fortunately, I did have a legal background,
too, from UCLA Law School.
So I looked into my own Blue Cross Blue Shield
contract.
And I saw that they said that they wouldn't
pay for cosmetic surgery, they wouldn't pay
for experimental medicines, but there was
no price cap on what they would pay for something
that was, quote, unquote, medically necessary
treatment.
So I just really did the math.
I said, okay, you know, what net present value
do I need to satisfy investors that they'll
get a good return on their investment?
How many patients are there?
Divide the number of patients into that amount
of money.
What must be the cost of the drug.
It turned out it had to cost $100,000 a year.
At that time, there was no medicine costing
$100,000 a year.
And I think many people in our little biotechnology
industry should maybe thank me for the fact
that now there's, like, a couple dozen medicines
that cost more than $100,000 a year.
But, fortunately, that means that there are
thousands of people with orphan diseases that
would have never gotten their diseases treated,
and biotech companies that treat orphan diseases
are now amongst the most profitable and successful
segment of the pharma industry.
>>Rebecca Jarvis: I do wonder - and this is
sort of a curveball question that we didn't
talk about before, but you brought it up,
so I want to ask you about it.
The idea of the venture community, of funding
going towards these businesses that have very
big but untested and potentially very expensive-to-get-there
ideas.
How difficult -- if you were starting all
of this today, do you think it would be more
difficult or easier, given the way of the
world as it stands today?
>>Martine Rothblatt: I think it would be pretty
much equivalent.
There -- People are always disbelieving until
something is created for them.
And there's this great saying by Arthur C.
Clarke, the famous science fiction writer
who discovered geostationary satellites.
He said, "If a wizened expert in a field,"
which are either VCs or the consultants that
VCs hire to advise them, "tells you something
is impossible, they are almost certainly wrong.
And if a wizened expert in the field tells
you something is possible, they're almost
certainly right."
So these VCs, they're risk averse and it will
always be difficult.
What's needed is to be practical, to make
a prototype to show people that this is practical,
to be persistent, to be ready to march through
99 noes for that one yes, and to finally communicate
your idea in a step-wise, sensible fashion.
And entrepreneurs are doing this today.
They did it 20 years ago.
Actually, they did it 200 years ago.
>>Rebecca Jarvis: If that wasn't enough, you
are now also focusing on what I would say
is somewhat of a new venture.
You're looking into software, and you believe
that software will have consciousness.
>>Martine Rothblatt: That's right.
Yes, Rebecca.
The -- I'm really inspired by the exponential
growth in information technology.
Ray Kurzweil, the author of Age of Spiritual
Machines and The Singularity is Near, he's
on our board of directors.
And he has actually had a very successful
track record in terms of predicting new inventions
that will come about as a result of the exponential
growth in I.T. technology.
So it seems to me that the natural extension
of Ray's ideas is that we will get to a point
where software is so sophisticated and so
capable that it will do its best to persuade
us that it's conscious.
And at the beginning, everyone will say, no,
you're not conscious.
You're just a smart puppet.
Hackers and makers and software companies
and DARPA contractors will work harder and
harder and harder to make this consciousness
more and more affable, more feelable, more
real.
And there will come finally a tipping point
when you can have a group of psychologists
that would spend a year with a software mind
and after a year, that group of psychologists
would say, this software mind is as human
as anybody person, although it lacks a body.
>>Rebecca Jarvis: Did you ever consider the
downside of that?
>>Martine Rothblatt: Sure.
Absolutely.
There's -- there's, you know, the possibility
of crazy software minds.
And, in fact, about 1% of all human births
result in a condition, a psychological condition,
where people just have a lack of affect and
even an antisocial, antisocial behavior type
of disorder.
But, you know, fire was used to burn people,
and they used fire to say if you're telling
the truth, then your hand won't burn when
you put your hand, just horrible, horrible
things have been done in the name of fire.
But our whole society is based on fire.
So I believe that the answer to the negative
face of technology is to emphasize the positive
face of technology, build better and better
positive technology, create safe harbors for
positive technology, because ultimately, it
will take a good software mind to catch a
bad software mind.
>>Rebecca Jarvis: It is said that you want
to knock down the wall between biological
and digital life and death.
What does that mean?
>>Martine Rothblatt: Well, one very practical
way that we're doing that right now, Rebecca,
is in a partnership between our company, United
Therapeutics, and Craig Venter's companies,
Synthetic Genomics and Human Longevity, Inc.,
where we're using the biological-to-digital
and digital-to-biological expertise of human
Longevity, Inc., and Synthetic Genomics to
decode the pig genome.
Now, the pig genome results in organs like
hearts and lungs and kidneys and livers that
are the best size match for human organs of
any animal in the animal kingdom, even better
match to us than chimpanzees, without the
associated ethical issues.
So we believe that our partnership with Human
Longevity and Synthetic Genomics will allow
us to make enough tweaks and changes in the
pig genome, using digital-to-biological and
biological-back-to-digital techniques, that
we can create an unlimited supply of transplantable
organs, starting with the lung and the heart.
And this means that when people reach the
point of having end-stage heart disease, end-stage
lung disease, instead of, like, you know,
just calmly marching off to death, instead,
they can say, hey, when my car needs a new
engine, I replace it.
We've got B-52 bombers that are still flying,
built in the '50s, but so many parts have
been replaced, they're older than even the
grandparents of some of the pilots.
So we could replace our lungs and our hearts
with an unlimited supply of transplantable
organs thanks to being able to walk back and
forth from digital to biological.
>>Rebecca Jarvis: We'll talk more with Craig
in a minute more about this project, but it's
interesting because on some levels this goes
back to Jenesis.
>>Martine Rothblatt: Yes, it does, because
still with people with pulmonary hypertension
and our daughter Jenesis, they all take a
handful of pills each day.
Most people with pulmonary hypertension, ultimately
they progress.
Their disease keeps progressing through the
treatments, and the only absolute cure is
a lung transplant.
But as most people know, people end up rejecting
the lung transplants.
It's a similar situation with pulmonary fibrosis,
cystic fibrosis, emphysema, even lung cancer.
So what we believe we can do is by tweaking
the pig genome, using these digital and biological
techniques, we can create a lung which is
tolerable by the human body so the patients
will not have to take lifelong immunosuppressants
and replacing one's lungs will be a true cure
for end-stage lung disease.
>>Rebecca Jarvis: You are also a futurist.
What do you believe is the future for humans?
>>Martine Rothblatt: I believe the future
for mu humans is taking the quality of life
that we've built up among most of the people
in the west and spreading that over more and
more people.
I'm a huge believer in Peter Diamantes's thesis
of abundance.
I think that the positive thinking and hope
and belief and working hard in science and
technology can overcome any problem.
Yes, we have horrible problems.
The ebola pandemic in West Africa, the ISIS
nihilism in the Middle East.
However, if you look back in history, things
were always worse.
I mean, there were times when people just
marched across all of Near East and Europe
and burned everything, burned people in their
homes, and nobody could do anything about
it, would do anything about it, would even
know about it in distant parts of the world.
We have now built a global network of mankind,
which is our satellite and Internet communications
capabilities.
We're creating a global empathy through meetings
such as this Zeitgeist and journalists like
you who can channel our stories to hundreds
of millions of people.
And we're building a global capability to
get together and do something with organizations
like the World Health Organization, United
States now sending thousands of soldiers into
West Africa to try to contain this pandemic,
many countries working together to contain
ISIS.
All of this is signs that we are, you know,
legions away from Utopia, but things are getting
better all time, and I believe the future
will continue to get better and better.
>>Rebecca Jarvis: What is the one story you
think needs to be told that is not getting
attention today?
>>Martine Rothblatt: That's an amazing question,
but I would say -- you really caught me -- caught
me at that one.
But I would say actually the story of -- of
the individual who is facing something that
seems to be an absolute boundary, life or
death.
Using their capabilities of communication,
like the presentation yesterday with the young
man dying from sarcoma, and using his ability
to make beautiful music, to marshal the talents
of people throughout the world to come up
with cures for those disease.
I think those are the stories that need to
be told.
That there is no limit.
To channel the great spirit of Audrey Hepburn,
"Nothing is impossible because the word itself
says 'I'm possible.'"
>>Rebecca Jarvis: The Martine Rothblatt story.
Thank you so much.
>>Martine Rothblatt: Thank you.
[ Applause ]
