Martine Rothblatt — Chairman and CEO of United Therapeutics, a biotechnology company she founded to save her daughter's life, and the earlier founder of Sirius XM satellite radio. A self-taught polymath spanning satellite communications, medicine, law, transgender rights, and aviation, holding degrees from UCLA and a PhD in medical ethics.
The gist
Tim Ferriss interviews Martine Rothblatt across an extraordinary range of fields she has personally pioneered. She recounts teaching herself biology overnight to find a treatment for her daughter's fatal pulmonary arterial hypertension, then licensing and developing the drug that became United Therapeutics' billion-dollar foundation. The conversation moves through xenotransplantation and pig-organ manufacturing, vagus nerve stimulation and bioelectronic medicine, digital consciousness and the Bina48 robot, and her gender transition and transbinary identity. Rothblatt also describes her family 'love night' tradition, the world's largest zero-carbon-footprint building, and her philosophy of questioning authority and 'identifying corridors of indifference.' Recurring themes are Alan Watts' dialectical thinking, scientific literacy, and the obligation that comes with every technological right.
Big reveals
- Rothblatt had her last biology class in high school; she taught herself medicine night after night in the hospital library after her daughter was diagnosed with fatal pulmonary arterial hypertension.
- She applied the legal research technique of 'Shepardizing' (following footnotes to footnotes) to medical journals, eventually finding a Glaxo Wellcome molecule that lowered only pulmonary artery pressure.
- Securing the failed drug required 15 different Glaxo executives to sign off; she licensed it for $25,000 plus 10% royalties, and has since paid Glaxo over a billion dollars in royalties.
- United Therapeutics engineers a growth-hormone-receptor knockout into pigs (copying a Peru/Ecuador 'Laron's disease' population) so transplanted pig organs stop growing inside humans.
- Dr. Kevin Tracey taught her the vagus nerve touches every cell and surfaces at the ear's cymba conchae, where electrical stimulation produces therapeutic effects.
- Rothblatt believes traditional Chinese acupuncturists genuinely mapped the vagus nerve pathways accessible from the earlobe through millennia of trial and error.
- On the last patent-issuing day of 2019 she received a patent for an 'Alzheimer's cognitive enabler' that reads brain signals to speak on a patient's behalf.
- She built a 150,000-square-foot net-positive-energy facility in Silver Spring, Maryland, the largest zero-carbon-footprint building in the world.
Things worth remembering
- Bina48 is a digital and physical robot copy of Rothblatt's wife Bina's personality and memories, created when Bina was 48, to inspire girls toward computer science.
- When her daughter was diagnosed about 2,000 Americans had pulmonary arterial hypertension; thanks to new medicines, roughly 50,000 Americans now live with it.
- Rothblatt notes the odds of any random molecule actually working safely in the human body are less than one in a hundred.
- Her first 'lightning bolt to the soul' came at a NASA tracking station in the Seychelles at age 19, when engineers said a strong enough satellite could let receivers fit in your palm.
- Each year only about 30,000 kidneys, 3,000 hearts, and 2,000 lungs are available for transplant, far below demand.
- The documentary 'Alive Inside' showed dementia patients hearing music from their youth could then hold coherent conversations after being previously near-catatonic.
- The Rothblatt family's 'love night' is a Friday tradition (now on Zoom with about 20 people) where each person shares what love meant to them that week.
- Rothblatt cites Marvin Minsky's 'The Emotion Machine' on building software that lets a computer feel emotions like love.
- United Therapeutics refurbishes rejected donor lungs in a glass dome with artificial blood and air, with transplant surgeons guiding technicians remotely; over 150 lives have been saved.
- Her favorite saying is 'identify the corridors of indifference and run like hell down them' - pursue ignored, unmet needs like COVID long-haulers rather than crowded fields.
Recommended in this episode
Books, products and media the guest or host genuinely endorsed here — with the buy link.
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Stranger in a Strange Land
Robert Heinlein
“his widow released the uncensored unedited version of stranger in the strange land it's like three times larger and like no holds barred i just savored” — Martine Rothblatt 00:14:38Find it on Amazon
Time Enough for Love
Robert Heinlein
“my favorite book of all of his is time enough for love in which he covers almost every topic under the sun” — Martine Rothblatt 00:14:38Find it on Amazon
The 4-Hour Body
Tim Ferriss
“i recommended it in fact in the 4-hour body this is more than 10 years ago and i did not get paid to do so” — Tim Ferriss 00:30:40Find it on Amazon
Cosmos
Carl Sagan (inferred)
“carl sagan was like an amazing amazing role model to me i watched the cosmos series over and over again and carl sagan was a genius” — Martine Rothblatt 00:37:18Find it on Amazon
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
Thomas Kuhn
“one of my favorites is a book by a historian of science named thomas kewan ... his book ... it's called the structure of scientific revolutions” — Martine Rothblatt 00:38:52Find it on Amazon
Parable of the Sower
Octavia Butler
“octavia butler ... one of them very well known as parable of the sower parable of the talents and in these books she gives people an appreciation of questioning authority” — Martine Rothblatt 00:41:58Find it on Amazon
Parable of the Talents
Octavia Butler
“one of them very well known as parable of the sower parable of the talents and in these books she gives people an appreciation of questioning authority” — Martine Rothblatt 00:41:58Find it on Amazon
Scientific American
Scientific American (inferred)
“subscribe to scientific american ... i find scientific american and national geographic two of like you know the greatest ways for lay people” — Martine Rothblatt 00:59:17Find it on Amazon
National Geographic
National Geographic (inferred)
“i find scientific american and national geographic two of like you know the greatest ways for lay people which i do consider myself a lay person to learn” — Martine Rothblatt 00:59:17Find it on Amazon
The Emotion Machine
Marvin Minsky
“a great book that i would recommend that goes into this subject in beautiful detail is called the emotion machine by marvin minsky” — Martine Rothblatt 01:22:12Find it on Amazon
Virtually Human
Martine Rothblatt
“that's the subject of my book virtually human that whole book is talks about how and when will society accept digital consciousness” — Martine Rothblatt 01:24:17Find it on Amazon