By Paul Feinberg and Carolyn Gray Anderson
In a popular series of television advertisements, a narrator describes the accomplishments of a charismatic swashbuckler, ultimately concluding that the fictional figure is, in fact, “the most interesting man in the world.”
Allow UCLA Anderson’s Dean Judy Olian to set the record straight: “Martine Rothblatt is the most interesting person you will ever meet,” the dean said in welcoming Rothblatt back to Anderson this week.
Rothblatt (B.A. ’77, MBA/J.D. ’81), whose company United Therapeutics is based in Silver Spring, Maryland, returned to UCLA to be honored with the UCLA Medal in a ceremony at the home of UCLA Chancellor Gene Block. Before the medal ceremony, Rothblatt participated in a lively question and answer chat with Olian as part of UCLA Anderson’s Dean’s Distinguished Speaker Series.
In the conversation, Rothblatt credited the interdisciplinary education UCLA afforded her as an undergraduate and graduate student for much of her remarkable success. Named by Forbes as one of the World’s 100 Greatest Living Business Minds, Rothblatt leads a multibillion-dollar pharmaceutical company that has brought life-saving treatments to market. Proudly transgendered, a medical ethicist, recognized as a technology and artificial intelligence pioneer, and now advancing the science of organ and consciousness transplantation, Rothblatt told the UCLA audience — which included UCLA Law School Dean Jennifer Mnookin and Department of Communications Chair Kerri Johnson — “This is what it looks like to ‘program’ someone with a UCLA curriculum.”
Rothblatt is chairwoman and co-CEO of United Therapeutics and president and CEO of its Lung Biotechnology public benefit company. She previously founded Sirius Satellite Radio and served as its chair and CEO, after launching satellite navigation and international satellite television systems. In addition to her degrees from UCLA, she earned a Ph.D. in medical ethics from the Royal London School of Medicine & Dentistry. Her patented inventions are in satellite communications, pharmaceuticals and cognitive software. She is the author of numerous academic papers and books, including: Your Life or Mine: How Geoethics Can Resolve the Conflict Between Public and Private Interests in Xenotransplantation; The Apartheid of Sex: A Manifesto on the Freedom of Gender; and, most recently, Virtually Human: The Promise — and the Peril — of Digital Immortality.
But Rothblatt isn’t one to rest on her laurels. Head of a profitable drug company that holds several soon-to-expire patents, she is wholly in favor of generic drugs. United Therapeutics exists because Rothblatt needed to solve the problem of her own daughter’s life-threatening illness — and as a result she has also helped develop a cancer treatment that saved other children’s lives. She believes competition among drug makers and patent holders sparks medical innovation. “Knowing that our patent is going to expire is the best incentive to ask how we’re going to make a better medicine,” she said. Companies getting rich by selling their patented drugs in perpetuity would slow development of new and better medicines.
“You’d have to be a cold-hearted person to make medicine inaccessible to people who need it,” she said.
Rothblatt was also candid about the challenges involved in her pioneering work. “People think launching satellites into outer space is risky. Drug development is ten times riskier. It’s almost impossible to summarize in a few sentences how to get something approved by the FDA,” she said. “It means you are approved to promote some alien molecule that has never been seen inside the human body and are allowed to promote the ingestion and infusion of that molecule. The responsibility of getting it wrong is greater than the responsibility of getting it right.”
Rothblatt’s company’s newest focus is on xenotransplantation, which involves transplanting animal tissue or organs into humans. She also believes everyone should be an organ donor, though universal organ donation would still not result in enough organs to save everyone who needs them. Rothblatt detailed one solution, an ex vivo chamber in which a donated lung can be placed and preserved. Among the reasons this breakthrough is significant is that many organs, including lungs, go to waste on the order of about 80 percent, even when other organs are donated from the same donor, because they are not considered suitable for transplant. The chamber Rothblatt described clears out all conditions that might prevent transplantation, essentially renewing the organ for safe transplant. And, as if pioneering revolutionary new organ regeneration and transplantation weren’t enough, Rothblatt is also developing a battery-powered helicopter to deliver organs more quietly and cleanly.
Organs can also be “manufactured,” much like artificial knees and hips, she said, with the help of genetic engineering that can smooth out immunological barriers. Some people are too sick to take the necessary immunosuppressants they must before transplant; enter 3-D printed organ scaffolds that use the recipient’s own cells and a system that extracts collagen from tobacco.
Olian noted that in addition to Rothblatt’s many “scientific selves,” she is a pragmatic problem solver, a brilliant communicator and an authentic leader open to all forms of difference. These are keys to business success that Anderson hopes to impart through a curriculum based partly on sharing success, thinking fearlessly and driving change. Rothblatt said, “UCLA Anderson gave me the understanding of how you distill, into a single number, a net present value.”
Olian also asked Rothblatt about her exploration of the idea of digital immortality and showed a video excerpt of Bina48, a humanoid robot created by Rothblatt and others, based partly on her real-life wife Bina.
In the video, Bina48 was “interviewed” by Siri, Apple’s familiar personal assistant, answering questions about her likes and dislikes, and revealing a fondness for Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here” and movies featuring robots.
Just as a human would, Bina48 “searches idiosyncratically for her own answers,” Rothblatt said.
The conversation also delved into Rothblatt’s experiences as a transgendered woman. Rothblatt said she had enjoyed many advantages growing up male and starting her career as a man, especially in the male-dominated satellite industry. “So many women never get to present themselves in situations I have been able to,” she said.
Rothblatt also noted that many transgendered people — perhaps most — suffer persecution or violence and said she considers herself a very fortunate exception.
“As a ‘publicly significant’ transgendered person, I can give hope and inspiration to a lot of other transgendered people,” she said. “If I can be out there speaking, and saying a good life as a transgendered person is possible, it’s my responsibility to do that.”
The planned hour-long conversation came to an end abruptly, a few minutes early, when a fire alarm sounded. The crowd exited reluctantly, applauding a remarkable alumna.
In the UCLA Medal ceremony that followed, Chancellor Gene Block remarked, “It’s not uncommon to hear terms like ‘visionary,’ ‘forward-thinker’ or even ‘over achiever.’ What is uncommon is to see those superlatives epitomized by one person to the extraordinary degree that they are epitomized by Martine Rothblatt.”
The citation to Martine Rothblatt’s UCLA Medal reads as follows:
Your bold thinking across disciplines and industries has made you a role model and influential leader in the business, technology, health care and transgender communities and more. Your fearless explorations have challenged and expanded the way we understand fundamental concepts ranging from communication to gender to the nature of consciousness and mortality.
You approach problems with an insatiable curiosity and an unshakable commitment to crafting creative solutions. A visionary leader, you inspire others through your optimism, authenticity, clarity of purpose and pragmatic problem solving.
With exceptional resilience, you see setbacks as invitations to approach a challenge from a different angle, breaking barriers and moving forward in ways that change peoples’ lives. In all these ways, you embody the optimism, creativity, compassion, persistence and commitment to serve that are foundational UCLA values. For this, we proudly bestow upon you the UCLA Medal.
Dr. Martine Rothblatt is my favorite person , god bless her
Posted by: hackmeet.org | 01/18/2018 at 10:24 AM
Professor Marvin Lieberman first explained xenotransplantation to me in market entry class. This award is much deserved.
Posted by: Angus Hsu | 01/16/2018 at 01:03 PM
I remember one of her interview in which i learned that Martin Rothblatt was raised by observant Jewish parents in a working-class suburb of San Diego and his father was a dentist. And her mother name is Rosa Lee, she always believed her first child was destined for greatness.
Posted by: Julie Andrew | 01/15/2018 at 06:51 AM