Making The Impossible Possible: A Conversation With Martine Rothblatt – Forbes

In this riveting Whats Ahead conversation youll hear how Martine Rothblatt, creator of SiriusXM, left the communications field entirely to hunt for a cure for a rare, mortal disease with which her daughter was diagnosed. The pressure was intense, as patients usually died within two to three years of diagnosis. After immense effortand setbacksRothblatt and her team came up with an effective treatment, which saved her daughter and thousands of others.

Martine Rothblatt, Chairwoman of United Therapeutics

Currently, Rothblatt and her firm, United Therapeutics, are working to manufacture transplantable organshearts, lungs, kidneys and liversfor those whose lives depend on donors. The tragedy today is that donor organs are in woefully short supply, and most people who are on donor wait lists will die.

Youll hear how Rothblatt has already found a way to treat lungs that have been rejected as not fit for transplant so they can, indeed, be used successfully. Some 150 people are now alive as a result of this work.

Doing whatever it took

So I did research night after night after night, Steve, and I finally discovered a pathway that could get me to a medicine that could halt the progression of our daughters Genesis illness. And, um, so I decided that, um, I had a new purpose in life. My previous purpose was to help humanity expand off the earth and into space, but my new purpose was to save my daughters life. And I didnt care about anything elseI was gonna, ifI didnt care about eating, I didnt care about anythingI was going to do whatever it took to save my daughters life.

Inspiration in impossible

But, Steve, my approach to when people say something is impossible, is I just drive an axe right between the letter M and P. And I say, No; impossible means to me Im Possible. And Im going to figure out a way to slice this problem up into little pieces.

Waste not, want not

So in these long hours in the library, I would begin researching not only the molecules that could help defeat pulmonary hypertension, but the disease in general. And I came across a couple of articles that said once somebody receives a lung transplant, which was the only absolutely cure for pulmonary hypertension, the pulmonary hypertension never recurred again in the patient after the lung transplant. And I found that very, very curious. Like, why would this disease not recur once somebody had a lung transplant? And I found myself becoming as fascinated with lung transplantation, or, I would say, organ transplantation in general, as I was fascinated with outer space. It seemed like another, another topic that went beyond the normal gambit of human experience, where things that were thought to be impossible suddenly screamed out, I'm possible.

So I began researching organ transplantation, and I learned that not only was it a cure for pulmonary hypertensionand for many other diseases, such as cystic fibrosis, for examplebut that 99% of the lungs that people donated, agreed to donate when they signed their driving license, were never used. And I thought this was astonishing as a statistic. And just 1% of all the lungs from people who die get used at all, and, um, the rest of them are literally thrown away. And I thought this was a horrible waste, and that there must be something I could do about this waste.

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Making The Impossible Possible: A Conversation With Martine Rothblatt - Forbes