WEBVTT

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Chris Anderson: So I guess
what we're going to do is

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we're going to talk about your life,

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and using some pictures
that you shared with me.

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And I think we should start
right here with this one.

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Okay, now who is this?

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Martine Rothblatt: This is me

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with our oldest son Eli.

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He was about age five.

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This is taken in Nigeria

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right after having taken
the Washington, DC bar exam.

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CA: Okay. But this doesn't
really look like a Martine.

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MR: Right. That was myself as a male,

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the way I was brought up,

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before I transitioned

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from male to female and Martin to Martine.

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CA: You were brought up Martin Rothblatt.

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MR: Correct.

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CA: And about a year after this picture,

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you married a beautiful woman.

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Was this love at first sight?
What happened there?

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MR: It was love at the first sight.

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I saw Bina at a discotheque
in Los Angeles,

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and we later began living together,

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but the moment I saw her,
I saw just an aura of energy around her.

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I asked her to dance.

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She said she saw an aura
of energy around me.

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I was a single male parent.
She was a single female parent.

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We showed each other
our kids' pictures,

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and we've been happily married
for a third of a century now.

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(Applause)

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CA: And at the time, you were
kind of this hotshot entrepreneur,

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working with satellites.

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I think you had two successful companies,

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and then you started
addressing this problem

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of how could you use satellites

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to revolutionize radio.

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Tell us about that.

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MR: Right. I always
loved space technology,

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and satellites, to me, are sort of
like the canoes that our ancestors

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first pushed out into the water.

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So it was exciting for me
to be part of the navigation

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of the oceans of the sky,

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and as I developed different types
of satellite communication systems,

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the main thing I did was to launch

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bigger and more powerful satellites,

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the consequence was that
the receiving antennas

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could be smaller and smaller,

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and after going through
direct television broadcasting,

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I had the idea that if we could make

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a more powerful satellite,

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the receiving dish could be so small

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that it would just be a section
of a parabolic dish,

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a flap of a plate embedded
into the roof of an automobile,

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and it would be possible to have
nationwide satellite radio,

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and that's SiriusXM today.

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CA: Wow. So who here has used Sirius?

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(Applause)

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MR: Thank you for
your monthly subscriptions.

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(Laughter)

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CA: So that succeeded despite
all predictions at the time.

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It was a huge commercial success,

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but soon after this, in the early 1990s,

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there was this big transition in your life

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and you became Martine.

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MR: Correct.
CA: So tell me, how did that happen?

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MR: It happened in consultation with Bina

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and our four beautiful children,

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and I discussed with each of them

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that I felt my soul was always female,

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and as a woman,

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but I was afraid people would laugh at me

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if I expressed it,

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so I always kept it bottled up

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and just showed my male side.

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And each of them
had a different take on this.

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Bina said that I love your soul

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and whether the outside
is Martin and Martine,

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it doesn't it matter to me,
I love your soul.

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My son said, if you become a woman,
will you still be my father?

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And I said yes,
I'll always be your father,

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and I'm still his father today.

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My youngest daughter did an absolutely
brilliant five-year old thing.

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She told people, "I love my dad
and she loves me."

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So she had no problem
with a gender blending whatsoever.

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CA: And a couple years after this,
you published this book:

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The Apartheid of Sex.

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What was your thesis in this book?

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MR: My thesis in this book is that there
are seven billion people in the world,

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and actually, seven billion unique ways
to express one's gender.

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And while people may have
the genitals of a male or a female,

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the genitals don't determine your gender

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or even really your sexual identity.

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That's just a matter of anatomy

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and reproductive tracts,

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and people could choose
whatever gender they want

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if they weren't forced by society

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into categories of either male or female

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the way South Africa used to force people

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into categories of black or white.

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We know from anthropological science

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that race is fiction,

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even though racism is very, very real,

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and we now know from cultural studies

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that separate male or female genders

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is a constructed fiction.

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The reality is a gender fluidity

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that crosses the entire continuum
from male to female.

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CA: You yourself don't always
feel 100 percent female.

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MR: Correct. I would say in some ways

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I change my gender about as often
as I change my hairstyle.

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CA: (Laughs) Okay, now, this is
your gorgeous daughter, Genesis.

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And I guess she was about this age

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when something pretty terrible happened.

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MR: Yes, she was finding herself
unable to walk up the stairs

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in our house to her bedroom,

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and after several months of doctors,

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she was diagnosed to have a rare,

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almost invariably fatal disease

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called pulmonary arterial hypertension.

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CA: So how did you respond to that?

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MR: Well, we first tried to get her
to the best doctors we could.

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We ended up at Children's
National Medical Center in Washington, DC.

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The head of pediatric cardiology

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told us that he was going to refer her
to get a lung transplant,

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but not to hold out any hope,

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because there are
very few lungs available,

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especially for children.

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He said that all people
with this illness die,

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and if any of you have seen
the film "Lorenzo's Oil,"

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there's a scene when the protagonist

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kind of rolls down the stairway
crying and bemoaning the fate of his son,

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and that's exactly
how we felt about Genesis.

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CA: But you didn't accept that
as the limit of what you could do.

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You started trying to research

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and see if you could find a cure somehow.

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MR: Correct. She was in intensive
care ward for weeks at a time,

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and Bina and I would tag team
to stay at the hospital

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while the other watched
the rest of the kids,

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and when I was in the hospital
and she was sleeping,

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I went to the hospital library.

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I read every article that I could find
on pulmonary hypertension.

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I had not taken any biology,
even in college,

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so I had to go from a biology textbook

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to a college-level textbook

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and then medical textbook
and the journal articles, back and forth,

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and eventually I knew enough to think
that it might be possible

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that somebody could find a cure.

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So we started a nonprofit foundation.

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I wrote a description

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asking people to submit grants

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and we would pay for medical research.

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I became an expert on the condition.
Doctors said to me, Martine,

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we really appreciate all the funding
you've provided us,

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but we are not going to be able
to find a cure in time

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to save your daughter.

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However, there is a medicine

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that was developed at the
Borroughs Wellcome Trust Company

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that could halt the progression
of the disease,

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but Borroughs Wellcome has just
been acquired by Glaxo Wellcome.

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They made a decision not to develop

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any medicines for rare
and orphan diseases,

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and maybe you could use your expertise
in satellite communications

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to develop this cure
for pulmonary hypertension.

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CA: So how on earth did you get
access to this drug?

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MR: I went to Glaxo Wellcome

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and after three times being rejected
and having the door slammed in my face

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because they weren't going
to out-license the drug

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to a satellite communications expert,

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they weren't going to send the drug
out to anybody at all,

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and they thought
I didn't have the expertise,

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finally I was able to persuade
a small team of people to work with me

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and develop enough credibility.

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I wore down their resistance,

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and they had no hope this drug
would even work, by the way,

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and they tried to tell me,
"You're just wasting your time.

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We're sorry about your daughter."

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But finally, for 25,000 dollars

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and agreement to pay 10 percent
of any revenues we might ever get,

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they agreed to give me
worldwide rights to this drug.

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CA: And so you put this drug on the market

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in a really brilliant way,

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by basically charging what it would take
to make the economics work.

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MR: Oh yes, Chris, but this really wasn't
a drug that I ended up,


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after I wrote the check for 25,000,

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and I said, "Okay, where's
the medicine for Genesis?"

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they said, "Oh, Martine,
there's no medicine for Genesis.

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This is just something we tried in rats."

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And they gave me, like,
a little plastic Ziploc bag

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of a small amount of powder.

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They said, "Don't give it to any human,"

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and they gave me a piece of paper
which said it was a patent,

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and from that, we had to figure out
a way to make this medicine.

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A hundred chemists in the U.S.
at the top universities

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all swore that little patent
could never be turned into a medicine.

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If it was turned into a medicine,
it could never be delivered

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because it had a half life
of only 45 minutes.

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CA: And yet, a year or two later,
you were there with the medicine

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that worked for Genesis.

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MR: Chris, the astonishing thing
is that this absolutely worthless

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piece of powder

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that had the sparkle of a promise
of hope for Genesis

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is not only keeping Genesis
and other people alive today,

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but produces almost a billion
and a half dollars a year in revenue.

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(Applause)

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CA: So here you go.

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So you took this company public, right?

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And made an absolute fortune.

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And how much have you paid Glaxo,
by the way, after that 25,000?

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MR: Yeah, well every year we pay them
10 percent of 1.5 billion,,

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150 million dollars,
last year a hundred million dollars.

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The best return on an investment
they ever received.

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CA: And the best news of all, I guess,

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is this.

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Mr: Yes. Genesis is an absolutely
brilliant young lady.

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She's alive, healthy today at 30.

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You see me, Bina, and Genesis there.

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She's, the most amazing
thing about Genesis

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is that while she could do
anything with her life,

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and believe me, if you grew up
your whole life with people

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in your face saying
that you've got a fatal disease,

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I would probably run to Tahiti and just
not want to run into anybody again.

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But instead she chooses to work
in United Therapeutics.

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She says she wants to do all she can
to help other people

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with orphan diseases get medicines,

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and today, she's our project leader
for all telepresence activities,

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where she helps digitally unite
the entire company to work together

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to find cures for pulmonary hypertension.

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CA: But not everyone who has this disease
has been so fortunate.

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There are still many people dying,

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and you are tackling that too. How?

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MR: Exactly, Chris. There's some 3,000
people a year in the United States alone,

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perhaps ten times that number worldwide,

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who continue to die of this illness

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because the medicines
slow down the progression

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but they don't halt it.

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The only cure for pulmonary hypertension,
pulmonary fibrosis,

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cystic fibrosis, emphysema,

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COPD, what Leonard Nimoy just died of,

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is a lung transplant,

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but sadly, there are only enough
available lungs for 2,000 people

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in the U.S. a year
to get a young transplant,

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whereas nearly a half
million people a year

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die of end stage lung failure.

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CA: So how can you address that?