31 May 2007

The Future Ain't What It Used To Be: Martine Rothblatt is a genius

I’m still reeling from an interview I watched last night with Martine Rothblatt; whom before last night I’d never even heard his/her name. There is no other way to describe it other than: far out. Martine is this soft spoken, ethereal transgender genius. Martine is responsible for launching several communications satellite companies.

S/he was one of the first people to dream up the commercialisation of space; inventing the first nationwide vehicle location system in 1983 called Geostar.In 2007 GPS systems and things like OnStar are commonplace, but he was coming up with this stuff over 20 years ago.

Martine basically invented satellite radio and was principally responsible for several other unique applications of satellite communications technology.

In 1993 his then ten-year old daughter Jenisis became mysteriously ill............... She could barely walk to her school bus without gasping for air. With alarming frequency, her lips would turn blue and her voice would shrivel to a squeak. She was diagnosed with pulmonary hypertension and doctors gave her 30 months to live.

Rothblatt refused refused to accept this dire verdict and immediately went to work on developing a cure for his daughters rare ailment; forming a foundation and later creating a biotech firm (United Therapeutics) to corral resources and contacts into a search for a cure.

Eventually doctors were able to stabilize the illness with a cocktail of seven pills, including blood thinners, heart strengtheners and a potent anti-hypertensive. Rothblatt still pursued a better treatment and an all out cure. His United Therapeutics collective created a drug called Remodulin which appears to lower pulmonary blood pressure while avoiding infection; he had developed the cure for his daughters illness.

The dude is brilliant beyond compare and now he’s talking about nanorobotics and nanobots which are microscopic smart robots. He says with the modern ability to make sateilete dishes the size of a pinhead they can now be injected into the bloodstream to fight diseases on a cellular level; attacking areas a surgeons scalpel and/or radiation couldn't ever reach.

In layman's terms, which is the only way I can comprehend all this shit, scientists will teach and program these microscopic robots what to look for as evil inside the body; once inside the body, controlled by satellite, these little guys will head directly for the bad shit and kill it; no surgery, no radiation, no pills, nothing. Its basically like the movie Inner Space come to life. Dennis Quaid is the nanobot that has been injected into Martin Short's bloodstream; but instead of blasting Sam Cooke, drinking whiskey and ogling Meg Ryan; Quaid is going to cure the ills inside Martin Short's body on a cellular level.

Never mind freezing your body in a meat locker until they come up with a cure for your disease; Rothblatt is talking about downloading your every thought and memory from your brain, cloning you a new body to live inside and then uploading all your memories back into your head. "If I knew then what I know now" will no longer be simply a regretful saying. Rothblatt is on the fucking doorstep of actually doing all these things; they won't be dreams or ideas much longer.

This is serious sci-fi shit come totally real. Betwixt this book I've been reading on black holes and the interview I caught last night, my head is spinning. I’ve never been so blown away by an interview with a mortal before, ever.

2 comments:

Meirav said...

I can't stop listening to Terasem radio.

Anonymous said...

There's a woman on my lap and she's drinking champagne...where did you see/hear the interview with he/she/it?

u.t.