Global Future 2045 Congress: Towards a New Strategy for Human Evolution / New York City, 2013
Dr. Martine Rothblatt
Visionary IT & Bio-entrepreneur — American lawyer, author, and life sciences entrepreneur. Founding CEO of United Therapeutics
Biotechnology creates some of mankind’s most remarkable and much loved products, from treatments to forestall blindness to cures for several cancers. Described broadly biotechnology is the creation of medical tools to enhance life processes. What is rarely even whispered, though, is that the real goal of biotechnology is the end of death. This is taboo because it is politically incorrect at best, and Galilean in its challenge to established theology and moral philosophy. Nevertheless, because biotechnologists undertake to cure diseases, and because death is generally the victory of disease over life, the ultimate goal of biotechnology is in fact the end of at least unwanted, non-violent and non-accidental death.
Biotechnology need not be limited to tissue and cellular focused technologies. The definition of biology is the study of life defined as things that are organized exchangers of matter and energy, and that react to stimuli, reproduce, develop and adapt. However, software code such as the Avatar Project of the 2045 Initiative can also be designed to exchange matter and energy with the environment, and to react to stimuli, replicate, develop and adapt. I distinguish this kind of “dry biology” with the latin-rooted neologism “vitology,” and I believe the field of biotechnology will increasingly embrace both biology and vitology.
Biotechnologists labor to forestall death through multiple avenues. Most biotechnologists work on creating molecular tools to engage in hand-to-hand battle with molecular-scale diseases. Other biotechnologists are working on macro-scale solutions to disease, such as replacing diseased vital organs with regenerated or mechanical substitutes. The vanguard of biotechnology is in the digital domain where preparations are being made for transplanting the mind from a diseased brain, or an end-stage diseased body, to a computational substrate. I call this process creating a mindclone, and it enables effective immortality for a person’s consciousness. The individual remains vitologically alive as a software-based being, a process well exemplified by the Avatar Project of the 2045 Initiative.
I will describe the critical skills the technology entrepreneur needs based on my experience in satellite communications and life science companies to achieve living mindclones in the decades ahead. Closely related to these entrepreneurial skillsets are the social and policy interactions needed with governments and NGOs to help ensure the Avatar Project of the 2045 Initiative is welcomed as a positive contribution to building the world as it should be.
BIOGRAPHY
Entered life sciences field by leading the International Bar Association’s project to develop a draft Human Genome Treaty for the United Nations (submitted in 1999), and by founding and leading as CEO her biotechnology company United Therapeutics (1996) which pioneers, among other things, 3D bio-printed replacement lungs for transplantation.
Earlier, launched several satellite communications companies, including 1st nationwide vehicle location system (Geostar, 1983), 1st private international space communications project (PanAmSat, 1984), 1st global satellite radio network (WorldSpace, 1990), and 1st non-geostationary satellite-to-car radio broadcasting system (Sirius, 1990).
Attorney-entrepreneur who led worldwide approval efforts to obtain new international treaties for satellite orbit/spectrum allocations for space-based navigation services (1987) and for direct-to-person satellite radio transmissions (1992).
Authored books on satellite communications technology (Radiodetermination Satellite Services and Standards, 1987), gender freedom (Apartheid of Sex, 1995), genomics (Unzipped Genes, 1997) and xenotransplantation (Your Life or Mine, 2003).
Cyberscripted and produced one of the first cybermuseums, the World Against Racism Museum.
Produced sci-fi film 2B (2009) and, with Ray Kurzweil, documentary The Singularity Is Near (2010).
