Martine Rothblatt
President of the William Harvey Medical Research Foundation
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(Quoted excerpt from Washington City Paper)
"Rothblatt has been a successful space cadet since the early ‘80s, when she
incorporated PanAmSat, a touchstone event in recent satellite history, since PanAmSat
became the first telephone satellite company to compete with Intelsat on Intelsat’s
own turf. Luckily for the satellite industry, the untapped possibilities of space have
attracted the sort of visionaries who made Silicon Valley sprout. And when this kind of
culture meets the world-citizen and do-gooder ethos on the banks of the Potomac,
interesting things happen.
Martine Rothblatt probably best exemplifies such a blend. Even before she was drawn to
Washington, Rothblatt had always been attracted to the universalism of satellites, their
global reach, their ability to carry polyglot conversations. "I’ve always
thought national boundaries were exceedingly arbitrary contraptions," Rothblatt says.
"Satellites can’t tell where Mexico starts and the U.S. ends." Rothblatt
found an ideological soul mate in Noah Samara, and their ideals helped shape the mission
of WorldSpace. His company’s services, Samara says, create "a common frame of
reference for people separated by abstractions that have no bearing on people living on
either side of the boundaries."
- Louis Jacobsen, Staff Reporter, Washington City Paper, December 4, 1992.
After starting the satellite companies PanAmSat, CD Radio and WorldSpace,
and adapting satellite technology to global television broadcasting, handheld radio
reception and tracking the locations of buses, trucks and trains, Ms. Rothblatt moved into the life sciences
field. She endowed the PPH Cure Foundation, formed a pharmaceutical company and led the
worldwide effort, described below, to help ensure the beneficent use of genetic medical
research.
Human Rights to Human Genetics
(Quoted excerpt from The IBA International Legal
Practitioner, December 1996)
Martine Rothblatt, Co-Chair of Subcommittee 2a (Bio-Ethics), speaks to Nicole Maley,
IBA Press and Public Relations Officer about human rights, the disparity between legal
systems, and the future of human genetics law.
A backpacking trip across Aftica, and a firsthand view of the site of many of the
world’s most horrific human rights abuses provided the motivating factors which
propelled Martine Rothblatt into a career in international law.
In 1981, recently graduated from UCLA, Ms Rothblatt embarked on a trip through East and
West Africa before starting out in her career as a lawyer. ‘In that time I travelled
a great deal, and what struck me the most was the similarity between people everywhere,
but the disparity between their legal systems,’ says Ms Rothblatt. ‘It seemed to
me that if there could be minimum international legal standards, then people in parts of
the world which were less well-developed could benefit from the legal concepts and
principles which had been established in more developed countries. I suppose it was a
desire to see this happen, that motivated me to go into law.’
Now a partner with Washington DC law firm Mahon & Patusky, Ms Rothblatt began her
career with Covington & Burling – one of the largest and most prestigious firms
in the District of Columbia. Recruited to work on a global telecommunications caseload,
she stayed with the practice until 1983, when she opened The Law Offices of Martine
Rothblatt. ‘After working at Covington & Burling, for a while I found that I felt
restrained by the large law firm environment,’ she says. ‘There were 200 lawyers
there, and I thought that I could do more, and have more flexibility to work on cases that
interested me, if I went to work on my own. Also, I had graduated with a combined law and
MBA degree and I felt that, as time was passing, I should use my MBA to be responsible for
my own business.
‘Very soon after opening I had five attorneys working with me, and we developed a
specialisation in satellite communications law. I felt good about that because it seemed
that satellite communications was something which was helping people the world over.’
Two years after opening the firm, the president of the largest client satellite
communications company Geostar – was diagnosed as fatally ill, and a unanimous vote
of the board of directors saw Ms Rothblatt leaving her practice to take over the
presidency. In 1989, after becoming ‘so submerged in the business that I wasn’t
really practising law at all’, she left Geostar, again opening her own firm. A year
later, as the US Congress passed a law to create the Human Genome Project, Ms Rothblatt
joined Mahon & Patusky. ‘I could see that the Human Genome Project was going to
change the course of history,’ she says. ‘Having been involved with satellite
communications I found that whole idea of a global project fascinating, and I began to
participate in a national committees discussing the legal ramifications of the new genetic
technology.’
It was around this time that a flier for the International Bar Association landed on Ms
Rothblatt’s desk, attracting her to the Association’s Committees on medicine,
communications and human rights law. ‘I was and continue to be, very impressed by the
IBA and its efforts at outreach to lawyers in Africa, Latin America, Asia and the Arab
World,’ she says. ‘I thought the IBA would be a good organisation to be involved
with, because I wanted to help to develop international legal standards, and to focus on
law and medicine worldwide. ‘By this time I guess I had become something of a US
expert on the subject of human genetics law and in 1993, when the IBA was approached by
the Human Genome Organisation (HUGO) to develop a treaty on human genetic technology, I
was a natural choice to be asked to be one of the founding members of the IBA’s
Bioethics Subcommittee.’
The treaty, which Ms Rothblatt as Co-Chair of the Subcommittee aims to present to the
United Nations for consideration in 1997, includes recommended rules for what is
appropriate and what should be illegal in dealing with genetics. It discusses subjects
including genetic discrimination, and the use of human genome information in developing
new healthcare treatments and therapies. ‘In the treaty we are proposing that the IBA
has a role in reporting to the UN on the extent of global compliance with international
genetics treaties. This role is now possible because, in the past two years through the
excellent efforts of John Slater, the IBA has become an official Category II NGO
affiliate. Now that we have this official status with the UN, I think it is entirely
appropriate for us to become an organisation that the UN can depend upon for impartial,
accurate reporting with regards to human rights standards worldwide.’
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