Conversations with Mike Milken

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Ep. 55: Test and Isolate, with Nobel Laureate Paul Romer May 29, 2020

Show notes

“The fundamental decision that every society has to make is, can we suppress this virus forever if necessary? Can we afford to do that? … If you know that you're going to give up, there's no point to suppress for a while.”

Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Romer is accustomed to seeing the big picture of a problem – and offering big solutions. In the case of COVID-19, he proposes a comprehensive “test and isolate” policy that would keep the infection rate low while allowing the economy to ramp up.

He also proposes billion-dollar national prizes to scale up testing: one for “the first lab that can process 10 million tests per day” and another for a simple, home-based test “so everybody could just test themselves and find out if they or any of their family members are infectious.”

Ep. 54: In Translation, with NCATS’ Christopher Austin May 28, 2020

Show notes

“Are we going to require the same level of evidence for a vaccine … before it is approved? Could we potentially begin to use it at the same time we're still studying it? Normally we would never do that, but it's this kind of translational innovation that this COVID crisis is making not only possible, but needed.”

How do simple scientific observations – from the laboratory, clinic, or the community – become therapies and cures? It’s called translation, and since 2012, one of the 27 institutes and centers of the National Institutes of Health has been dedicated to doing just that. As director of NCATS, Christopher Austin oversees a vast ecosystem of research, analysis, and innovation to accelerate cures and therapies to those who need them most.

Austin sees the current pandemic as a turning point for greater data sharing and team science. “We are seeing that on a scale I have never seen across NIH, across government agencies, and with the pharmaceutical and biotech industry,” he tells Mike. “We have a singular moment when everyone realizes the need for faster cures and the limitations of the current system to deliver them.”

Ep. 53: Helping Hand, with Brent McIntosh May 27, 2020

Show notes

“In America, we don't look to the government alone to develop the solutions. We look to the creativity and ingenuity and vitality of the private sector, whether it's corporations or philanthropic organizations for many of those solutions.”

In normal times, Brent McIntosh’s charge at the Treasury Department is to advance America’s economic interests abroad. Today, that mission includes extending a helping hand: McIntosh was instrumental in getting the G7, the G20, the World Bank and the IMF to relax debt service payments from struggling nations so they could focus on caring for their citizens.

McIntosh has also been focused on solutions closer to home: “It's a very difficult challenge to make sure those supply chains can function, but they are functioning … in part because we've put in place many efforts to keep cargo flights moving, to … keep the ports open, and to treat the workers in those supply chains as essential.”

Ep. 52: The Stakes, with Entrepreneur and Philanthropist Strive Masiyiwa May 26, 2020

Show notes

“Public health will not be able to cope with this pandemic if it becomes a major crisis of the scale that we have seen in the West and in China. There's almost nothing we can do about it because we just don't have time. But it has been a massive wake-up call.”

Strive Masiyiwa is in a race against the clock. The Zimbabwean-born businessman, entrepreneur, and philanthropist is working to shore up medical and food supply chains so African nations can manage a possible surge of coronavirus cases. For Masiyiwa, the stakes could not be higher.

“We all need to help Africa navigate itself through something which is not if it's making and is affecting us,” he tells Mike. “And this is where we really need some global thinking and audacious thinking. Because if we don't think how to help Africa through this, it could be a very difficult next two or three decades and it doesn't have to be so.”

Ep. 51: Service, with Former Congressman Henry Waxman May 26, 2020

Show notes

“Explain things in a credible way so that the public understands why they're being asked to do things. You can't force people – especially Americans – to do things they refuse to do.”

When he retired from the U.S. House of Representatives after four decades of service, Henry Waxman was considered one of the most influential and effective legislators of his era. He championed such issues as the environment, clean energy, and government oversight, sponsoring 48 bills that made it into law. The congressman chaired the first hearing on HIV/AIDS in 1982, as well the tobacco industry hearings 12 years later, demonstrating a commitment to public health that continues to this day.

“We need to change our public health system,” he tells Mike. “We need to make sure that everybody's covered. We need to do contact tracing. … We tackled other pandemics in the United States much more successfully and we've got to be able to have a public health system that will allow us to do that.”

Ep. 50: A Special Episode with PCF And FasterCures May 22, 2020

Show notes

A Special Episode on Potential Breakthroughs in COVID-19 Research Coming from Cancer Research by the Prostate Cancer Foundation and FasterCures

A video recording of this episode – with helpful graphics – is also available at mikemilken.com.

For our 50th recording, Jonathan Simons (President and CEO, Prostate Cancer Foundation) and Esther Krofah (Executive Director, FasterCures) join Mike for a special discussion about how breakthroughs in cancer laboratories are advancing our understanding and possible treatment of COVID-19.

The roundtable discussion features six scientists from academic medical research institutions and the biopharmaceutical industry sharing their insights on the TMPRSS2 gene’s role as the doorway through which the SARS-CoV-2 virus enters the lung. That same genetic doorway also happens to play an important role in several forms of cancer. The promising news is that researchers – including those on this call – have learned how to shut that door in other contexts.

Ep. 49: Time Equals Lives, with FasterCures’ Esther Krofah May 22, 2020

Show notes

“We spend numerous hours a day updating that tracker because what is critical is real-time information that researchers and scientists can respond to. … As I've been speaking to colleagues, ranging from NIH to these large companies, they're using that daily in their prioritization exercises to determine what they can accelerate and what the potential opportunities are.”

Keeping track of rapid-pace global developments in treatments and vaccines for COVID-19 may seem to be an uphill battle. But since February, Esther Krofah’s team at FasterCures has been producing exactly that: a real-time tool that, as of late May 2020, is monitoring development of more than 200 treatments and 140 vaccines.

Krofah, who assumed her leadership role just months before the coronavirus crisis, continues to build on the organization’s legacy of partnerships with government, industry and patient groups: “We believe time equals lives, and so these organizations, these institutions, have been part of our journey over the last almost three decades. And as we come to a time like this with COVID, we need that foundation of trust. … There's that recognition that individuals, families, patients is what drives us day-in and day-out.”

Ep. 48: Commencement, with UCLA’s Gene Block May 21, 2020

Show notes

“Normally about 14,000 students live on our campus in our dormitories and that's down to I think less than about 900 students. … The campus has taken on an eerie feeling of really being abandoned.”

Big changes are afoot at UCLA, America’s #1-rated public university. Chancellor Gene Block has already seen an 85% reduction of his on-campus workforce, and with a record of 5,000-plus classes currently being taught online, he anticipates further, more permanent alterations to the way students obtain higher education.

There is one tradition, however, that Chancellor Block believes should remain intact. “Commencement is really important for students. It's a sense of closure. It's also a sense of new beginnings. It really completes one phase of their life and begins another, and we're going to make certain that our students get that experience even if it's somewhat delayed.”

Ep. 47: Unprecedented, with UCLA Health’s John Mazziotta May 20, 2020

Show notes

“One day, for the first time in my 39 years, there were no patients in the emergency department. It was a Sunday morning. Never seen that in my life. … Heart attacks, strokes, mental illness – these people were not coming in. … There are a lot of deaths that are indirectly going to be associated with COVID-19 even though the patients never had the infection.”

As the vice chancellor of UCLA Health Sciences and the CEO of UCLA Health, John Mazziotta helms one of the crown jewels of California’s formidable medical research and health care ecosystem. When the crisis erupted, his hospitals prepared to be a major hub for the region’s most challenging cases. Fortunately, that anticipated influx never came; however, for UCLA and for hospitals and patients everywhere, Dr. Mazziotta sees consequences that will reverberate for years.

But his concerns about the collateral damage of COVID-19 are at least partially offset by his prognosis for the future: “I'm actually extremely optimistic about how we come out of this,” he tells Mike. “I don't think there's anything in medicine that will look the same after the pandemic. … I've told that to the faculty, I’ve told that to the staff, and we have to figure out a way to do the new world of medicine more efficiently, more effectively and have the end result be better for patients, trainees and scientists.”

Ep. 46: Stewardship, with DBS Group's Piyush Gupta May 19, 2020

Show notes

“Most times your right or your requirement for personal privacy trumps other kinds of needs. But a pandemic is … when it becomes quite clear that sometimes the needs of the collective, the needs of society, trump the needs of the individual.”

As the CEO and Director of DBS Group, a financial services firm operating in 18 countries throughout Asia, Piyush Gupta is known for anticipating and staying ahead of current trends in banking. When the pandemic hit, DBS quickly built upon the digital platform Gupta had already implemented.

Gupta’s effective stewardship of the 52-year-old firm – formed as the nation’s development bank – echoes Singapore’s overall management of the crisis: “Even though we now have about 20,000 cases, the actual number of fatalities are only 20,” he tells Mike. “With good medical treatment and good health systems, you can actually manage the virus relatively well.”

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