Speaker 1: These sees Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Tim
Speaker 1: Stenebeck on Bloomberg Radio. Our next guest known certainly first
Speaker 1: time on Wall Street, the Highs and Lows, and for
Speaker 1: changing how Wall Street finances deals. A high yield pioneer.
Speaker 1: Much reporting has been done on his life, A very
Speaker 1: private individual who has created very public forms via his
Speaker 1: Milk and Institute and more to shed a lot of light,
Speaker 1: conversations and action on the global challenges of our time.
Speaker 1: He's got a new book out. It's called Faster Cures,
Speaker 1: Accelerating the Future of Health. He wrote it with Jeffrey
Speaker 1: Evansmore Joining us is Mike Milk, and Mike joins us
Speaker 1: via zoom in Los Angeles. Mike, nice to have you
Speaker 1: here on Bloomberg. How are you. I'm Greg, Carol, looking
Speaker 1: forward to seeing you at the Global conference later this month.
Speaker 1: I am looking forward to it, and I have to
Speaker 1: say my first Milk and Institute there. I assumed it
Speaker 1: would be a lot of financial types. I was surprised
Speaker 1: by the wellness and the healthcare component, but in your
Speaker 1: book you really bring it all together. I mean, you
Speaker 1: can't have advancements if you will in healthcare and R
Speaker 1: and D with also without not having that access to capital,
Speaker 1: you bring it all together. Talk to us about why
Speaker 1: you wrote this book specifically and why you wrote it now.
Speaker 1: I would say why I wrote it now is a
Speaker 1: very simple answer. We had geared up for COVID nineteen
Speaker 1: and everything that went before it. An incremental funding by
Speaker 1: the federal government of a half a trillion dollars laid
Speaker 1: the groundwork, and it was nine weeks sixty three days
Speaker 1: between the sequencing the DNA of the virus and putting
Speaker 1: it in the first human We get geared up for emergencies,
Speaker 1: and then we get geared down. So the reason I
Speaker 1: wrote this book was to reflect on fifty years of
Speaker 1: medical and healthcare progress, but also as a call to
Speaker 1: action now that the next generation the new technology is
Speaker 1: to be deployed and we have an opportunity to finally
Speaker 1: bring to an end many life threatening diseases. It was
Speaker 1: to keep the energy going, both financially and continuing to
Speaker 1: recruit the best and brightest into the field, landing it
Speaker 1: wind down. Mike, I have to say one of the
Speaker 1: things that struck me in your book, and I really
Speaker 1: thought about this coming off the pandemic, the collaboration that
Speaker 1: we saw on some existing work that had been done
Speaker 1: years before, but just jumping on it and the coordination,
Speaker 1: if you will, that we saw. You talk about how
Speaker 1: medical institutions are competitors, not collaborator, especially when it comes
Speaker 1: to getting money for R and D. That system that
Speaker 1: we still have inherently flawed. Well, it's changed dramatically in
Speaker 1: the last thirty years, where I would say today you
Speaker 1: have team science. So we just finished some major breakthroughs
Speaker 1: coming out of Melbourne at the Peter mccollumn, but it
Speaker 1: was coordinated in Europe, the United States and other parts
Speaker 1: of the world as a team. And so there has
Speaker 1: been but never have we seen cooperation as we did
Speaker 1: during this recent pandemic between for profit academic science centers government.
Speaker 1: The idea that the government would put forth money to
Speaker 1: build factories before we knew if the vaccines work, or
Speaker 1: fun research and manufacture vaccines before we knew that they
Speaker 1: would work. So that one the cost of the country,
Speaker 1: just this country, maybe a trillion a month, was so
Speaker 1: great that investing in products and plants of a few
Speaker 1: billion dollars if it didn't work, was small compared to
Speaker 1: what was going on. Not just the United States, but
Speaker 1: around the world. Mike before the pandemic, and I take
Speaker 1: you back to you growing up in the fifties, and
Speaker 1: you take us through your life and some of the
Speaker 1: health crises that your family has had to deal with.
Speaker 1: You talk about your dad, your mother in law, your kids,
Speaker 1: and of course yourself a first cousin as well. This
Speaker 1: book is very personal personal. What was it about the
Speaker 1: crisis that your family, the medical crisis that you yourself
Speaker 1: went through in your family, the impact that that had
Speaker 1: that has gotten you to do what you have done
Speaker 1: over the last few decades. Well, I would say just
Speaker 1: the realization of my father's experience with polio and then
Speaker 1: with melanoma, our children's challenges. No family, There isn't any
Speaker 1: family that doesn't have these. Our family is not unique.
Speaker 1: One and two men get cancer in their lifetime one
Speaker 1: in three women. But the fact that I really could
Speaker 1: not discuss with my dad what we've been able to
Speaker 1: do to create access to capit on in the financial world,
Speaker 1: make it available to millions of company and these great jobs, etc.
Speaker 1: Because of his own medical issues in many ways, he
Speaker 1: was not able to succuss his success with his parents,
Speaker 1: and they both passed away. But I think there was
Speaker 1: that very famous music and song that life gets in
Speaker 1: the way. So you have a plan, but something happens
Speaker 1: in life, and I don't feel people in economic terms
Speaker 1: or in the financial world really realize that more than
Speaker 1: fifty percent of all economic growth in the last two
Speaker 1: hundred years can be traced to advances in health and
Speaker 1: medical research. And if we just reflect that at the
Speaker 1: start of the twentieth century, average life expectancy on planet
Speaker 1: Earth was thirty one and today, one hundred and twenty
Speaker 1: years later, it's in the mid seventies. This dramatic, dramatic
Speaker 1: change not only in the extension of life, but the
Speaker 1: quality of life has driven the world's economy. In Southeast Asia,
Speaker 1: you've had a doubling of life expectancy in two generations,
Speaker 1: and now due to medical breakthroughs in Sub Sahara Africa,
Speaker 1: many countries are seeing a doubling of life expectancy and
Speaker 1: one generation. How that affects the economy, how it affects
Speaker 1: relationships between generations is greatly underestimated. No, I think that
Speaker 1: you know, we talked so much about economic impacts, market impacts,
Speaker 1: and that is certainly clear when you think about it.
Speaker 1: That way. I want to go back to what you
Speaker 1: said you were quoting. I believe a song you have
Speaker 1: a plan, life gets in the way. Talk to us
Speaker 1: about you obviously had a plan and then life got
Speaker 1: in the way. When you are forty six years old,
Speaker 1: and there's been much written about your terminal cancer diagnosis
Speaker 1: back in nineteen ninety three, I can only imagine how
Speaker 1: that felt. But reading about it in the book, you know,
Speaker 1: you got your diagnosis, and then it seems like you
Speaker 1: set about and got to work talking to a lot
Speaker 1: of different doctors to figure out that there had to
Speaker 1: be a better way. Well, I think one of the
Speaker 1: things you learned that when people have life threatening diseases,
Speaker 1: and I had lost ten relatives by that time and
Speaker 1: my prognosis was worse than all of them, is often
Speaker 1: at the beginning they do the least possible, and when
Speaker 1: you have a reoccurrence later, they'll do anything to try
Speaker 1: to stay alive. And so I think one of the
Speaker 1: things we're trying to bring to bear here is that
Speaker 1: technology afford you such a better chance today. And I
Speaker 1: would say, unfortunately, most of the people diagnosed in my
Speaker 1: condition thirty years within five years had all passed away,
Speaker 1: but I chose a different path that involved nutrition. Iervade
Speaker 1: a medicine. I went to China to visit with doctors Russia, healers,
Speaker 1: witch doctors in Africa, Western medicine. But I found a
Speaker 1: lot of strength in Indian medicine at that period of
Speaker 1: time and continued with observing many of the things that
Speaker 1: have been around for five thousand years to try to
Speaker 1: energize my immune system. But the world is so different
Speaker 1: today than it was when I was diagnosed. Then they
Speaker 1: told me I had eighteen months to live. Today, if
Speaker 1: you were diagnosed in my condition, someone might tell you
Speaker 1: that you're not going to die from cancer. You're not
Speaker 1: going to die from this disease. That we have solutions
Speaker 1: and the marrying of really three things, one access to
Speaker 1: capital to recruiting the best and brightest to go into
Speaker 1: this field. And three the tremendous advanced it's in technology
Speaker 1: with computers a million times faster and data storage costs
Speaker 1: one billion have brought us to where we are today.
Speaker 1: That we have an excellent chance to find a solution
Speaker 1: for each individual who has a life threatening disease in
Speaker 1: their own lifetime, which is great to hear some optimism
Speaker 1: having some own family members who are dealing with some
Speaker 1: difficuent health issues, it does feel like there are a
Speaker 1: lot more options. Hey, Mike. One of the things I
Speaker 1: was thinking about and prepping for our conversation was that
Speaker 1: when you got your diagnosis and you reached out to
Speaker 1: the healthcare network that you knew or were able to
Speaker 1: tap into various resources, you're already philanthropic and doing work
Speaker 1: when it came to healthcare and medical research. You know
Speaker 1: that access enabled you to I think open doors that
Speaker 1: maybe some would say we don't all have. And I
Speaker 1: feel like coming off the pandemic, we talked about the
Speaker 1: inequities in healthcare. How do we get rid of the
Speaker 1: inequities in healthcare? Is it even truly fully POSSI the ball?
Speaker 1: I believe it's possible, and we're on the verge of
Speaker 1: making it happen. So when you just think it costs
Speaker 1: three billion dollars, took more in the decade to sequence
Speaker 1: the human geno now less than an hour and one
Speaker 1: hundred or two hundred dollars, and someday it will be
Speaker 1: ten to twenty. It's available for everyone. And now in
Speaker 1: terms of cost, the idea that we can get the
Speaker 1: right treatment. So I was on a commission here in
Speaker 1: California number of years ago when the name was the
Speaker 1: Personalized Medicine Commission, and within six months or eight months,
Speaker 1: we changed the name to the Precision Medicine Commission so
Speaker 1: we could be precise. And when we submitted the report
Speaker 1: after a couple of years, it was the Precision Health Commission,
Speaker 1: so we could figure out not only to treat you
Speaker 1: after you or sick, but before. But as you pointed out,
Speaker 1: during the pandemic, we learned a number of things. We
Speaker 1: knew there were food deserts where people couldn't access fruits
Speaker 1: and vegetables in their neighborhood. We then discovered there were
Speaker 1: financial deserts where people didn't have bank accounts, and when
Speaker 1: the government wanted to write funding to serve as a
Speaker 1: safety net, they couldn't get the money to people. And lastly,
Speaker 1: there were health deserts where people did not have a
Speaker 1: facility in the neighborhood they could visit to take care of.
Speaker 1: But if we start with just the United States, the
Speaker 1: demographics in the United States and have changed so dramatically.
Speaker 1: So sixty years ago, seventy five percent of everyone that
Speaker 1: was not born in the United States was born in
Speaker 1: Europe and ten percent in Canada. Today seventy percent of
Speaker 1: everyone not born in the United States was born in
Speaker 1: Latin America, Asia, and almost eleven percent of everyone not
Speaker 1: born in the United States was more in Africa or
Speaker 1: seven or eight percent in the Middle East. So the
Speaker 1: face of Americas changed dramatically, and we need to make
Speaker 1: sure for clinical trials and access to healthcare every individual
Speaker 1: has that opportunity, and that is one of our focuses
Speaker 1: that faster cures. The center is health equities and access
Speaker 1: because if we primarily have people of European ancestry going
Speaker 1: into clinical trials, we're not going to get the exact
Speaker 1: breakdown of the population, and so we need to find
Speaker 1: a way to recruit and provide access. But the dropping
Speaker 1: in cost of getting the facts. The idea that we
Speaker 1: can change your genes, then we know we can do
Speaker 1: that today by Christopher, we're not going to do it
Speaker 1: because we don't understand all the ramification yet, but we
Speaker 1: do know that you can change how your genes are
Speaker 1: expressed by changing your micro biom and you can start
Speaker 1: to do that in seven days by changing what you eat,
Speaker 1: what you drink, and your lifestyle. So there are numerous
Speaker 1: programs available today throughout this country that are now reaching
Speaker 1: out to a much more diverse population to make sure.
Speaker 1: What we learned during COVID is we have to find
Speaker 1: a way to get healthcare to our entire population. And
Speaker 1: as you know, there's been a lot of research. The
Speaker 1: first thing that came out was that twenty minute subway
Speaker 1: ride from Manhattan up to the Bronx or so you
Speaker 1: reduce life expectancy by a decade or so, or if
Speaker 1: you look at other parts in Baltimore, I think life
Speaker 1: expectancy in the city is almost twenty years less than
Speaker 1: it is in the suburbs. So we know the problems,
Speaker 1: we have the data, and now we need to put
Speaker 1: the systems in place to take care of that shortfall.
Speaker 1: In your book and the interr the early innovation and
Speaker 1: finance turned out to be a template for much of
Speaker 1: what you all have accomplished in the search for faster cures.
Speaker 1: Your financial background, I'd be remiss if I didn't ask you,
Speaker 1: do you ever miss Wall Street or at least being
Speaker 1: involved specifically with a financial firm, either on Wall Street
Speaker 1: or out there on the West Coast in the day
Speaker 1: to day mind if you will. The Milk, the Milken
Speaker 1: Institute is heavily involved. Our Center for Financial Markets are
Speaker 1: global efforts creating new financial markets. And you make a
Speaker 1: very interesting point in that the analogy holds. When I
Speaker 1: was a student at Berkeley, after the Watts riots had
Speaker 1: occurred here in Los Angeles, when I was visiting on
Speaker 1: August eleventh, nineteen sixty five, I changed my major to
Speaker 1: focus on finance and access to capital. And then a
Speaker 1: many young an American man who told me his father
Speaker 1: didn't have access to capital because of the color of
Speaker 1: his skin in nor would he and it didn't make
Speaker 1: any sense to me, and so I switched and I
Speaker 1: went back to Berkeley, and what I discovered was I
Speaker 1: could access data as a student free that allowed me
Speaker 1: to look at the history and books that have been
Speaker 1: written about credit. And what I discovered is what everyone
Speaker 1: was saying about credit was just wrong. The best credits
Speaker 1: happened to be entrepreneurs and companies. The worst credit was
Speaker 1: countries throughout all of history. But you couldn't access medical data.
Speaker 1: So today it's a totally different world than it was
Speaker 1: when I was at Berkeley almost sixty years ago. Today,
Speaker 1: this medical data exists. There's numerous companies that have loaded
Speaker 1: the data of individuals, their DNA, their microbio homes, their
Speaker 1: biological history, their clinical history, and so today a young
Speaker 1: student such as I was at Berkeley could access this
Speaker 1: data as a medical student at a university today and
Speaker 1: test out their theories the same as I was able
Speaker 1: to test out my theories when I was both an
Speaker 1: undergrad and a graduate student. And that is why we're
Speaker 1: seeing this explosion of advances in medical research. We don't
Speaker 1: have to guess anymore of what is the potential best
Speaker 1: treatment for an individual or what their disease is. We
Speaker 1: now can identify what is that disease, just like we
Speaker 1: identified the DNA of the virus and COVID nineteen and
Speaker 1: then created vaccines against it. And that's the big We
Speaker 1: just got about thirty seconds, Mike. That's really the big
Speaker 1: game changer when we think about what takes us to
Speaker 1: the next level in healthcare, and again just got about
Speaker 1: twenty five seconds. Well, we're on the verge of our
Speaker 1: understanding of immunology to allow your own immune system to
Speaker 1: rehabilitate you to deal with disease. And the once again,
Speaker 1: the reason I wrote this book now is that we
Speaker 1: can seize defeat if we don't continue what we were
Speaker 1: able to accomplish during COVID. We are on the verge
Speaker 1: of a revolution that can eliminate many life threatened diseases
Speaker 1: for our children and our grandchildren if we just stay
Speaker 1: with it today. Well, so appreciate getting some time and
Speaker 1: looking forward to being with you and your team out
Speaker 1: there on the West Coast. Mike Milkin, thank you so much.
Speaker 1: As we mentioned, the new book is Faster Cures, Accelerating
Speaker 1: the future of health. Mike, thank you.