Brad Gerstner: The $100 Test That Could Save 50,000 Lives a Year

Molly O'Shea (0:00)

Okay, we are here at the All In Summit at an amazing trailer that Brad Gerstner brought. You bought this how long ago?

Brad Gerstner (0:07)

About a year ago.

Molly O'Shea (0:08)

Okay, so Brad, tell us what we're standing in front of.

Brad Gerstner (0:10)

Yeah, so we're standing in front of a mobile calcium CT scanner. So most of the folks who followed us on both the All In pod, the BG2 pod, et cetera, know that one of the moon shots I'm working on is we have 800,000 people die in this country every year from heart disease. It's the number one killer in the world. If we turn the calcium CT scan into the mammogram for the heart, we will save 50,000 lives a year. That's like ending a Ukraine war every year in the United States. It will save the government $20 billion in care for people. But most importantly, we're losing our most important friends, brothers, dads at the prime of their life in something that's totally preventable. So this has a calcium CT scanner in it. We had hundreds of people coming through here. We found scores over the last two days that most definitely have saved people's lives. It costs 100 bucks and it takes 15 minutes. So I lost my father too early and my good friend here, Rob Goldberg, I want you to hear from him. But this is what, this is the type of moonshot that we need to have. We're working with Washington. We want to get this covered by insurance so that we get 40 million people to take the scan. Mammograms, which are super important in this country, we have 40 million a year. CAC scans, which is the number one killer, we have 1 million a year. We need to have 40 million CAC scans in this country every year. But Rob, we're going to do a Tag Team Pod here. You are a key inspiration. Your family was a key inspiration for me in wanting to do this along with Jason Chang and the rest of the besties. Talk a little bit about, you know, how this touched your family.

Rob Goldberg (1:48)

Thank you, Brad. Thank you. And thank you and Jason for doing this and for you showcasing it. It's my unfortunate, you know, connection to this is that my brother and I and a number of our friends were on vacation for a friend's 50th birthday, another bestie, Phil Deutsch. And we, in the afternoon, we saw him. We were all hanging out by the pool and then six o'clock, six thirty, couldn't find him.

My sister-in-law and I started looking for him. And we unfortunately found him in the gym of the house collapsed. And my adrenaline was going so fast, I couldn't tell if it was his heartbeat or mine. So I just started doing CPR and, we unfortunately brought him to the hospital and he'd been dead for hours because he had undiagnosed heart disease. And these are folks, so my sister-in-law is Sheryl Sandberg, she wrote a book called Option B about his death and about grieving and top medical, concierge doctors. He had actually passed, so this is a really important point. So my brother had passed a running EKG five months before he dropped dead from heart disease, from undiagnosed heart disease. Unfortunately, EKGs have a four percent, either positive or negative, where he had actually done so much cardio that he taught his heart to overcome the heart disease. And so it was pumping harder and harder and harder. And then eventually when we were in Mexico, we had just stopped.

He died of ventricular arrhythmia. There was reports of, because we found him near, I gave the report, we found him next to the treadmill. He did not fall off the treadmill and die. He died of heart disease. And thankfully, to Sheryl, to Chmoff, to some other folks, we got him back to be able to do a full autopsy and found his heart disease.

But it's truly tragic and it was completely unnecessary. He was 47 My niece and nephew were seven and 10 They're growing up without a biological father. They have a great stepfather now, but it's just complete, as Brad just said, we are losing people in the prime of their lives who have no need to die for something that is completely preventable and screenable.

Brad Gerstner (3:40)

And Dave was such a legend, so loved, the inspiration in many ways for All In and the Bestie Group. I mean, Chamath would say he was the original, you know, who got everybody together.

Rob Goldberg (3:52)

He might have argued a few points with everyone on stage, but yes.