American Morning
On trial in North Korea
You've seen their faces – the two American journalists captured and accused of spying in North Korea. Today, they are set to go on trial. The sister of one of the journalists, reporter Lisa Ling has pleaded for their release. CNN's Jason Carroll reports on what a trial in North Korea could mean.
Inside Dr. Gupta's operating room
By Danielle Dellorto, CNN Medical Producer
I wasn’t sure what to expect as I waited outside the employee parking lot of Grady Memorial Hospital Monday morning. My assignment for the day? Produce a story on Dr. Sanjay Gupta’s life outside of CNN – his life as a trauma neurosurgeon. For the past three years I’ve been producing stories for him – but this time he was my story.
He greeted our crew a little before 5 a.m. with a familiar smile and diet soda in hand. Wasting no time with chit-chat, he scurried into the hospital, quickly changed into scrubs, then was off to his “home away from home”, O.R. 14. He had three cases scheduled by the time we arrived – a brain surgery and two spinal fusions.
First up – clipping a ruptured brain aneurysm.
My heart raced as I stood on pins and needles watching a critical part of the operation, during which the patient had an interoperative brain bleed. “I always like to tell people we spend 99% of our preparation on the 1% of things that happen.” Sanjay’s team didn’t flinch. They knew she’d be losing a liter of blood in just seconds and to prevent disaster, they raced to stop the bleed. Mission accomplished. It was a scary 90 seconds for a bystander like myself watching it all go down, so what really struck me was how calm and focused his team was the entire time.
“When you have an aneurysm rupture like that and you are losing a liter of blood over several seconds, it makes any TV live shot you've ever done look not that scary. I know if I don’t get that thing stopped within a couple of minutes, the patient won’t survive,” he explained.
No doubt their neuro team is a well-oiled machine. It was especially fascinating to watch Dr. Gupta interact with his residents. “Many of my residents have never done cases like this so I get to show them for the first time how to do these procedures, which is pretty interesting for me and for them,” Gupta said. Between critical moments in the O.R. they chatted like comrades. Everything from rock concerts, to their love lives to real estate – joking around like old friends.
One thing that is “very important” during surgery: the music. I watched as they took turns flipping through the iPod. Dr. Gupta gave me his ultimate playlist for brain surgery: open with Gypsy Kings or Rise by Eddie Vedder and close the surgery with Coldplay’s Viva La Vida or Mr. Brightside. Solid picks, Doc!
The morning flew by fast. By 10am, Dr. Gupta and his team had already saved one life. By 10pm, that tally was up to three. Overall, it was incredibly exciting to not only see a whole other side of Sanjay on the job, but also see inside the human brain!
Want to see more in the weeks to come? Follow Sanjay on Twitter @sanjayguptacnn. He posts cool pics each week from the operating room!
Is recovering Flight 447 possible?
Today, an armada of ships is converging on an area about 400 miles northeast of the Brazilian island of Fernando de Noronha. Some are carrying submersibles that can work miles underwater, all to start piecing together the disaster of Air France Flight 447, which disappeared over the Atlantic Ocean.
One expert said it could be the hardest recovery since the search to find the Titanic, which took decades. Underwater recovery expert John Perry Fish spoke to John Roberts on CNN’s “American Morning” Wednesday.
John Roberts: What will searchers be looking for at this point in their operation? And what kind of topography of the ocean floor are they going to be searching in?
John Perry Fish: The searchers are going to be looking for a very important piece of equipment called a digital flight data recorder… These record many, many parameters of the flight, the aircraft, its attitude, even the amount of force that one of the pilots might put on a pedal. And it’s very important to find these in order to find out what happened to the flight. Attached to each of these data recorders is what we call a “pinger.”
It puts out an acoustic pulse once a second for 30 days as soon as it's submerged in the water and these contacts are joined by electrical forces. So it's important to find these. And they'll be looking for these in an area that's fairly deep, as deep as a couple of miles and also part of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, which is a mountainous area that runs all the way from Iceland down into the South Atlantic.
U.S. patients try stem cell therapies abroad
[cnn-photo-caption image=http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2009/images/06/03/art_stem_family.jpg caption="Sierra Journey Factor, 8, has a muscular disease that her mom, Shaylene Akery, hopes can be treated in China."]
By Drew Griffin and David Fitzpatrick
CNN Special Investigations Unit
TITUSVILLE, Florida (CNN) - It's shortly after 5 a.m. when the phone rings, and on the line is a clearly anxious and worried parent.
"Sierra is having a lot of problems tonight," Shaylene Akery tells a CNN producer. "We have to take her to the hospital, but we still want to talk to you about her trip to China."
Her daughter, Sierra Journey Factor, is 8 years old and has a terminal disease called Type 2 spinal muscular atrophy, a genetic disorder that affects parts of the nervous system that control voluntary muscle movement. In addition, she has a restrictive lung disease and a kidney disorder. She has used a wheelchair since infancy.
Sierra's mother, her stepfather and her biological father, A.J. Factor, all know that Sierra is seriously ill. On the morning we met them, Sierra was treated at two hospitals before she was stabilized.
But the family is convinced of their next step - taking Sierra on an arduous trip to southern China, where they believe the little girl will be injected six times with stem cells during a 34-day stay. It's the kind of treatment not yet approved in the United States by the Food and Drug Administration.
Sierra's treatment will cost $26,500, which does not include the cost of travel and living for the extended family. Those costs would mean an additional $25,000, according to Akery.
"We are really walking into this blindfolded," Akery said. "It's scary, but everybody says it's so nice over there."
The family says it got most of its information from a Web site called China Stem Cell News, at stemcellschina.com, which boasts of dozens of anecdotal testimonials from loved ones who say their children or family members showed improvement after the stem cell treatments. The site offers no scientific evidence and no means of making contact except through a Web form. CNN used the form, but as of yet has received no reply.
What’s on Tap – Wednesday June 3, 2009
Here are the big stories on the agenda today:
- President Obama is heading to the Middle East. He's expected to touch down in Saudi Arabia this morning, with the goal of “resetting” relations with the Muslim world. We are live in Riyadh and previewing the president’s highly anticipated speech tomorrow from Cairo.
- Signs of debris, but no survivors from the Air France plane that crashed in the Atlantic off the Brazilian coast. The U.S. Navy is joining Brazil and France in the search for wreckage – and answers. One expert saying it could be among the hardest recoveries since the search to find the titanic, which took decades! Investigators say the so-called “black boxes” probably survived, but they are not hopeful they will find them.
- A CNN Special Investigation. Every day, desperate Americans are flying to places like Peru, Mexico and China, seeking a miracle in the form of stem cell therapy. Many of them – parents with children who are sick, or dying. They're spending tens of thousands of dollars – despite the fact there's no scientific evidence it works. Drew Griffin talks to doctors, looks for answers and speaks to families that are literally putting everything on the line for an experiment.
We Listen!
Tuesday’s American Morning audience continued question and debate regarding the murder of Dr. Tiller and the issues surrounding abortion.
- Celeste: Dr. Tiller saved a lot of lives and was NOT A MURDERER! To repeat this abject foolishness and give voice to obvious lunatics is the height of irresponsible journalism! Please stop encouraging these fringe elements by giving them air time and commentary without the condemnation they deserve. Just because we have the right to believe and state what we want, DOES NOT require mainstream media to broadcast ill-advised, base comments from hate mongers. The "dumbing down" of the discussion of social issues for the sake of ratings is a disgrace!
- Arigg: Whoever said that the people who disparaged Dr. Tiller, calling him "Tiller the Baby Killer" (O'Reilly and that other crazy guy) can't be held accountable for his murder, should take note of the case of Charles Manson ... he never actually killed anybody, but his words surely persuaded others to commit heinous crimes. I think the world would be a better place of Bill O'Reilly's mother would have a retroactive abortion performed on her son. Our planet has way too many humans to support now, and if humans don't consciously try to prevent unwanted births, I'm sure the earth will balance herself out and get rid of this mass of crazed humanity. Those people should be held accountable for their evil words that drive wack-a-loons to murder innocent doctors
- Diane: The public needs to hear from some of the desperate women for whom Dr. Tiller performed late term abortions. Their stories would make it clear that he was not in it for he money and that these women did not make this decision lightly.
- Gabe: About the abortion doctor who was murdered in Kansas, what is not being asked is, why did he perform the late abortions that he did? Was it out of the mother's whim or were they done to save the mother's life? If the latter, then the doctor was not a killer of babies, as has been charged, but a saviour of women's lives. He should therefore be remembered as a hero as well as a good family and church-going man. And why is it that pro-lifers always give more importance to the fetus than to the woman who bears it? I think the woman, the mother, should come first. After all, she may already have other children and loved ones to look after whereas a fetus is but a blob of tissue, an unborn life. These so-called pro-lifers sure have their priorities mixed up.
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