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American Morning

'Gimme a Minute'; 'Paging Dr. Gupta'

Aired June 04, 2004 - 08:32   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome, everybody. Just about half past the hour on this AMERICAN MORNING. A huge litmus test for the economy and the president. The new jobs report is out right now. It could have enormous political implications. Christine Romans is looking it over. She's going to have that for us in just a moment.
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: Also, it is Friday, that means time for give me a minute. Our panel looks today at a number of things. One suggestion from Senator Kerry, that the war in Iraq has created a kind of backdoor draft, keeping troops in uniform longer than they agreed to initially. We'll get to that, Ahmad Chalabi, also political discussion in a moment here. Time for "Gimme a Minute" in just about a minute.

O'BRIEN: Lots to talk about today.

But first, let's get to Christine right away, because the numbers are in. They're expecting, or hoping for, or predicting 217,000. How did it line up?

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: 248,000 jobs added in the month of May, and April's number was get better than we thought, 346,000 jobs added in April. So the president's gap, the number of jobs that have been lost under his administration, have gone now to about a million and a half to a million and a quarter, a little less than that, and his critics have been saying he's got to get those numbers down, he's got to start adding jobs. So we've got a third month in a row here of jobs. Until today, we've seen three months in a row of jobs growth of 708,000. So almost a million jobs added over the past four months.

O'BRIEN: Christine Romans, thanks. We'll check in with you more on that a little bit later this morning. Thanks.

HEMMER: Thank you, Christine, for that, a pretty good topic for our "Gimme a Minute" panel.

But is Friday, time to cover the week's biggest stories, the once-over from our segment today. In D.C., Jonah Goldberg with the National Review Online.

Good morning. Welcome back. Nice to see you on a Friday.

JONAH GOLDBERG, NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE: Good see you, Bill.

HEMMER: Here in New York City, Laura Flanders, Air America Radio host, the first time we've had her on "Gimme a Minute." Pressure is on. She's also the author of "Bushwomen: Tales of a Cynical Species."

Also, here in New York, in our own studio, Andy Borowitz, of theborowitzreport.com.

Drew, nice to see you.

ANDY BOROWITZ, BOROWITZREPORT.COM: Autochthonous (ph).

HEMMER: Nice.

Jonah, let's start with you. Is there one reason why George Tenet goes now?

GOLDBERG: Think there are a lot of reason yes he should have gone a long time ago. I -- the conspiracy theories all around Washington are flying around. You have to say that the family had something to do with it, but he needed to go. Maybe he was trying to beat the report from the 9/11 Commission.

HEMMER: Laura?

LAURA FLANDERS, AIR AMERICA RADIO: Well, I think you know, one George down, one George to go. I mean, he's taken the blame for misleading the president. I think this November, you're going to see Bush taking the blame for misleading the people. This has not been a failure of intelligence; it's been a failure of arrogance, and now the administration's clearly looking for a lightning rod. I don't think it's going to work.

HEMMER: His name is not George, but it is Andy.

BOROWITZ: Well, Bill, I just heard Tenet just retracted his resignation. He said it was based on faulty intelligence.

HEMMER: That's the back story, right, Andy?

BOROWITZ: That's the real story.

HEMMER: That's right.

Next topic, the backdoor draft that Senator Kerry talks about. Laura, what is your take on this? The senator saying essentially a lot of people have been misled about the duty and time served in the U.S. military?

FLANDERS: Well, think the voluntary army has always been a little less fact than face saving. It is really volunteer when like Jessica Lynch, it's your only way to a livable wage or a chance at an education. Now is it volunteer army when you're being denied the right to leave after you've done your service? I don't think so. I think Kerry's right.

HEMMER: Jonah, the senator says he wants 40,000 new volunteers to be trained. Sound good to you or not? GOLDBERG: Actually I think it's a great idea. I think we should make the Army a lot bigger, and it's not exactly a good idea. I don't quite get the sort of quasi-Marxist notion that volunteering for the Army isn't volunteering because of economic issues.

But look, this is not a draft; I think what it is, is it's unfortunate it has to be, and I think Kerry's trying to scare a lot of people by using the word draft.

HEMMER: Seven seconds, Andy.

BOROWITZ: Proof that it's a draft: Dick Cheney just asked for another deferment.

HEMMER: And here it comes, ding!

BOROWITZ: There we go.

HEMMER: Third topic, Ahmad Chalabi -- Jonah, is he a spy or is he a scapegoat?

GOLDBERG: It's entirely possible that he's both. This is one of the weirdest stories. I still can't get to the bottom of it. It's a real Rashaman (ph) thing. A lot of people I talked to who take the Pentagon's side make a very persuasive case that the spy story just doesn't add up, but at the same time, he's an odd cat. I just don't know.

HEMMER: Is he both, Laura?

FLANDERS: He's absolutely both, and the administration knew it. I mean, this is a guy what who would tell anybody whatever they want to know, American, Iranian, you name it. He's a crook to boot. He just stopped being useful to the administration...

HEMMER: When things go wrong around here, Laura, we just blame Andy Borowitz. He's our scapegoat.

BOROWITZ: Well, you know, I think he is a scapegoat. The White House is now saying that Chalabi pushed bush off the bike, so, yes.

HEMMER: And we've got the picture to prove it, right? It's out there somewhere, I know of it.

What story did we miss this past week, Laura? Why don't you start?

FLANDERS: Well, the most obvious big blockbuster story is that Air America radio is outranking WABC, Limbaugh's station, in its first month in New York. No question about it, that's the most important story.

HEMMER: Very popular among the taxi drivers, you know that, right?

FLANDERS: There you go. HEMMER: How about you, Jonah?

GOLDBERG: I would say -- that was news to me. I would say the fact is, is that this has been the best week in terms of fixing Iraq that we've had in six months, and it's been basically treated as a ho- hum story. We've had the formation of an Iraqi government. You've had Ayatollah Sistani endorsing the government. These are huge stories, and they've been pushed to the back page.

HEMMER: What's news to you -- Andy.

BOROWITZ: Well, Bill, the world's oldest woman died this week, but on a positive note, Madonna is still on tour.

HEMMER: And coming up real close to 114 years old, right?

BOROWITZ: Exactly.

HEMMER: Thank you, Andy. Thank you, Laura. Thank you, Jonah. Have a great weekend.

GOLDBERG: Thank you.

O'BRIEN: Still to come on AMERICAN MORNING, lots of confusing news out there about just how safe and effective some popular antidepressants are. Dr. Sanjay Gupta is going to join in just a few moments to clear up some of that the confusion.

HEMMER: Also, in a moment here, the new Iraqi government takes over in less than a month. Find out how long it wants the U.S. troops to hang around. Critical comments again yesterday. We'll tell you what they were in a moment on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

O'BRIEN: One of the world's largest drugmakers, GlaxoSmithKline, IS being sued for allegedly hiding negative information about its popular antidepressant Paxil. The suit claims the company concealed studies that suggest an increased risk of suicide in children. In general, there's a good deal of controversy now over the effects that prescription antidepressants are having on children.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta joins us from the CNN Center this morning with more on this.

Sanjay, good morning.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Soledad.

Really at the heart of this issue is looking at how much the public gets to know about these antidepressants and when they get to that information, certainly even more important perhaps with children. Paxil, all these other antidepressants a huge business. You and I have talked about this for a long time. A million prescriptions a week are written around the world for these antidepressants. That's per week. Paxil alone, $3.4 billion in sales.

Just a few years ago, psychologists weren't even sure whether or not kids or children suffer from depression the same way adults do. That hasn't stopped the antidepressant industry from growing certainly. Just between 1987 and 1996, it tripled. You can see there now, 1998 to 2002 it increased 10 percent a year.

Most remarkably perhaps, it's children under five, children under five, that are the fastest growing user group of these antidepressant medications.

Now if you look at the overall medications and which ones can be used, Prozac, right now the only one that's FDA-approved, and all others in the U.K. are actually banned, besides Prozac, for the use in children. Others are used off-label by doctors.

But the most remarkable thing, really, there's no long-term studies for children. Certainly when you think of long-term studies, you want studies of a decade or more. You're not getting that, and they don't know how these drugs work at all.

Still we talked to folks at the American Psychiatric Association. We talked to folks at the FDA. People still believe that it's combination of medication and talk therapy that can be the most effective, and that's why there's so much excitement about these drugs -- Soledad.

O'BRIEN: Sanjay, it seems that the basis of the lawsuit is essentially that the company may have concealed some studies that weren't so positive for the company. Does everyone have to publish in the medical field when they do these studies? Do they have to publish all the results? I mean, is that required, every single study has to be made public?

GUPTA: Very good question, a really important sort of nuance of this. First of all, a lot of these drug studies are actually paid for and conducted by the pharmaceutical companies that make the drugs in the first place, and that gets into a bit of a murky area as it is when it comes to these sorts of drug studies. But here's the way the law sort of stands is that they can do all sorts of different studies, and they have to disclose that information to the FDA before the FDA will actually approve these drugs.

Where it gets complicated is that a lot of doctors will see one study which tends to be -- which was probably the favorable one that's released, and they'll start to prescribe the medication off-label. And the Paxil, there was 2.1 million prescriptions written for children alone on off-label use just last year. So you can see where it gets a little bit murky there, Soledad.

O'BRIEN: Some huge numbers.

Sanjay Gupta for us at the CNN Center. Thanks, Sanjay. Nice to see you, as always.

GUPTA: Thank you. O'BRIEN: Still to come this morning, some rough stuff on the diamond, fists and insults fly. We'll show you more of that, just ahead on AMERICAN MORNING. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HEMMER: Fourteen minutes now before the hour. A check of other news. To Heidi Collins yet again.

Good morning, Heidi.

HEIDI COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning to you, Bill.

This just in to CNN now, I want to tell you about the governor of Najaf, who said that American troops and forces loyal to Muqtada al Sadr have reached an agreement to withdraw from the holy cities of Najaf and Kufa. The U.S. military says it has agreed to move its forces to the outskirts of these sensitive areas, allowing Iraqi security forces to move in. More on that a little later.

Meanwhile, a top official in Iraq says the country is not ready for the U.S. troops to go home. Iraq's new foreign minister, Hoshyar Zabari, met with U.N. officials yesterday. Zabari told the Security Council that any approved U.S. resolution should give the interim government full sovereignty, and oppose a fixed date for U.S. troop withdrawal.

President Bush in Italy, the first stop of the European tour he's doing. The president laying a wreath at a World War II site with Italy's Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. The two also discussing Iraq.

Earlier, Mr. Bush was at the Vatican, where he held private talks with Pope John Paul II. The president presented the pontiff with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. President Bush will be in Paris tomorrow.

And a bit of a baseball scuffle you may have heard about last night in St. Louis. The Cardinals and the Pirates pretty much cleared the benches after a controversial pitch. Insults flew between Pirates' catcher Jason Kendall and Cardinals' manager Tony La Russa. That's when Pittsburgh manager Lloyd McClendon stormed up from the dugout. He was held back by a couple of umpires as he rushed La Russa. Both managers ejected from the game. St. Louis won the game, though, anyway 4 to 2, so tempers flaring, as you might imagine.

HEMMER: Roy McClendon a former Cincinnati Red, by the way. Speaking of the Reds, first place still.

(CROSSTALK)

COLLINS: We don't know how much longer this is going to last, so we're going to enjoy while we can.

O'BRIEN: Get it in whenever you can. I hear you, Bill.

HEMMER: Thank you, Heidi.

I want to get back to that big jobs numbers that came out just about 14 minutes ago. Christine Romans, working for Andy today, back with more on that.

Better than expected, huh, again?

ROMANS: Better than expected, 248,000 jobs added; from March, April and May, 947,000 jobs added in this economy. That whittles the president's deficit down to about a million and a quarter jobs lost under his tenure. So the direction is improving. You're seeing jobs added in everything from factories to goods-producing services, retail. Government jobs, the only sector that fell. 5.6 percent is the unemployment rate now.

HEMMER: Good news for the White House anyway, their perspective today, and politically speaking, you know this is going to have huge implications going forward in this campaign...

ROMANS: You've got to see it continue, though. That's the thing. Some people say it's been four good months, but you got to make sure that employers aren't concerned about energy prices and decide, well, I can't hire more workers right now, I've got to see how this energy price -- also, you know, where there are jobs, for women, it's still pretty tough out there. When you look at the deficit between the wages for women, there are only about five sectors where women make as much or more than men. This is (UNINTELLIGIBLE) where women make more than men: convention planning -- oh, this is where there equal: convention planning, cafeteria service, construction and trade helpers, and where they make more than men, hazardous waste cleanup, telecom installation.

O'BRIEN: Interesting. I wonder why, why women make more in hazardous waste cleanup and telecom installation. I'm just asking, generally, anybody.

ROMANS: Maybe because they're managers, you know.

Anyway, so the numbers are getting better overall for the jobs market, but it's still kind of the same old story.

O'BRIEN: And you have a long way until November.

HEMMER: Yes, that you do. We talked so often about a jobless recovery, but clearly here, there is evidence, at least in some parts of the economy, it is improving.

ROMANS: They are coming back.

HEMMER: Thanks, Christine.

ROMANS: Sure.

O'BRIEN: Still to come this morning, George Tenet took a lot of heat over the past few months, but he has his defenders. We're going to talk to Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel, who says Tenet did the best job he could under the circumstances. That's just ahead. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HEMMER: What a beautiful day it is outside here in New York City. May not last, we'll keep our fingers crossed. That's what they're saying, anyway.

JACK CAFFERTY, CNN ANCHOR: That's not good.

The Belmont Stake. But that horse is a good mudder. He won the derby on a wet track, so he'll do OK.

HEMMER: Starting on the outside, too. He's going to look at those horses all the way to the...

CAFFERTY: Bill is into this. He's going right to the off-track betting parlor at 10:00 to put down next week's paycheck.

Yankee fans can rejoice in a decision that was rescinded. Teen officials -- teen officials -- team officials, Jack, team with an 'm' -- I sounds like those kids on that spelling bee. Team officials brought back Cracker Jacks.

O'BRIEN: Oh, yum.

CAFFERTY: They had taken them out of the stadium and substituted something called Caramel Popcorn Crunch and Munch. Well, that didn't work. I mean, come on, this is Yankee's Stadium. You go to the ballpark, you get a hot dog and some cracker jacks. They did it because the company that made Cracker Jacks started putting them in bags instead of boxes. But officials changed their mind because there was a fan uprising. So Cracker Jacks are back at the house that Ruth built, and all is well in the Bronx.

O'BRIEN: Both versions are very good, by the way.

CAFFERTY: Yes. California taxpayers -- this is unbelievable -- California taxpayers, where they have the huge budget deficit number, remember. Medical bills for state prison inmates are nearing $1 billion a year. "The L.A. Times" reports this includes paying for a convict's breast-reduction surgery and skin treatments at a Beverly Hills dermatologist. Some of this stuff could be done in the prison laundry, and it wouldn't cost taxpayers anything. They're spending for this kind of nonsense has doubled in the last five years, and they're having hearings now, and they think maybe it's time to do something about it. Breast reduction surgery for prison inmates.

Finally, my favorite story, maybe of the week, also from California. We count on them for a lot of File items out there. Plans are under way for an environmentally correct cemetery. It's going to be in Marin County, called Forever Enterprises. An L.A. cemetery operator developing a 32-acre project where the dead will be buried in a biodegradable container, or a shroud or nothing, nothing at all. Family and friends can dig the grave themselves. It will be marked with trees or rocks. No embalming fluid, no metal caskets, no conventional tombstones. And the bodies will then play a, quote, "active role in replenishing the ecosystem." And this is according to a spokesman for Forever Enterprises.

O'BRIEN: Marin County, of course, is some of the most expensive property outside of San Francisco. I wonder how the neighbors are going to feel about people biodegrading next door.

CAFFERTY: I could get myself in so very much difficulty.

O'BRIEN: Just don't do it. Just don't do it.

CAFFERTY: I could ruin what's been a reasonably successful career right here, right now.

O'BRIEN: We got a good couple of months going. Just say no, Jack.

CAFFERTY: I'm going to resist.

(WEATHER REPORT)

HEMMER: In a moment, her face has become very familiar since the Iraqi prison scandal broke. Now Private Lynndie England has a new lawyer on her team, rather. We'll talk to him. Find out how he plans to defend his client, in a moment when we continue here, on a Friday edition of AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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Aired June 4, 2004 - 08:32   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome, everybody. Just about half past the hour on this AMERICAN MORNING. A huge litmus test for the economy and the president. The new jobs report is out right now. It could have enormous political implications. Christine Romans is looking it over. She's going to have that for us in just a moment.
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: Also, it is Friday, that means time for give me a minute. Our panel looks today at a number of things. One suggestion from Senator Kerry, that the war in Iraq has created a kind of backdoor draft, keeping troops in uniform longer than they agreed to initially. We'll get to that, Ahmad Chalabi, also political discussion in a moment here. Time for "Gimme a Minute" in just about a minute.

O'BRIEN: Lots to talk about today.

But first, let's get to Christine right away, because the numbers are in. They're expecting, or hoping for, or predicting 217,000. How did it line up?

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: 248,000 jobs added in the month of May, and April's number was get better than we thought, 346,000 jobs added in April. So the president's gap, the number of jobs that have been lost under his administration, have gone now to about a million and a half to a million and a quarter, a little less than that, and his critics have been saying he's got to get those numbers down, he's got to start adding jobs. So we've got a third month in a row here of jobs. Until today, we've seen three months in a row of jobs growth of 708,000. So almost a million jobs added over the past four months.

O'BRIEN: Christine Romans, thanks. We'll check in with you more on that a little bit later this morning. Thanks.

HEMMER: Thank you, Christine, for that, a pretty good topic for our "Gimme a Minute" panel.

But is Friday, time to cover the week's biggest stories, the once-over from our segment today. In D.C., Jonah Goldberg with the National Review Online.

Good morning. Welcome back. Nice to see you on a Friday.

JONAH GOLDBERG, NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE: Good see you, Bill.

HEMMER: Here in New York City, Laura Flanders, Air America Radio host, the first time we've had her on "Gimme a Minute." Pressure is on. She's also the author of "Bushwomen: Tales of a Cynical Species."

Also, here in New York, in our own studio, Andy Borowitz, of theborowitzreport.com.

Drew, nice to see you.

ANDY BOROWITZ, BOROWITZREPORT.COM: Autochthonous (ph).

HEMMER: Nice.

Jonah, let's start with you. Is there one reason why George Tenet goes now?

GOLDBERG: Think there are a lot of reason yes he should have gone a long time ago. I -- the conspiracy theories all around Washington are flying around. You have to say that the family had something to do with it, but he needed to go. Maybe he was trying to beat the report from the 9/11 Commission.

HEMMER: Laura?

LAURA FLANDERS, AIR AMERICA RADIO: Well, I think you know, one George down, one George to go. I mean, he's taken the blame for misleading the president. I think this November, you're going to see Bush taking the blame for misleading the people. This has not been a failure of intelligence; it's been a failure of arrogance, and now the administration's clearly looking for a lightning rod. I don't think it's going to work.

HEMMER: His name is not George, but it is Andy.

BOROWITZ: Well, Bill, I just heard Tenet just retracted his resignation. He said it was based on faulty intelligence.

HEMMER: That's the back story, right, Andy?

BOROWITZ: That's the real story.

HEMMER: That's right.

Next topic, the backdoor draft that Senator Kerry talks about. Laura, what is your take on this? The senator saying essentially a lot of people have been misled about the duty and time served in the U.S. military?

FLANDERS: Well, think the voluntary army has always been a little less fact than face saving. It is really volunteer when like Jessica Lynch, it's your only way to a livable wage or a chance at an education. Now is it volunteer army when you're being denied the right to leave after you've done your service? I don't think so. I think Kerry's right.

HEMMER: Jonah, the senator says he wants 40,000 new volunteers to be trained. Sound good to you or not? GOLDBERG: Actually I think it's a great idea. I think we should make the Army a lot bigger, and it's not exactly a good idea. I don't quite get the sort of quasi-Marxist notion that volunteering for the Army isn't volunteering because of economic issues.

But look, this is not a draft; I think what it is, is it's unfortunate it has to be, and I think Kerry's trying to scare a lot of people by using the word draft.

HEMMER: Seven seconds, Andy.

BOROWITZ: Proof that it's a draft: Dick Cheney just asked for another deferment.

HEMMER: And here it comes, ding!

BOROWITZ: There we go.

HEMMER: Third topic, Ahmad Chalabi -- Jonah, is he a spy or is he a scapegoat?

GOLDBERG: It's entirely possible that he's both. This is one of the weirdest stories. I still can't get to the bottom of it. It's a real Rashaman (ph) thing. A lot of people I talked to who take the Pentagon's side make a very persuasive case that the spy story just doesn't add up, but at the same time, he's an odd cat. I just don't know.

HEMMER: Is he both, Laura?

FLANDERS: He's absolutely both, and the administration knew it. I mean, this is a guy what who would tell anybody whatever they want to know, American, Iranian, you name it. He's a crook to boot. He just stopped being useful to the administration...

HEMMER: When things go wrong around here, Laura, we just blame Andy Borowitz. He's our scapegoat.

BOROWITZ: Well, you know, I think he is a scapegoat. The White House is now saying that Chalabi pushed bush off the bike, so, yes.

HEMMER: And we've got the picture to prove it, right? It's out there somewhere, I know of it.

What story did we miss this past week, Laura? Why don't you start?

FLANDERS: Well, the most obvious big blockbuster story is that Air America radio is outranking WABC, Limbaugh's station, in its first month in New York. No question about it, that's the most important story.

HEMMER: Very popular among the taxi drivers, you know that, right?

FLANDERS: There you go. HEMMER: How about you, Jonah?

GOLDBERG: I would say -- that was news to me. I would say the fact is, is that this has been the best week in terms of fixing Iraq that we've had in six months, and it's been basically treated as a ho- hum story. We've had the formation of an Iraqi government. You've had Ayatollah Sistani endorsing the government. These are huge stories, and they've been pushed to the back page.

HEMMER: What's news to you -- Andy.

BOROWITZ: Well, Bill, the world's oldest woman died this week, but on a positive note, Madonna is still on tour.

HEMMER: And coming up real close to 114 years old, right?

BOROWITZ: Exactly.

HEMMER: Thank you, Andy. Thank you, Laura. Thank you, Jonah. Have a great weekend.

GOLDBERG: Thank you.

O'BRIEN: Still to come on AMERICAN MORNING, lots of confusing news out there about just how safe and effective some popular antidepressants are. Dr. Sanjay Gupta is going to join in just a few moments to clear up some of that the confusion.

HEMMER: Also, in a moment here, the new Iraqi government takes over in less than a month. Find out how long it wants the U.S. troops to hang around. Critical comments again yesterday. We'll tell you what they were in a moment on AMERICAN MORNING.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

O'BRIEN: One of the world's largest drugmakers, GlaxoSmithKline, IS being sued for allegedly hiding negative information about its popular antidepressant Paxil. The suit claims the company concealed studies that suggest an increased risk of suicide in children. In general, there's a good deal of controversy now over the effects that prescription antidepressants are having on children.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta joins us from the CNN Center this morning with more on this.

Sanjay, good morning.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Soledad.

Really at the heart of this issue is looking at how much the public gets to know about these antidepressants and when they get to that information, certainly even more important perhaps with children. Paxil, all these other antidepressants a huge business. You and I have talked about this for a long time. A million prescriptions a week are written around the world for these antidepressants. That's per week. Paxil alone, $3.4 billion in sales.

Just a few years ago, psychologists weren't even sure whether or not kids or children suffer from depression the same way adults do. That hasn't stopped the antidepressant industry from growing certainly. Just between 1987 and 1996, it tripled. You can see there now, 1998 to 2002 it increased 10 percent a year.

Most remarkably perhaps, it's children under five, children under five, that are the fastest growing user group of these antidepressant medications.

Now if you look at the overall medications and which ones can be used, Prozac, right now the only one that's FDA-approved, and all others in the U.K. are actually banned, besides Prozac, for the use in children. Others are used off-label by doctors.

But the most remarkable thing, really, there's no long-term studies for children. Certainly when you think of long-term studies, you want studies of a decade or more. You're not getting that, and they don't know how these drugs work at all.

Still we talked to folks at the American Psychiatric Association. We talked to folks at the FDA. People still believe that it's combination of medication and talk therapy that can be the most effective, and that's why there's so much excitement about these drugs -- Soledad.

O'BRIEN: Sanjay, it seems that the basis of the lawsuit is essentially that the company may have concealed some studies that weren't so positive for the company. Does everyone have to publish in the medical field when they do these studies? Do they have to publish all the results? I mean, is that required, every single study has to be made public?

GUPTA: Very good question, a really important sort of nuance of this. First of all, a lot of these drug studies are actually paid for and conducted by the pharmaceutical companies that make the drugs in the first place, and that gets into a bit of a murky area as it is when it comes to these sorts of drug studies. But here's the way the law sort of stands is that they can do all sorts of different studies, and they have to disclose that information to the FDA before the FDA will actually approve these drugs.

Where it gets complicated is that a lot of doctors will see one study which tends to be -- which was probably the favorable one that's released, and they'll start to prescribe the medication off-label. And the Paxil, there was 2.1 million prescriptions written for children alone on off-label use just last year. So you can see where it gets a little bit murky there, Soledad.

O'BRIEN: Some huge numbers.

Sanjay Gupta for us at the CNN Center. Thanks, Sanjay. Nice to see you, as always.

GUPTA: Thank you. O'BRIEN: Still to come this morning, some rough stuff on the diamond, fists and insults fly. We'll show you more of that, just ahead on AMERICAN MORNING. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HEMMER: Fourteen minutes now before the hour. A check of other news. To Heidi Collins yet again.

Good morning, Heidi.

HEIDI COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning to you, Bill.

This just in to CNN now, I want to tell you about the governor of Najaf, who said that American troops and forces loyal to Muqtada al Sadr have reached an agreement to withdraw from the holy cities of Najaf and Kufa. The U.S. military says it has agreed to move its forces to the outskirts of these sensitive areas, allowing Iraqi security forces to move in. More on that a little later.

Meanwhile, a top official in Iraq says the country is not ready for the U.S. troops to go home. Iraq's new foreign minister, Hoshyar Zabari, met with U.N. officials yesterday. Zabari told the Security Council that any approved U.S. resolution should give the interim government full sovereignty, and oppose a fixed date for U.S. troop withdrawal.

President Bush in Italy, the first stop of the European tour he's doing. The president laying a wreath at a World War II site with Italy's Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. The two also discussing Iraq.

Earlier, Mr. Bush was at the Vatican, where he held private talks with Pope John Paul II. The president presented the pontiff with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. President Bush will be in Paris tomorrow.

And a bit of a baseball scuffle you may have heard about last night in St. Louis. The Cardinals and the Pirates pretty much cleared the benches after a controversial pitch. Insults flew between Pirates' catcher Jason Kendall and Cardinals' manager Tony La Russa. That's when Pittsburgh manager Lloyd McClendon stormed up from the dugout. He was held back by a couple of umpires as he rushed La Russa. Both managers ejected from the game. St. Louis won the game, though, anyway 4 to 2, so tempers flaring, as you might imagine.

HEMMER: Roy McClendon a former Cincinnati Red, by the way. Speaking of the Reds, first place still.

(CROSSTALK)

COLLINS: We don't know how much longer this is going to last, so we're going to enjoy while we can.

O'BRIEN: Get it in whenever you can. I hear you, Bill.

HEMMER: Thank you, Heidi.

I want to get back to that big jobs numbers that came out just about 14 minutes ago. Christine Romans, working for Andy today, back with more on that.

Better than expected, huh, again?

ROMANS: Better than expected, 248,000 jobs added; from March, April and May, 947,000 jobs added in this economy. That whittles the president's deficit down to about a million and a quarter jobs lost under his tenure. So the direction is improving. You're seeing jobs added in everything from factories to goods-producing services, retail. Government jobs, the only sector that fell. 5.6 percent is the unemployment rate now.

HEMMER: Good news for the White House anyway, their perspective today, and politically speaking, you know this is going to have huge implications going forward in this campaign...

ROMANS: You've got to see it continue, though. That's the thing. Some people say it's been four good months, but you got to make sure that employers aren't concerned about energy prices and decide, well, I can't hire more workers right now, I've got to see how this energy price -- also, you know, where there are jobs, for women, it's still pretty tough out there. When you look at the deficit between the wages for women, there are only about five sectors where women make as much or more than men. This is (UNINTELLIGIBLE) where women make more than men: convention planning -- oh, this is where there equal: convention planning, cafeteria service, construction and trade helpers, and where they make more than men, hazardous waste cleanup, telecom installation.

O'BRIEN: Interesting. I wonder why, why women make more in hazardous waste cleanup and telecom installation. I'm just asking, generally, anybody.

ROMANS: Maybe because they're managers, you know.

Anyway, so the numbers are getting better overall for the jobs market, but it's still kind of the same old story.

O'BRIEN: And you have a long way until November.

HEMMER: Yes, that you do. We talked so often about a jobless recovery, but clearly here, there is evidence, at least in some parts of the economy, it is improving.

ROMANS: They are coming back.

HEMMER: Thanks, Christine.

ROMANS: Sure.

O'BRIEN: Still to come this morning, George Tenet took a lot of heat over the past few months, but he has his defenders. We're going to talk to Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel, who says Tenet did the best job he could under the circumstances. That's just ahead. Stay with us.

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HEMMER: What a beautiful day it is outside here in New York City. May not last, we'll keep our fingers crossed. That's what they're saying, anyway.

JACK CAFFERTY, CNN ANCHOR: That's not good.

The Belmont Stake. But that horse is a good mudder. He won the derby on a wet track, so he'll do OK.

HEMMER: Starting on the outside, too. He's going to look at those horses all the way to the...

CAFFERTY: Bill is into this. He's going right to the off-track betting parlor at 10:00 to put down next week's paycheck.

Yankee fans can rejoice in a decision that was rescinded. Teen officials -- teen officials -- team officials, Jack, team with an 'm' -- I sounds like those kids on that spelling bee. Team officials brought back Cracker Jacks.

O'BRIEN: Oh, yum.

CAFFERTY: They had taken them out of the stadium and substituted something called Caramel Popcorn Crunch and Munch. Well, that didn't work. I mean, come on, this is Yankee's Stadium. You go to the ballpark, you get a hot dog and some cracker jacks. They did it because the company that made Cracker Jacks started putting them in bags instead of boxes. But officials changed their mind because there was a fan uprising. So Cracker Jacks are back at the house that Ruth built, and all is well in the Bronx.

O'BRIEN: Both versions are very good, by the way.

CAFFERTY: Yes. California taxpayers -- this is unbelievable -- California taxpayers, where they have the huge budget deficit number, remember. Medical bills for state prison inmates are nearing $1 billion a year. "The L.A. Times" reports this includes paying for a convict's breast-reduction surgery and skin treatments at a Beverly Hills dermatologist. Some of this stuff could be done in the prison laundry, and it wouldn't cost taxpayers anything. They're spending for this kind of nonsense has doubled in the last five years, and they're having hearings now, and they think maybe it's time to do something about it. Breast reduction surgery for prison inmates.

Finally, my favorite story, maybe of the week, also from California. We count on them for a lot of File items out there. Plans are under way for an environmentally correct cemetery. It's going to be in Marin County, called Forever Enterprises. An L.A. cemetery operator developing a 32-acre project where the dead will be buried in a biodegradable container, or a shroud or nothing, nothing at all. Family and friends can dig the grave themselves. It will be marked with trees or rocks. No embalming fluid, no metal caskets, no conventional tombstones. And the bodies will then play a, quote, "active role in replenishing the ecosystem." And this is according to a spokesman for Forever Enterprises.

O'BRIEN: Marin County, of course, is some of the most expensive property outside of San Francisco. I wonder how the neighbors are going to feel about people biodegrading next door.

CAFFERTY: I could get myself in so very much difficulty.

O'BRIEN: Just don't do it. Just don't do it.

CAFFERTY: I could ruin what's been a reasonably successful career right here, right now.

O'BRIEN: We got a good couple of months going. Just say no, Jack.

CAFFERTY: I'm going to resist.

(WEATHER REPORT)

HEMMER: In a moment, her face has become very familiar since the Iraqi prison scandal broke. Now Private Lynndie England has a new lawyer on her team, rather. We'll talk to him. Find out how he plans to defend his client, in a moment when we continue here, on a Friday edition of AMERICAN MORNING.

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