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New Lungs for Sarah; Court Compromises on Gene Patents; Florida Police Solve 8-Year-old Cold Case; Hillary Clinton in the Spotlight

Aired June 13, 2013 - 10:30   ET

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

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN Breaking News.

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: A lot of breaking news happening this morning. Just want to update you a little bit on that big chemical plant explosion in Louisiana. Geismar, Louisiana, right along Route 30 near Baton Rouge. Actually it's in between New Orleans and Baton Rouge, but we understand Geismar is a little closer to Baton Rouge.

Authorities tell us that there are possible fatalities as a result of this explosion. There are injuries. We're still working to get more information for you.

In other top stories this morning, at 33 minutes past, two major wildfires churning across central Colorado. And there are some staggering numbers to report. Nearly 100 homes destroyed. Ten thousand people in shelters and some 55 square miles under evacuation orders. Remarkably, there's not been a single confirmed injury so far.

New data from the Census Bureau shows that for the first time ever, Asians are the fastest rising ethnic group in the United States. The population rising by nearly 3 percent last year. The majority of that growth came from international immigration.

NFL commissioner Roger Goodell is under fire this morning after defending the Redskins' nickname for Washington's team. In a letter to Congress, Goodell backed away from calls to condemn the name and instead said it represented courage, pride and respect. Some Native American groups called the nickname insulting and racially insensitive.

Ten-year-old Sarah Murnaghan is recovering this morning after getting a new set of lungs from an adult donor. Sarah is the little girl from Pennsylvania whose story sparked a national debate over transplant rules.

Earlier this week, a transplant committee that set those rules temporarily changed its policy to give kids younger than 12 equal access to adult organs.

CNN national correspondent Jason Carroll is in Philadelphia.

How's Sarah doing?

JASON CARROLL, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, she's still heavily sedated. She is still resting, Carol. Her family wants to be continuously been at her side. They want to be there when she opens her eyes, when she wakes up. And even before she went into surgery, as you know, she was so sick she had to be heavily sedated. But even throughout that entire period of time, her mother and her aunt tell me that they continued to talk to say Sarah, continued to read to her every single day, with the thought that perhaps she was still hearing them in some kind of a way.

And now that the six-hour surgery is over and now that we have this at least temporary change in national policy in terms of how children under 12 are prioritized on the adult donor list, the family is using this moment to also recognize the broader implications of what has -- what has happened here.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SHARON RUDDOCK, NIECE GET LUNG TRANSPLANT: We feel really good that it's not just Sarah. We never wanted it to be just for Sarah. But it's all the children in this position who really can get adult lungs and really could thrive on them. And really just need a fair shot. And I'm -- we're thrilled about that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARROLL: And Sarah still has a very long road ahead of her when you're dealing with this type of complicated sensitive surgery. And there is always the risk of infection, there's always the risk that her body will reject the organ donation. But, you know, her family at this point just has to take it one step at a time. That's all they can do. And that's really all they ever really wanted to do. They wanted to be that at this moment where they are now -- Carol.

COSTELLO: Of course. And going back to that rule change, it is temporary. And other children can benefit from it for, what, a year? So is anyone pushing for that rule change to become permanent?

CARROLL: Well, you know, that is what a lot of folks in the medical community are talking about. There is still a lot of research that has to be done on the subject and that's what's going to take place over the next year. They'll look at things, mortality rates of people who are waiting, children waiting on these -- waiting to receive lung donations.

These are just some of the variables that they'll be looking at as they look further into this issue to find out whether or not this temporary change will someday become a permanent one.

COSTELLO: Jason Carroll reporting live for us this morning. Thanks.

Still ahead in the newsroom, a Marine kidnapped in Mexico. What his family has to say about the government's attempts to find Armando Torres. That's coming up next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: A Marine missing in Mexico for nearly a month after he was kidnapped at gunpoint along with his father and uncle. His name is Armando Torres. And earlier I spoke with his wife about the government's efforts to find her husband.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MELISSA ESTRADA, WIFE OF MARINE RESERVIST KIDNAPPED IN MEXICO: And a lot of people questioning is the government doing everything they can. I can assure everyone that everything that is being done is being done. I have been in contact with FBI every day and I have left it up to them and kind of put my trust in a stranger's hands, you know, life (INAUDIBLE) basically. I do believe they are doing everything they can.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: And the family is getting some help from Capitol Hill. Several members of Congress have sent a letter to the State Department asking for its help to bring Armando Torres home.

This just in. We've been talking about this for the last couple of minutes. The U.S. Supreme Court has made a major decision in the case, deciding whether human genes can be patented. In other words, can a company own your genes.

Let's bring in Jake Tapper.

What's the decision, Jake?

JAKE TAPPER, ANCHOR, "THE LEAD WITH JAKE TAPPER": Well, it seems as though there has been a compromise decision as to whether or not DNA can be patented. The Supreme Court has come up with a way to compromise, it seems, and let's now go to Joe Johns to find out more about this ruling.

Joe, what did the Supreme Court decide and was it a unanimous decision or a split?

JOE JOHNS, CNN CRIME AND JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: This was a decision that was about genes and whether they can be patented, Jake. The simple question was about a company called Myriad that isolated a couple of genes that if they mutate would create much greater chance for the individual who had those genes to develop breast cancer.

And the question was whether this company could patent those genes. Because the company essentially cornered the market on the test, if you will, to determine whether these genes, BRCA 1 and BRCA 2 were actually present in an individual.

The court, in a very important ruling today, determined that if the gene we're talking about occurs naturally, that is occurs in nature, then you can't patent it. But if the gene on the other hand is actually synthetic, something called composite DNA, then it is susceptible to a patent.

So it's a very important ruling because there had been a lot of questions about how much money was charged for this testing because this company had essentially cornered the market, Jake. So we do have a decision from the court that says if it occurs in nature, it can't be patented. And that of course leads to the next question which is whether eventually tests for these genes which create breast cancer can become less expensive.

Jake, back to you.

TAPPER: All right. Let's go to our legal team now for analysis as to what this means.

Jeffrey Toobin, obviously this biotech firm in Utah, Myriad, wanted many, many patents. They wanted to be able to singularly test individuals and hold the patent for testing individuals, women and men, for breast cancer whether or not they had a propensity to develop breast cancer.

What does this mean for them? Obviously this is not a 100 percent against them ruling because there is this synthetic DNA part of it, but for intents and purposes this has got to be bad news for them, I would think.

JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: I think so. You know, Jake, Supreme Court opinions are often boring and impenetrable. This opinion today by Justice Clarence Thomas is actually very clear, readable and interesting on this question. Because he basically says look, anything that occurs naturally, whether it's an arm, a nose, part of our DNA, the government cannot give you a patent for that. That is available to everyone to investigate, to look at. But as soon as you start doing something to that stretch of DNA or you have a -- you create a test to use that DNA, that can be patentable.

So decision is certainly bad news for Myriad, the company that came up with this patent and has now been denied the patent, but it doesn't seem to cut off the research in this area which would certainly be bad for everyone. So it does seem like the court compromised.

This is, as we all know, a very politically polarized court. This was a unanimous decision. All the justices joined Justice Clarence Thomas' decision. So it seems like a healthy development for all concerned.

TAPPER: And Jeffrey Rosen, I want to bring you in. The idea that this firm, Myriad, was seeking patents, their argument is, and the argument of many biotech firms, is we need to have this ability to patent this, we need to make money so that we can continue to innovate, to find ways to help people survive. Of course from a civil liberties perspective, there is another point of view. Explain that.

JEFFREY ROSEN, PRESIDENT AND CEO, NATIONAL CONSTITUTION CENTER: There is indeed. This was a dramatic clash between pharmaceutical companies like Myriad and doctors, researcher, innovators who argued that if the U.S. Patent Office continued to grant broad ability to patent human genes, which it's been doing since 1982, then research would become difficult and innovative treatments like the one, breast cancer here, would be difficult in the future. Here the Supreme Court significantly split the baby. It refused to defer to the U.S. Patent Office and signaled it was not going to give a green light to broad patenting of human genetic material. But it did say that if a company genuinely contributes something on its own as the synthetic DNA in this case qualified, then it could have a patent. So not only was it, you know, legally significant as Jeff Toobin said, it has huge practical implications and it really suggests that the Obama administration has won.

They were the ones who urged the court not to be so differential about human gene patents. The court unanimously accepted that position and in this sense the big winners here were both the Obama administration and academics, researchers, doctors who believe that they will be able to innovate much more in the future.

TAPPER: And I don't know what it means but I'm told that Myriad's stock is up 6 percent right now.

Let's bring in Dr. Sanjay Gupta on the phone. There's been a lot of talk, a lot of discussion in the media and the medical community about breast cancer. A lot of it kicked off because of Angelina Jolie, the actress, discussing the fact that she had double mastectomy, a preventive measure since she had, according to this testing, a propensity to develop breast cancer and she wanted to avoid that.

Practically speaking, Sanjay, what does this ruling mean for the millions of women and men who might develop breast cancer in the coming years?

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT (via phone): It means -- probably means that the costs of the test and the availability of the test will be easier for them. It will be cheaper and easier to access probably as a result of this. But this is a -- this is a very interesting ruling and pretty interesting scientifically.

Let me just try and clear a couple of things I think that are important. When we're talking about the gene specifically the sequence of DNA, what leading this decision, it sounds like they're saying that is naturally occurring. That cannot be patented. But what is relevant and important, Jake, in a situation like this from a scientific perspective is that you take that sequence of DNA in order for it to be useful in the lab, you have to eventually make a copy of it and then that copy you have to take out some of the junk, if you will.

And that's what the body will do sort of naturally, but this is what you have to do in a lab to make that gene useful for study. That copy is called complementary DNA. So you have DNA and then you have complementary DNA. That complementary DNA, in order to get it to that stage, does require human intervention. No longer naturally occurring. And from reading again this scientifically sophisticated opinion here, that complementary DNA is patentable.

So the technique per se to get it to a useful form sounds like it's patentable. There are other companies that may be able to do this using slightly different techniques and perhaps they can -- they get the competition that way. But this is a nuanced slightly decision scientifically.

TAPPER: Does it mean, Sanjay, before I let you go, that the breast cancer test that Myriad had worked on, that that is patentable? Does that involve the synthetic DNA that the Supreme Court affirmed is patentable as opposed to the naturally occurring DNA that the Supreme Court said is not patentable?

GUPTA: It -- it does. It does mean that the breast cancer synthetic, the technique to get to that point is patentable. But I think what's important is that other companies could potentially come up with a technique to also create that synthetic form or that complementary form of DNA. So they didn't so much to say look, the gene itself at the very top of the food chain here is patentable, but one layer below that, where you have to create that copy, that's patentable.

But other people could create their copy as well using their own techniques. I think that that may be where, you know, the price of the test comes down and competition is encouraged.

TAPPER: Dr. Sanjay Gupta on the phone. Jeffrey Toobin, Jeffrey Rosen and of course our own Joe Johns, thank you so much. I'm now going to throw it back to my colleague, Carol Costello, in Atlanta.

Carol, back to you.

COSTELLO: All right. Thanks, Jake Tapper.

Coming up in the NEWSROOM, police solve a cold case that may lead them to a serial killer. We'll be back with that story and more after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: Now to -- now to an incredible story out of Florida. Officials say they've arrested this man, Jose Martinez, in connection with a double homicide cold case from 2006. And according for Martinez, those aren't the only murders he's responsible for. The suspect claims he's killed 30 people across the United States.

Alina Machado is following the story.

So how did investigators find them?

ALINA MACHADO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Carol, it was through DNA lab results that were taken from a cigarette butt that was found in the victim's truck -- that was in the Florida case -- that they found out about Jose Martinez. Those results pointed to Martinez. And that's when investigators started digging and they realized that Martinez was also wanted in Alabama for an unrelated homicide.

Now authorities arrested him in Arizona and he was extradited back to Alabama for a first-degree murder charge.

Now here is where things got interesting. Florida detectives then travelled to Alabama to talk to Martinez and they say that's when he confessed to not only the 2006 double homicide, but also to dozens of other murders.

And, Carol, investigators say Martinez told them he committed his first murder when he was 16 years old.

COSTELLO: So he claims he's committed these 30 murders. Do police believe him?

MACHADO: Well, that's what investigators are trying to figure out exactly how many of these murders he committed. But so far, they say they've been able to confirm at least 11 murder victims that Martinez allegedly confessed to killing.

COSTELLO: So what happens now?

MACHADO: Well, investigators are now going to try to figure out exactly how many of these victims were actually Martinez. Again he confessed -- he allegedly confessed to these murders and that's what they're going to try to pinpoint. He remains in custody in Alabama. He's going to have to go through the murder charge there before he's sent to Florida to face additional charges.

COSTELLO: Wow. Alina Machado, thank you -- thank you very much.

Still ahead in the NEWSROOM, with speculation swirling over a possible White House run, Hillary Clinton takes center stage in Chicago.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: Hillary Clinton back in the political spotlight, backed up by her family. She's speaking at the Clinton Global Initiative meeting in Chicago at the top of the hour.

CNN's Erin McPike is covering it. She joins us by phone. Tell us more, Erin.

ERIN MCPIKE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (via phone): Hi there, Carol. Well, Hillary Clinton as you know joins Twitter earlier this week and she just sent out her second tweet about an hour ago saying thanks for the Twitter welcome and that she's in her hometown in Chicago where she's going to be giving a speech in about an hour. So she's already using social media to drive people to her.

So what the speech is going to do at the very beginning, she's going to talk about the renaming of the Clinton Foundation which will include both her and the Clinton's daughter Chelsea. She's also going to be talking about putting herself into the newly renamed foundation and that's going to be where she does the base of her philanthropic work. And she's going to be outlining some of that.

And also, Carol, we -- we also know that she's going to have an announcement at CGI tomorrow and she's going to be previewing that a little bit. And what that has to do is -- with this (INAUDIBLE) focus in the foundation, so we know that she's going to be doing a lot more with the foundation in the next year or so and she'll be previewing some of that -- Carol.

COSTELLO: You know what's interesting, Chris Christie, another possible 2016 contender, right? He appeared on Jimmy Fallon's show doing the slow jam. And in the midst of the slow jam, Erin, the topic of Christie possibly running for president came up and he said to Jimmy Fallon, are you kidding? I wouldn't announce that on your show. So it's interesting both of these powerful people are making so many public appearances.

MCPIKE: That's right and also, Carol, this is actually going to be a very interesting two-day event. We'll be seeing President Bill Clinton throughout the next two days and he will be appearing on stage with Christie -- with Chris Christie, the governor of New Jersey, tomorrow afternoon. So it will be a very interesting two days, lots of politics, I'm sure.

(LAUGHTER)

COSTELLO: Boy, you're not kidding. Thank you so much, Erin McPike. We appreciate it.

And thank you for joining me today. I'm Carol Costello. CNN -- CNN NEWSROOM continues right now.

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN Breaking News.

ASHLEIGH BANFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, everyone. I'm Ashleigh Banfield. Nice to have you with us this morning. And we indeed have breaking news. A major explosion and fire at a chemical plant in Geismar, Louisiana. It is along Highway 30 and the pictures tell quite a story.

Take a look at that fireball and the ensuing black smoke. Our affiliate WAFB in Baton Rouge says it is the William Oliphant Plant. We are getting reports of multiple injuries. The authorities are trying to get the fire under control right now.

We're going to bring you more details on the story as we get them. But as you can imagine, this is just unfolding now and we are just starting to see some of the pictures. And as the first responders get on scene, I think we'll have a clearer picture of just what that fire ball was able to inflict in terms of damage.