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Naturally-Occurring Human Genes Cannot be Patented; Geismar, Louisiana Chemical Plant Explosion; Mueller in the Hot Seat; U.S. Open Postponed due to Weather; 360 Colorado Homes Destroyed, Zero Impact on Flames

Aired June 13, 2013 - 11:00   ET

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

ASHLEIGH BANFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: But there is some video as you're rolling along, heading towards that plant, the chemical plant in Louisiana, a pretty remarkable explosion.

We'll watch this for you. There you see where it is in relation to New Orleans on our Google map. Keeping a close eye on it here at CNN, and we will bring you more as we get it.

And there you have it, as well, Supreme Court deciding, we're getting this to you, as well, as breaking news. The Supreme Court is handing down another major decision. If it's June, this is the kind of news you get.

This one has to do with whether a company can own a bit of you, your genes, genetic material, anyway. This is among the first decisions that we're hearing from the court's recent term.

I want to bring in Joe Johns, who is at the U.S. Supreme Court, live, right now. This is the fascinating case of whether a company, in this particular case, a company called Myriad, can actually patent a tiny itsy-bitsy piece of a person in a gene.

They tried to patent two genes that had to deal with breast cancer mutation form. What did the Supreme Court say and why did they say it the way they did?

JOHN JOHNS, CNN CRIME AND JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Ashleigh, first, it was a unanimous decision and it's important to note that the court sort of made this decision two decisions.

So let's start at the top. Myriad Genetics, this company, did one thing really well. They isolated the genes that cause or increase the likelihood of breast cancer, BRCA1 and 2, essentially found the location and the sequence, the precise sequence of these genes.

And the way they were able to sort of monetize that was to charge a lot of money for the test to determine whether you have this gene. The question was whether that gene could actually be patented under the law.

The court said, if the gene is actually occurring only in nature, then you cannot patent that gene. But if the gene is, say, isolated, changed a little bit so you can work with it, turned into something they call complementary DNA, then you can actually patent that. And that's essentially where the court stands.

The question, of course, is also about whether these processes could be patented. And I think it's important to read something the courts here said. Had Myriad created an innovative method of manipulating genes while searching for BRCA1 and 2, it could possibly have sought a method patent, but the processes used by Myriad to isolate DNA were well understood by geneticists at the time of myriad's patents, well understood, widely used, fairly uniform insofar as any scientist engaged in the search for a gene would likely have utilized a similar approach.

So the question, of course, is what Myriad's got here right now, and we're looking to them for answers. I did see an e-mail just a little while ago that their stock was up, Ashleigh.

BANFIELD: All right, well, hold that thought for a moment. I want to bring in Jeffrey Toobin, our senior legal analyst here at CNN who knows a few things about the Supreme Court because you wrote the book, twice over (inaudible).

People were perplexed by this in so many ways if they heard it in sort of common parlance. How on earth could you patent a piece of me, however molecularly small?

On the other hand, when they hear the argument that this company invested years and money finding a beige needle in 50 haystacks and that achieving that takes that kind of work and, if you can't be protected, you will never get this kind of research and this kind of benefit to people like us who need it.

JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: Well, you really isolated the dilemma in this case. And they decided that a piece of DNA was essentially like an elbow. You can't tell other companies, I own elbows.

I know -- if you want to do research on elbows, you've got to pay me first. So that's what they said about this DNA.

Even though it did cost a lot of money and even though there was a lot of effort and money and time expended in isolating this piece of our genetic sequences, they said that is not something one company can own.

BANFIELD: Which is not surprising.

TOOBIN: It's not surprising. It's the position that the Obama administration urged upon the court. We all know how polarized this court is. All nine justices agreed this was the right result.

The opinion was written by Justice Clarence Thomas, actually very interesting, clear discussion of these issues. But they basically said, hey, this is part of nature; you can't patent it.

BANFIELD: We sure don't get a nice unanimous decision like that, a friendly nine, very often.

I want to bring in Sanjay Gupta because he -- the both of you have such a great perspective on why this is so critical.

Sanjay, I was listening to a report of yours earlier, and I think you really hit the nail on the head when you described in doctor-speak what this really means.

If you take the actual BRCA genes, BRCA1 and BRCA2, which were those genes, those beige needles found in the haystack, and you replicate them in order to do the research, what is that replication? Is it that the synthetic gene that they can actually patent now or is it just the process by which they got to the working project that's patentable, as you understand it?

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT (via telephone): I think it's the first thing that you said. It is the replica. It's the synthesized gene. They call it the complementary DNA.

But think of it as a template, as you and Jeffrey were just saying. The gene itself cannot be patented. Even the techniques, as arduous as they were to develop and as long as they took to work, cannot be patented.

But then, when you have a gene, what you really need to do is you need to create a replica of it with the junk taken out, so to speak. And it's that template that they say can be patented.

Now, let me just get to the next point because it's the important point, and that is that other companies can also create their own template of this, as well. They can figure out a way to copy these sort of DNA strand that makes up the gene, get rid of the junk and create their own template.

And then they -- so it wouldn't be the same template that Myriad has and that's why you'll probably see increased competition and other testing options become available because other companies will do this.

BANFIELD: And that brings me to my next point. Paul Callan, another CNN analyst, a legal analyst, who's with us as well, is this the kind of -- because, really, when it comes right down to it, if I'm sitting in Omaha or if I'm in Washington state, right, I want to know how this affects me. And if I am at a risk for breast cancer, can I all of a sudden now with this ruling have better access to critical health care?

PAUL CALLAN, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Not necessarily. The Supreme Court basically has given the pharmaceutical industry, the biotech industry, you know, a way to make a lot of money in this area.

If they have isolated a gene and they have in essence created sort of an artificial form of the gene, they can still charge for the testing that ultimately they're going to sell to the public.

Now, let's bring it right down to the level of somebody in their doctor's office. Some of these tests cost like $1,000 to do because doctors have to buy the material from these biotech companies.

So I don't necessarily think that you're going to see any sort of immediate help to patients out there, but on the other hand, the company says, hey, this may give us the opportunity to develop more tests. We're going to put hundreds of millions of dollars into curing cancer and doing other things and that the long-term benefits to society will be great.

So this is a big, important decision in an area that affects everybody.

BANFIELD: And stay nimble because we have big important decisions coming down in the next couple of weeks, as well.

Paul Callan, thank you very much for your insight. Jeffrey Toobin, as always, same thing. And also Joe Johns live at the Supreme Court. Thank you to all three of you.

Coming up this hour, breathing new life into the lungs of a 10-year- old girl, Sarah Murnaghan on the mend this morning after a life saving transplant is deemed a success, the little girl and her big story.

The hottest ticket in Florida? A seat on the George Zimmerman jury. One by one, the potential jurors are peppered with questions about Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman and just how much they have learned from television.

But will the hot seat produce a fair jury?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BANFIELD: And we've got this breaking news for you, a major explosion, a fire and explosion at a chemical plant in Geismar, Louisiana. You can see its proximity right there to New Orleans.

Our affiliate, WASB, in Baton Rouge says this is the Williams Olefins plant. We're getting reports already of multiple injuries. The authorities there are trying to get the fire under control. They are evacuating the area around the plant.

I can tell you this as well. One of the witnesses that was on a local station, WAFB, says that everybody was evacuated to the road, and that everyone is trained for something like this.

He said that it looked as though Williams had taken all the precautions that they could to evacuate all the personnel, but a major explosion that we are working right now in Louisiana, in Geismar, Louisiana.

So we'll continue to collect our details, our information. We're getting crews towards that scene as we speak. We'll update you just as soon as we have more.

In the interim, hey, Washington, you better hunker down today because you're in for a day of pretty rough weather, including hail and torrential downpours, damaging winds, and here's the bad news -- possibly even tornadoes.

It was that same storm that ripped across the Midwest yesterday. Take a look at the funnel. You just cannot get enough of these pictures. This was a funnel cloud in Belmont, Iowa, a small farming community in the middle of that state. Wow.

Just it's always remarkable and great to see it where there is mud as opposed to this kind of thing when it hits power lines and when it hits structures. So we're happy to say there weren't any serious injuries reported, but a lot of damage.

Look at that. If you -- if this is your town, this is your heartbreak. Local officials are fearing that a nearby levee could actually fail because the rains were just so darn heavy.

Want to take you to Chicago, the Willis Tower, the tallest structure in the city, was on the receiving end of a massive lightning bolt. Unbelievable. Look at that. Catching that just is a remarkable feat if you're a photographer.

Chad Myers is in the CNN Weather Center, live in Atlanta. I always say this. You know, for those people who had to endure the brunt of those funnel clouds and tornadoes, you know, thank God they're not in heavily populated areas, but that is a small consolation if it was your farm or your home that got trashed.

CHAD MYERS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Yeah, and thank goodness that these were only like EF1, EF2 tornadoes, so completely survivable if you're on the inside of your home, not in your car, in a small closet on the lowest level, preferably in the basement if you one, and there are basements in Iowa.

But here you go. This is what we're setting up for today, weather rolling just offshore now, Atlantic City all the way up toward -- even up toward Long Island, we had just a line of showers and thunderstorms now just moving offshore.

But there is more weather back behind it. That's what we're worried about because, it's not so much that the storms that are going to be pushing away, it's the storms that are still coming that we have to worry.

It's the sunshine. It's the heat. It's the humidity. It's still hot in D.C. and Baltimore.

A line of weather just went through you. Now that kind of cooled your air mass down a little bit, but there's still more weather back out to the west. That's the weather that we're worried about, the new line of weather through Cincinnati down into West Virginia and still has a ways to go before it does hit parts of the middle east into the mid- Atlantic states here from Washington, D.C., right on up even into Baltimore.

Gulf moisture in the way, that's a problem. Walk outside right now anywhere in the East Coast, you go, oh, what just happened? How did all this humidity get here? That's the fuel to the fire that we're going to use today to get these big storms here right around the major metropolitan areas, Baltimore, D.C., Richmond. BANFIELD: I just spent the day in Baltimore yesterday and I could barely breathe, it was like breathing a wet blanket, it was so humid and so heavy and thick. I always worry about the traffic, too. You think about the people not only the hassle factor, with the bad weather, but the danger factor. You're in your car and you're stuck like you were in the Oklahoma tornado, really dangerous, Chad.

MYERS: And you don't know where you are because you didn't see what county you just drove through. Even if you're from 50 miles away, you don't know what county you're in.

BANFIELD: Right, right. All right. Chad, keep an eye. Thank you.

Want to take everybody to Washington. We have cameras everywhere. A lot of busy stuff going on. Right now the director of the FBI, Robert Mueller, is testifying. This is a FBI oversight hearing. On the table this morning a lot of issues. Obviously if you've been watching the news, a lot. Lack of information sharing between the agencies is officially on the agenda, wasteful spending by the Department of Justice, and of course that big question over surveillance by the National Security Agency that has been rocking this country. Have a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROBERT MUELLER, FBI DIRECTOR: Any endeavor we undertake addressing national security is legal. In this particular case, the problems -- the programs to which you refer, the legality has been assured by the Department of Justice. The FISA court has ruled on these two programs, monitors these two programs, and again has assured the legality of the efforts undertaken in these two programs. And lastly I will say in response to what the ranking member (INAUDIBLE) said in terms of a debate, Congress has been briefed as has been pointed out, has been briefed over the years.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BANFIELD: You're hearing a lot of this really bipartisan response in terms of the legality of what's been going on with the NSA and what was leaked, and what information we do know, what we don't know, and what we don't deserve to know. And that is one bipartisan fellow, too. He has spanned two administrations. Robert Mueller took office, if you remember, one week before 9/11. So you do the math. He's been on the seat now for 12 years, so he knows how to handle a House Judiciary Committee.

Our White House correspondent Dan Lothian is live now in Washington. Just get me up to speed on how the hearing has gone so far and what he's had to fend off or at least answer to the most.

DAN LOTHIAN, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, I think you know, the message you just heard a while ago where he talked about how lawmakers were briefed on this. This is a continuing what the administration has been saying now for several weeks, that information -- this kind of classified information on the government surveillance program -- had been out there, that these lawmakers had been briefed or at least had the opportunity to be briefed.

But lawmakers saying they perhaps didn't understand the full scope of some of these programs. He's being asked about a whole host of issues. Benghazi, about guns and background checks. But the primary question what keeps coming up time and time again is for him to sort of defend these NSA programs. And he has been doing that. He was specifically asked about Snowden and he admitted these leaks have had an impact. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MUELLER: As for the individual who has admitted making these disclosures, he is the subject of an ongoing criminal investigation. These disclosures have caused significant harm to our nation and to our safety. We're taking all necessary steps to hold the person responsible for these disclosures.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LOTHIAN: He pointed out that these surveillance programs do protect the country from terrorism, but he refused to go into any great detail because he said a lot of this information is classified.

BANFIELD: We hear that a lot, don't we? Classified. It's very frustrating. Makes us frustrated as we try to get to the bottom of things and you can't. With this one, you can't. Dan Lothian, thank you for that.

Tee time for Tiger Woods on hold officially right now. Chad was just talking about it, it's because of weather dampening the U.S. Open. Tiger hoping to end the drought. Phil Mickelson aiming for the top instead of runner up. More in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BANFIELD: So the weather really stinks. The weather gods are not being kind to the golfers this morning. Especially the U.S. Open golfers. Because it's been suspended due to bad weather. Want to head directly out to CNN's Shane O'Donoghue, he's in Ardmore, Pennsylvania for our Bleacher Report today. What do really rich golf athletes do when they have to wait it out? Do they go to the clubhouse and have like an Arnold Palmer or how do they bide their time?

(LAUGHTER)

SHANE O'DONOGHUE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That would be very nice. I'd like one of those myself. But the players, they're based not far from here. The rain just down here on the west course. The clubhouse is at the east course, and this is a bit of a logistical nightmare, but the USGA and all the officials and all the club officials are doing a wonderful job, but it's in trying circumstances.

But the weather is the real issue at the moment today. The players obviously would have been cooped up in their players lounge and all of those millionaires would have been on their smartphones and I'm sure just shooting the breeze, and on their laptops, but really anxious just to get back out on the course.

Obviously they started at 7:00AM this morning. Phil Mickelson was in one of the marquee groups at 7:11, but they suspended play at 8:36AM here. And then we saw a deluge for about an hour from 9:30 to 10:30 or thereabouts. And then it stopped. You can still feel quite a bit of warmth here, but the conditions under foot are very soggy indeed.

The good news is that the players are out on the practice range at the moment behind me. The likes of Brandt Snedeker, Phil Mickelson just over my right shoulder. A number of other players working on their pitching games and they're up on the driving range just working on getting loose and getting ready to get back out there because play will resume at 12:10PM local time.

So that's good news, but no guarantee that there won't be another rainstorm at some stage today. It will be a long day. Those who are playing in the afternoon are delayed by at least 3 1/2 hours and that includes the real marquee group of the day which features Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy and Adam Scott, the top three players in the world. So they will have a long wait.

BANFIELD: All right, well, and once they finish their Arnold Palmers, hopefully they didn't put a shot of vodka in it because play is supposed to resume later today and we want to see -- well, you know what, that would make for good TV. Won't lie. Thanks. Keep us posted on what those fellas are up to.

I want to move out west now. We have breaking news from Colorado. Listen, wet weather is a Godsend for Colorado, but they do not have this kind of luck right now. Instead this is what they're facing. Look at those pictures. That is a cameraman that is awfully close to a very dangerous circumstance. Walls of flames racing through what is only to be called bone dry forests.

And also 360 bone dry burned homes, as well. And that's only so far. Thousands of people have just literally taken off and run for their lives. They don't get a lot of time to collect their photos and hard drives and get out. Lifetimes of their hard work and their memories just go up in smoke, and they're lucky if they just get out with their lives frankly. Colorado officials just issued an update on this moments ago and it's been one hell of a fire. Dan Simon is in Colorado Springs right now. What do they say, Dan?

DAN SIMON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: First of all, this has become quite the catastrophe for this community. The number of homes destroyed more than tripled overnight. As you said, 360 homes destroyed. That exceeds what we saw last year in this community with the Waldo (ph) Canyon fire. This is absolutely horrible for the folks living here and the conditions are not improving whatsoever.

More red flag warnings today, could see wind gusts up to 40 miles an hour. That despite the fact that you have all of these resources on the ground. You have 500 firefighters trying to battle this wildfire, numerous aircraft dumping water, dumping retardant, none of it seemed to be making a difference whatsoever. At this point the fire is still zero percent contained if you can believe that after several days of trying to fight the fire. They're making really zero progress in terms of containing this blaze. And now we're just getting this late breaking word 360 homes destroyed.

BANFIELD: Oh, Dan, that's just heartbreaking to hear that. Our thoughts are with all those people having to make a new start. Dan will keep watching it for us out there in Colorado Springs.

In the meantime, will she or won't she run for president in 2016? You'll hear that a lot. Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Global Initiative Conference, we're live in Chicago. And the Clintons are all there. It's a whole family affair. Her husband right now speaking live on the stage. But is he or his wife or their daughter, Chelsea, going to drop any hints? And just what is this all about anyway? We'll take you live to Chicago next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BANFIELD: So our breaking news we've been following all hour, a major explosion and fire at a chemical plant in Geismar, Louisiana. That's along highway 30 if you're familiar with this area nor far from New Orleans. It's the Williams Olefins plant. Take a look at some of these picture that we've been getting in.