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Sanjay Gupta MD

Reserving an OD; Cancer Cost Crisis; The Power of Self- Deception

Aired June 01, 2014 - 07:30   ET

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

BROOKE BALDWIN, GUEST HOST: Hi, everyone. Thanks for joining us. I'm Brooke Baldwin, in today for Dr. Sanjay Gupta.

Ahead this half hour, kidding ourselves. The hidden power of self deception and why lying to yourself may actually not be such a bad idea after all.

But, first, the rapidly spreading heroin epidemic. On the hunt for new solutions, the biggest police force, New York City, just this week said all officers would start carrying a drug, it's called Naloxone, and this medication can actually reverse a heroin overdose with virtually no side effects.

So, first, let's take a quick look at how powerful this medicine can be. Here is Dr. Gupta.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): What you're watching is shocking. A heroin addict named Liz overdosing.

That night she was with Adam Wigglesworth and Louise Vincent. They both volunteer with the program in Greensboro, North Carolina, that provides clean needles and other assistance to addicts.

ADAM WIGGLESWORTH: She seemed to be pretty unresponsive and we were noticing blueing of the lips, lack of oxygen and her breathing became quite shallow.

LOUISE VINCENT: Well, once someone's not breathing and they're responding to any sort of stimulus, you give them breath, and at that time, I usually administer Naloxone.

GUPTA: Now, watch what happens next.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We gave her about 60 units of Narcan.

GUPTA: Narcan, also known as Naloxone, can reverse an overdose from heroin and other drugs like Oxycodone.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Liz?

GUPTA: Another sternal rub, another shot of Narcan.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (INAUDIBLE) give her some more Narcan. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Give her the rest of this whole CC.

GUPTA: And, finally, Liz begins to come around.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Liz? You OK? You went out. We're giving you mouth to mouth resuscitation. We're giving you some Narcan. You overdosed.

Can you sit up?

LIZ, HEROIN ADDICT REVIVED BY NALOXONE: Yes.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BALDWIN: My goodness. I can tell you that after being revived Liz made it to rehab and when we last checked in on her, she was doing well. As you saw, Liz was saved by friends but the idea is to get this medicine into the hands of as many as soon as possible. Not just New York City, but other police department, trying it. Rhode Island police began carrying this drug a month ago and state trooper James D'Angelo has already put it to good use.

Trooper, welcome.

JAMES D'ANGELO, RHODE ISLAND STATE TROOPER: Thank you for having me.

BALDWIN: So, from what I understand, you were actually the first person in your force to administer Naloxone. What was that like? What happened?

D'ANGELO: That's correct. It was a wonderful experience. This past Memorial Day, around 11:00 in this morning I had the occasion of observing a local police officer on a motor vehicle stop at which time I went to assist him with that stop to make sure he was OK, if he need any assistance, at which time after speaking with him, he advised that he had a passenger in the vehicle in which he had stopped that was unresponsive.

I attempted to make contact with that party and he was, in fact, unresponsive, head staring -- eyes staring up at the ceiling, eyes rolled back in his head, very shallow breathing, and wasn't responsive. I asked the officer if he had been issued Naloxone or Narcan yet, at which time their department hadn't. I went to my cruiser and grabbed my division-issued Naloxone kit and administered a dose through his nasal passage of the Naloxone, at which time it sustained his breathing enough where he didn't go into full respiratory failure, giving enough time for the rescue personnel to arrive on scene and revive him intravenously through their pushes of the Narcan.

BALDWIN: Trooper D'Angelo, with all the good, of course, comes the bad. You have all these critics who were saying that this will absolutely enable addicts, that law enforcement is supposed to stop them from using illegal drugs. What's your response to that?

D'ANGELO: I wholeheartedly disagree with that. I think the layman doesn't understand that it's an illness, it's a disease, and we're able to give these people a second chance, and relapse is, in fact, a part of recovery, so I'm happy that I was able to give this individual, this gentleman a second chance at recovery.

BALDWIN: State trooper James D'Angelo from Providence, Rhode Island -- thank you so much, sir, for coming on. We appreciate it.

And coming up, putting a price tag on miracles -- miracle drugs that is. Some oncologists are saying it's just too much.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: This weekend kicks off the world's biggest scientific meeting on cancer. We'll hear a lot about new research and experimental treatment. But for many cancer doctors, not to mention patients, it seems we're kind of at a crossroads, because many of new cancer drugs costs tens of thousands of dollars for one round of treatment, some more than $100,000. So, some doctors are actually starting to say, it's just too much.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BALDWIN (voice-over): Fifty-seven-year-old Barbara Hoehn was diagnosed with breast cancer eight months ago. Before the shock of the diagnosis wore off, she was hit with another one -- the cost of the drugs her doctor prescribed to treat her cancer.

BARBARA HOEHN, BREAST CANCER SURVIVOR: I asked her if there were any other cheaper options that would do the same thing for me.

BALDWIN: Her doctor says this happens frequently.

DR. RUTH O'REGAN, WINSHIP CANCER INSTITUTE, EMORY UNIVERSITY: All we can do at this point is pick the least costly agent that we have available to us that we know is going to be equally efficacious.

BALDWIN: In 2012, the Food and Drug Administration approved 12 new cancer drugs, many costing around $100,000 a year, joining other big price tags on the shelf. Gleevec, approved to treat leukemia, it costs up to $30,000 a year when it was approved. Now, more than $90,000.

Tasigna runs around $113,000 annually, also to treat leukemia.

CLIFFORD HUDIS, AMERICAN SOCIETY OF CLINICAL ONCOLOGY: There are cancer drugs that so transformative, such breakthroughs, their prices are even be lower than might be justified. But there are some drugs that do not deliver much value relative to their price.

BALDWIN: Two years ago, doctors at Memorial Sloane-Kettering, Dr. Hudis' hospital, decided not to prescribe the new colon cancer drug Zaltrap made by Sanofi because it cost over $11,000 a month, and according to the FDA, it only extends survival by six weeks on average compared to other treatment. Eventually, Sanofi cuts the price in half.

Not just doctors but insurance companies are speaking out against these soaring costs.

KAREN IGNANI, CEO, AMERICA'S HEALTH INSURANCE PLANS: When you look at the six-figure prices of specialty drugs, you come away with the conclusion that the pricing is anything that pharmaceutical companies and manufacturers can get away with.

BALDWIN: For their part, drugmakers say the medicines are expensive because they cost so much to develop. One study put it at nearly $5 billion on average to bring a new drug to the market.

LORI REILLY, PHRMA: We need an insurance system that's there for patients when they need it. They pay into a system and the expectation and the promises that it will be there and provide the kind of coverage that patients need.

BALDWIN: In the end, Barbara Hoehn was prescribed a cheaper drug within her budget. She'll be on it for the next five years, the stress of affording high priced drugs at bay for now.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BALDWIN: Every year, thousands of people all around the globe are diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. It is an unpredictable often disabling disease of the central nervous system. And in honor of World M.S. Day, just this past Wednesday, Sanjay has a story of a country star who's fighting the illness so she can keep write on singing.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

(SINGING)

GUPTA (voice-over): Nowhere does country singer, Julie Roberts, look more at home than on stage performing for her fans.

(SINGING)

JULIE ROBERTS, SINGER WITH MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS: I decided at a young age that I wanted to be a singer like Barbara Mandrel.

(SINGING)

ROBERTS: And I would pray every night when I was a little girl that I would get a record deal and I not one night missed praying that.

GUPTA: During college in Nashville, Roberts interned at Mercury Records. When she graduated, she was offered a job as a receptionist, and eventually becoming the assistant to chairman Luke Lewis. A demo without Roberts' name on it, found its way to Lewis's desk and her days of answering the phones were over. She got to work on her first record.

(SINGING)

ANNOUNCER: Please welcome Julie Roberts.

(CHEERING)

GUPTA: CMT was there, in the moment, when Roberts' first single debuted on the radio.

(SINGING)

GUPTA: Roberts' album went gold. She was living the dream. And then, one night on stage, a nightmare.

ROBERTS: I can't even remember the city. But I remember the stage. I can see it in my mind. I was holding the microphone. The band was behind me. They were playing like they always do.

And I lost use of my right hand. And I knew that it was giving out, so I switched to my left. And my left hand didn't work. So then I put it in the mike stand.

GUPTA: Roberts kept on singing but she knew something wasn't right. A few tests led to a quick diagnosis, multiple sclerosis.

(SINGING)

ROBERTS: Truthfully, I didn't want to admit it, that I had it. And I was so afraid that all would be taken away from me if I told the world that I had MS.

GUPTA: Fortunately, that hasn't happened. And these days, Roberts manages her MS with three shots a week, plus a healthy diet and plenty of exercise.

ROBERTS: Thank you all so much for coming out today. I'm so proud of you all for raising money for MS.

Doing something like this is so important for me because we're raising money for research for the National MS Society and helping other people with MS just like me.

I have never missed a show because of MS and I will never miss a show because of MS. This is what I'm supposed to do. It's what I love.

(MUSIC)

GUPTA: Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN, reporting.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BALDWIN: You heard her sing good wine and bad decisions. Let's talk about the hidden power of self deception. How to harness this civility not for evil but for good -- next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: To some degree or another, we all misjudge reality and this can be as simple as our perception of distance or maybe of time passing. But these little gradations in perceptions are actually much more widespread and subject to change than we realize. These acts of self deception infiltrate and influence every major aspect of our lives.

Joseph Hallinan is the author of "Kidding Ourselves."

Joe, welcome to CNN.

JOSEPH HALLINAN, AUTHOR, "KIDDING OURSELVES": Thank you. It's wonderful to be here.

BALDWIN: I guess we're all guilty and we're all kidding ourselves to some degree.

HALLINAN: To some degree.

BALDWIN: Talk about this notion of self-deception. Give us examples of -- in every day life, how we do this.

HALLINAN: A really easy one is report cards. And a lot of people at home are getting the kids home now from school to get the report cards. Researchers found that when they ask people, for instance, just to remember their grades in high school, a funny thing happened. They exaggerated their grades. Up to 90 percent of the people over- remember their GPAs from high school.

But the interesting thing is not just that they think they're smarter than they actually were but they found when they go back that the memory varies according to the grade received and the worse the grade, the worse the memory. So, nobody forgets an "A." The recall rate is 98 percent.

BALDWIN: My memory is so good.

HALLINAN: You're so good.

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: Yes.

HALLINAN: When you get a D, the recall rate was only 29 percent.

So, people tended to remember the good and forget the bad, but they did it automatically and with no idea that they're really doing that.

BALDWIN: OK. So, that's every day life and we can relate to grades and we are talking and you really fascinated specifically with athletes and sports and there was this recent poll of half of them, all sports fans believe that the outcome of the game was affected by super natural factors.

I was just at the baseball game this week, totally had the rally hat going. Because naturally, if I wore my baseball hat a certain way, you know, the Red Sox would win. You know, they had the beards for the World Series, they won. You know, you're adjusting your glove, I don't know what you're doing as an athlete, but it seems if you feel like you're doing something to affect the outcome, does it translate?

HALLINAN: It does. BALDWIN: It does.

HALLINAN: In tangible results. And if you played sports, you know, going in with confidence is hugely important. They proved this a little while ago. Researchers in Germany took two groups of people and gave them a golf ball. First group, they said, here's ball, go putt. The second group, they give them ball but said, this ball has been lucky so far, give it to them. Go putt.

BALDWIN: Lucky ball.

HALLINAN: Lucky ball, like lucky sock or lucky hat.

BALDWIN: How did they do?

HALLINAN: How did they do? Guess who did better? The people who believed they had the lucky ball actually golfed much better than the other group, and they repeated this with a number of other tasks and found that when people believed that they had some lucky ball or lucky whatever, they actually performed better and it was a confidence.

BALDWIN: What about men and women? Who's the most guilty at self- deception?

HALLINAN: It's a close call and depends on what you look at. If I had to flip a coin, which one would I -- which side where I go to, I'd probably say men, particularly in the area of confidence. Men pretty much across the board are far more confident than rational objective facts would dictate.

BALDWIN: So you're saying certain men shouldn't be as confident in some cases as they are.

HALLINAN: Yes, yes.

BALDWIN: I would say though confidence is attractive.

HALLINAN: It is. I mean, there's a lot to it. There's a lot to having that. I mean, if you're in any number of occupations or lines of work or facing danger, being confident in yourself is a very good thing. It's got a downside but it's got a very good thing and men seem to have a lot more of that in many cases than women do, but there's enough on both sides to go around.

BALDWIN: Joe Hallinan, fascinating. Thank you so much. Again, your book is called "Kidding Ourselves." Nice to meet you.

HALLINAN: Thanks, Brooke. It's been a pleasure.

BALDWIN: And you do not want to rely on positive thing, though, for this next one. A new way to spot restaurants that are serving up, uh- oh, food poisoning.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: With all the attention on food poisoning outbreaks, this next headline definitely caught my eye. The CDC and health officials in New York City, they have this new way to track down outbreaks. Just take a look at the reviews on Yelp. It's not quite that simple but it's actually pretty close.

Here's what they did. They scoured reviews for these words -- sick, vomit, diarrhea, and food poisoning. So, if they saw a cluster of these kinds of words, these bad reviews in a short time window they followed up with an investigation. It was just a nine-month test run. They say they found three outbreaks that hadn't been reported.

Kat Kinsman covers all things food for us, on the CNN Eatocracy blog. And she's an awesome guide to visit New York City restaurants.

But, Kat, ew. That's my first thought. Thought number two is, can you just do this on your own?

KAT KINSMAN, CNN EATOCRACY: Well, it would be highly effective if as I did you look for words like barf, diarrhea, you never want to eat again, at home, in a restaurant, nowhere. So, it is a little bit more complicated than doing that. But you can go to Yelp yourself and look at reviews and see if anybody mentions getting sick and do a little bit of research from there.

But what they did was a little bit more complicated than that, because they ended up sending emails or sending private messages to the various people who made these complaints, asked them if they had gotten in touch with a restaurant or with the Department of Public Health and then, from there, offered a phone number that they could call and discuss their individual cases.

So, there was a lot of legwork that was done after the initial study and what they found out was that there were patterns around certain restaurants and they were able to identify a few key dishes that had been served, and a few places where they were served and find some commonalities and then the protocol is for the department of health to go to the restaurants and tell them what's going on and make some changes.

BALDWIN: That has to irk restaurants, right? They can't be loving this.

KINSMAN: They want this data. First of all, they want this data. They do not want to be responsible for having the next Typhoid Mary on their hands. They don't want people to go out in the world and say, hey, you know, in a very public way I got sick at this place and tell the world. They want them to tell the restaurants.

There was a case a couple weeks ago where two Mets players fingered a restaurant saying, hey, we got food poisoning at this restaurant. It turns out that that wasn't actually possible, that they had eaten somewhere else. But because of the public megaphone that they have on social media, they were able --

BALDWIN: That's right.

KINSMAN: Right, they were able to spread the word far and wide. So, restaurants do want this data. They're in the business of hospitality and making people happy and feeding them. They don't want anybody getting sick.

And at the same time, they would infinitely rather that you tell them and not the whole world.

BALDWIN: Yes. Here's what I want to know because you eat and write for a living. Tell me, have you ever been in a restaurant, seen something and thought, hmm, goodbye, and you turned around and you walked out.

KINSMAN: No, pretty much just an ex-boyfriend.

BALDWIN: So, men, not food. I see your priorities, Kat Kinsman.

KINSMAN: Right. If I'm in the middle of a meal and something taste as little off, feel as little off, that's a point where you're not a complaining customer. They want to know if something is not right in the restaurant and honestly whether it's that the wine is off. They don't want to be serving that wine to a lot of people. If something tastes a little funky, they want that feedback and people need to not be shy and not hide behind social media or all the other platforms and while you're there, say something.

BALDWIN: Yes, I'm saying something to you now. Can we please see your necklace? Can you hold it up for me?

KINSMAN: Yes, indeed.

BALDWIN: Cheeseburger, cheeseburger. Kat Kinsman, thank you, with the Eatocracy Blog -- thank you.

KINSMAN: Thank you so much.

BALDWIN: That's going to wrap things up for SGMD today. Thank you so much for spending part of your weekend with me. I'm Brooke Baldwin.

Now, time to get you back to the "CNN NEWSROOM" with Randi Kaye.