Return to Transcripts main page
Legal View with Ashleigh Banfield
How Top-Secret Ebola Drug Is Made; Why Israel-Hamas Conflict Is Different This Time; Jurors Deliberating Over Renisha McBride Case; Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu Speaks
Aired August 06, 2014 - 12:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
ERICA OLLMANN SAPHIRE, PROFESSOR, SCRIPPS RESEARCH INSTITUTE: Yellow is the antibody, so this is the molecule the virus uses to attach to a human cell and drive itself in.
The antibody will attach itself to it and do one of a couple things. One of the ones in the ZMapp cocktail alerts the immune system to the presence of the infection.
The other two do exactly this. They bind to the base of this molecule and prevent it from working.
STEPHANIE ELAM, CNN CORRESPONDENT: One reason it takes so long to make doses is the need to recreate the antibodies, something the scientists are able to do rather cheaply with tobacco plants.
DR. CHARLES ARNTZEN, PROFESSOR, ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY: They're taking hundreds of plants at a time, dipping them in this genetic solution. The plants take up the virus, they start this process of viral infection, and in the process, get jammed full of monoclonal antibody.
As the plant starts turning yellow, because it's going to die from the viral infection, once you see that the plant has gotten to that point, the guys in Kentucky harvest the leaf material.
ELAM: After separating the antibodies through a multistep process, the three desired antibodies are then combined to make the drug that the Americans, Dr. Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol, received. It's called ZMapp.
SAPHIRE: It looks very promising and it's certainly encouraging and it's certainly a reason to go forward with these kinds of studies.
ELAM: And Dr. Sapphire said it brought a tear to her eye when she saw Dr. Brantly actually get out of that ambulance and walk on his own power into the hospital.
That gives her encouragement that this cocktail is working, but because there was no control and these were the first two people ever to get a trial version of this drug, she says that more trials need to be done, more studies, so they can get more information and hone this drug as necessary so that more people can benefit and more lives are saved.
Stephanie Elam, CNN, La Jolla, California.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ASHLEIGH BANFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: And joining me to talk more about this secret serum that may be helping the American Ebola patients receiving treatment in Atlanta is one of the scientists who got the ball rolling and helped develop that drug, Charles Arntzen.
Dr, Arntzen, thanks so much for being with us today. First and foremost, I want to go back a decade-plus, and that is to the beginnings of this, the genesis of the drug in the first place.
Is it my understanding, is it correct that you were actually working in concert with the U.S. Army because there was a concern about these kinds of attacks and the need for treatment and vaccines?
CHARLES ARNTZEN, PROFESSOR, ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY: Well, I'd say we weren't as much concerned about attacks at the time as just some basic immunology.
And it began with Mary-Kate Hart with the U.S. Army at Fort Detrick, studying Ebola in mice. We obtained a gene sequence for antibodies that would attack the Ebola virus.
Larry Zeitlin, who's with Mapp, and I wrote a grant proposal to the army back in 2002. They gave us money to begin studying how to improve those antibodies but also how to produce them in a tobacco plant. That's how it took off.
BANFIELD: OK, so work with me on the tobacco plant. I think this is rather complex for a lot of people to understand.
We're talking about a serum that is fighting off the Ebola virus with antibodies, and yet it is somehow generated in a plant, in a tobacco plant.
Can you marry those two concepts and explain in layperson's English how that works?
ARNTZEN: Well, monoclonal antibodies are living system. You can't do it chemically in a test tube. You could use mammalian cells. We decided we wanted something that works faster and in a more cost- efficient way.
And so we've been working with tobacco plants for the last 15 years. What was done was taking the gene sequence for the monoclonal antibody and fusing it to a gene sequence for a plant virus.
So now you've got a long piece of DNA. You simply dip the tobacco plants into this genetic solution, and it invades the cells of the tobacco plant, and begins a viral infection.
And as the virus replicates, every time its genome turns over, it produces the monoclonal antibody that we're interested in.
BANFIELD: So now let's fast-forward 12 years to where we are today, and that is that your two former colleagues, Larry Zeitlin and Kevin Whaley, who you mentioned, are now behind this company, ZMapp, and are able to at least -- at the very least -- provide the doses to help these two Americans. I believe they're getting three doses apiece.
Do you have any idea at this early stage how much of this serum is available now, how quickly it can be generated, and if anybody in West Africa -- because we're now at a death toll that's closing in on a thousand -- can benefit from this and in a hurry?
ARNTZEN: Well, as far as I have been able to learn, they've used up almost all of the available supply.
What was used in Africa was actually destined to go into some animal experiments, and what surprised me is that somebody -- somebody high up in government -- made the decision, took the risk and said, let's skip the monkey study. Let's shift this directly to Africa.
I think it's just astonishing and delightful, because from everything we're hearing, we expected it to work, but it actually did work. And from a scientific standpoint, it's wonderful that someone was able to cut through the red tape and actually help people immediately on the spot.
BANFIELD: Well, Dr. Arntzen, it's great of you to join us, and I thank you for being at the forefront of getting this research under way. And obviously, the results of it so far are showing to be promising. We can only hope that this story evolves over time and be better and better.
Thanks for you time. It was nice to meet you.
ARNTZEN: Thank you very much.
BANFIELD: Another story we're following now, the crisis in the Middle East, Israel and Hamas are in the middle of a cease-fire. It's young but so far successful.
And any minute now, we're expecting to hear from the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who's going to take that microphone live in Jerusalem, and when he speaks, we're going to bring that live to you on CNN as well.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BANFIELD: We're getting word from Cairo that Palestinian negotiators have opened the talks with Egyptian go-betweens, and it's almost the halfway point right now in the 72-hour cease-fire in Gaza between Hamas and the Israelis.
The Cairo talks in Egyptian are the crucial next step. They're aimed at not only keeping the peace but something much bigger, tackling the major grievances that Hamas holds against Israelis and vice versa of course. And there is a wide chasm, as there always has been.
An Israeli team is in Cairo as well. That's a big step. By the way, as that team arrives in Cairo, just to the north in Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to brief reporters live in Jerusalem at any moment.
What he has to say remains unclear at this point, but like I said, halfway into a, so far, successful cease-fire. Israel and Hamas are not going to speak face-to-face. Make no mistake. That is a herculean task
But they haven't been bombing or shelling or shooting each other either since this truce took effect early yesterday, so if there's any good news, and it's hard to find it lately, that is great.
In some ways, the latest conflict in Gaza is just like the others that you probably remember. Certainly it's cyclical. In other ways, it's very different and particularly dangerous this time too.
Our chief national security correspondent Jim Sciutto takes a closer look.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JIM SCIUTTO, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Reporter: Even seasoned Middle East experts and diplomats I talked to say the crisis is the worst they've ever seen it. One of the reasons is there's multiple crises happening at the same time.
Let's start with Israel and Gaza. This is of course a years' old, a decade's old conflict. There are new complications. One is economic desperation inside Gaza, in part because of the economic blockade, the blocking of smuggling tunnels.
Really no money is coming in there, no trade. That puts Hamas in a desperate position which some believe makes it have much less to lose with a military conflict even when it's outmatched by Israel.
More broadly, a lot of the traditional mediators in this conflict just don't have the same influence they used to have in the past, the U.S. with somewhat less involvement in the region than in the past, but also Arab nations.
For one, Egypt, much less sympathetic to the Hamas cause, same goes for other Arab leaders who in the past might have been much more publicly critical of Israel's offensive there. This time, they haven't been, because they are so much against Hamas.
Who is going to broker a peace deal? It's difficult to find mediators who all sides consider trustworthy. While Israel is facing Hamas in Gaza, several other countries in the region at the same time are facing ISIS, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, which now calls itself simply the Islamic State.
It started in Syria, one of the several rebel groups fighting the regime of Bashar al-Assad. Then from there, it spilled over into Iraq. It's making enormous progress there, taking over virtually a third of the country, the north and west of the country, as it expand, it's threatening other countries.
It's reached the border of Turkey, the border of Jordan, the border of Saudi Arabia. These countries are very concerned about spillover. Saudi Arabia sent 30,000 new troops to its border with Iraq to keep ISIS out. We even saw ISIS expand into Lebanon, taking over a town there.
If you're frustrated, many U.S. officials are as well. When you look at these crises, each one has brought a different policy response -- in Iraq, the withdrawal of U.S. forces; in Israel, with the Palestinian, a months-long attempt by Secretary Kerry at peace talks that went nowhere.
Right now, the best anyone hoping for in Israel with Gaza is just a true a cease-fire. Virtually no one talks about a long-term solution to that crisis.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BANFIELD: And of course a long-term solution is one of the biggest stories of the century when it comes to this part of the world.
And as we continue to watch the live mic and wait for the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to come out and address the press on the halfway point of the cease-fire and on the nascent talks that are beginning in Cairo to the south of Israel, the Palestinian delegation, or at least whatever part of Hamas is represented in that Palestinian delegation, has begun its discussions with the Egyptians, who are brokering this process. The Israelis, we are told, have not begun that process yet.
But I can tell you this. This is a moment for wound licking on the part of many of the Palestinians right now, who have had a day and a half to go back to the bombing sites and find piles and piles -- and that's a euphemism -- for destruction and rubble, many of them with no homes, no systems, nothing.
There's about an 1,800-person death toll on the Palestinian side, a 60-plus death toll on the Israeli side.
Once again, when the Israeli prime minister begins his discussion, his briefing, we'll take it to you live, right here on CNN.
Back in a moment.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BANFIELD: Welcome back to LEGAL VIEW.
Theodore Wafer said he was terrified at nearly 5:00 in the morning when someone was banging on his front door. The key witness in this trial told a Michigan courtroom that he panicked, then quietly got a shotgun, opened the steel door and then blasted through the screen, killing a young woman. A woman, by the way, who had crashed her car nearby and some say was asking for help. Here's some of day two, the testimony after the assistant prosecutor asked Wafer if he actually aimed that gun.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) THEODORE WAFER, DEFENDANT: There was no leveling of the gun. There was no pointing. It was just a reaction. A self-defense reaction.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BANFIELD: Wafer is charged with second degree murder in the death of 19-year-old Renisha McBride. The prosecutors say McBride was drunk when she came to Wafer's house simply looking for help. But McBride's family said that didn't give Wafer the right to shoot her. The law is tricky.
Our Susan Candiotti is tracking this. I also want to bring in criminal defense attorney Midwin Charles and legal analyst Danny Cevallos.
So, first, I want to begin with you, Susan. We're kind of getting to the crux of this trial. They are -- they've done the closings.
SUSAN CANDIOTTI, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Right.
BANFIELD: Instructions, et cetera. I'm not sure if they started --
CANDIOTTI: They started deliberations about an hour now.
BANFIELD: But overall, what was the tenor and the feel of this trial so far?
CANDIOTTI: You know it's a tough one in particular because there's -- there's always been an undercurrent of was race an issue here. The D.A. has said from the start race was not an issue but the defense took great pains to have -- ask Wafer at the stand about his neighborhood. He said he liked the ethnic mix of it but that he was afraid about -- he had concerns about the rise of crime. And the defense tried very hard to get into evidence, but failed to get in pictures of Renisha McBride making sort of gang wannabe signs in a photograph and (INAUDIBLE) --
BANFIELD: Well, he'd have no way of knowing of that.
CANDIOTTI: Yes.
BANFIELD: And she showed up on his porch that night, he'd have no way of knowing any kind of --
CANDIOTTI: He wouldn't have known it.
BANFIELD: You know, prior history of this person.
CANDIOTTI: Exactly.
BANFIELD: I can imagine prosecutors would have made short work of that.
What confuses me about the case, and I have to be honest, and, Danny and Midwin, this is probably right up your alley. There are so many states that have those so-called castle doctrines where if you are afraid, your perception of being afraid is enough to galvanize you, oftentimes, against any kind of prosecution if you shoot someone who is ostensibly on your property or coming closing to getting on your house. Start with that, Danny, and then you can talk me off of the ledge, Midwin.
DANNY CEVALLOS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: OK. So Michigan has a form of this. Basically there -- it has the traditional self-defense. If you honestly, that's the word it uses, honestly believe you're in danger of imminent harm, then you can -- it has to be serious bodily harm or death, you can use that deadly force. But another part, another section says that when you're in your home and someone is trying to gain entrance to your home, a presumption arises. In other words, you have the edge as the defendant. That presumption is that your use of force in that situation was reasonable. And that's what this entire case comes down to. What does the jury believe was in his mind and in his heart when he pulled that trigger?
BANFIELD: So, Midwin, how are we supposed to get into his mind? Because if he says it, and I love that you say honest. So few people are honest in a courtroom, I'll be completely honest with you. How are we supposed to know what was in his mind?
MIDWIN CHARLES, CRIMINAL DEFENSE ATTORNEY: And that's part of the reason why we have to listen to his testimony. It's very interesting that they decided to put him on the stand. I think from a defense perspective, it was a good idea. But going back to what Danny said, he is correct with respect to the castle doctrine. He didn't have a legal responsibility to retreat.
BANFIELD: Right.
CHARLES: In other words, he could stand your ground, which is a term that we're all familiar with. But going into his mind --
BANFIELD: And he -- he's in his home.
CHARLES: His house, exactly.
BANFIELD: So it's not as though there's a --
CHARLES: Exactly.
BANFIELD: You know, he's already got protection.
CHARLES: Exactly.
CEVALLOS: But shooting out.
CHARLES: But that -- but that -- but that's the thing. And when you look at his testimony, he said that he heard no voices per se. He heard a loud banging. It was so loud that it awoke him from sleep. However, the medical examiner said that there were no injuries on her hands to sort of equate that or at least to kind of make any sense of that --
(CROSS TALK)
BANFIELD: Noises can happen tipping over something on your way (INAUDIBLE) --
CHARLES: Right. But their -- but --
BANFIELD: By the way, burglars rarely announce their arrival and I'm just giving the benefit of the doubt, which is what we do in our system.
CHARLES: If she's -- right. Of course. If she's -- if she's a burglar.
BANFIELD: Right.
CHARLES: I mean we already know the back story. She had crashed her car and she was looking --
BANFIELD: He didn't, right.
CHARLES: Right, he didn't.
CANDIOTTI: But what's --
CHARLES: He absolutely didn't. But what's most interesting is, is that he shot his shotgun about 24 inches away from her face outside of the home.
BANFIELD: Susan, (INAUDIBLE) seconds.
CANDIOTTI: And that's the problem with this because either -- he claimed two things, that he was both in fear of his life and, oh, but it was an accident.
BANFIELD: Yes.
CHARLES: Right.
CANDIOTTI: And that's what the state has to overcome.
(CROSS TALK)
CEVALLOS: Alternative theories of self-defense.
CHARLES: Right, of self-defense.
CEVALLOS: Many courts won't allow them you -- because accident and self-defense are logically inconsistent.
BANFIELD: They're (INAUDIBLE).
CHARLES: They're diametrically opposed. That's the problem.
CANDIOTTI: That's right. And in this case the state is saying, now, wait a minute, if he was afraid, why did he then open the front door --
BANFIELD: Right.
CANDIOTTI: Pick up the gun. It can't fire accidentally. CHARLES: And not call -- and not call 911.
BANFIELD: I could go on and on, but --
CHARLES: He claimed he couldn't find his phone.
BANFIELD: You're all going to get trumped by the Israeli prime minister is all I'm saying.
CEVALLOS: It happens.
CHARLES: It happens.
BANFIELD: Can you keep and let us know as soon as we hear anything, a peep from that jury room on this case.
CANDIOTTI: Absolutely.
BANFIELD: A lot of people are very interested. Thank you to all three of you. I want to scoot over right away to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He's been speaking in Hebrew. He's now switched over to English.
BENJAMIN NETANYAHU, ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER: Does it not show on the screen. Oh, OK. Well, the rectangle that you see in the center is the UNRWA Shahad (ph) Elmanos (ph) Elementary School for Boys. That's the thing that you see there in reddish, reddish color. And you see right around that, four mortars firing, five mortars fired, one mortar fired, one mortar fired right around that school. It's very important to see that and to understand what kind of conditions our forces are facing from Gaza.
Here's a terror tunnel near a school. You see the big building to the right of the arrows. That's a school. You see civilian houses, distance of a few meters. A mosque literally touching the school. Civilian houses around it. This is where the terror tunnels are dug. May I say that in many places the terror tunnels were dug from homes, from homes, from inside the homes. So that is an example, again, of the use of civilian areas both to fire rockets at our civilians and to dig the terror tunnels for the death squads to reach and -- our people, kidnap and kill.
I expect now that the members of the press are leaving Gaza, or some of them are leaving Gaza, and are no longer subjected to Hamas restrictions and intimidations. I expect we'll see even more documentation of Hamas terrorists hiding behind the civilian population, exploiting civilian targets. I think that's very important for the truth to come out.
The goal of Operation Protective Edge was and remains to protect Israeli civilians. That means to protect our people from roughly 3,500 rockets -- 3,500 rockets that Hamas and the other terrorist groups have fired on our cities, on our towns, on our civilians, on our children in the last month. The goal of this operation was to protect our people from the threat of terror tunnels build to send death squads into Israel, to commit terrorist atrocities against Israel civilians.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Can you hear him?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hi.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hi. Can you hear him?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes, yes, he's in English now. Just -- he finished -- I translated --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, it was really good. Thank you.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Did they hear it? OK.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, (INAUDIBLE).
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: My phone went off in the middle of it, so I lost three words, but he's now also repeating all of it in English.
NETANYAHU: We do not target them. We do not seek them. The people of Gaza are not our enemy. Our enemy is Hamas. Our enemy are the other terrorist organizations trying to kill our people. And we've taken extraordinary circumstances and measures to avoid civilian casualties.
The tragedy of Gaza is that it is ruled by Hamas, a tyrannical and fanatical terror group that relishes civilian casualties. They want civilian casualties. They use them as PR fodder. So it's not that they don't want them. They want them. And they pretty much say so. Indeed, Hamas has adopted a strategy that abuses and sacrifices Gaza civilians. They use them as human shields. They endanger them and deliberately increase the death toll. They fire their rockets at Israel from schools, from hospitals, from mosques -- you've just seen that -- from urban neighborhoods. And right next to schools where journalists are staying, you can discover that for yourself.
Of course, nearly everyone says that they are -- they support Israel's right to defend itself. And we appreciate those who say this. But there are those who refuse to recognize or to let Israel exercise that right. They would allow Hamas to attack with impunity because they say they're firing from schools or from mosques or from hospitals and Israel should not take action against them. That's obviously a mistake. It's a moral mistake. It's an operational mistake. Because that would validate and legitimize Hamas' use of human shields and it would hand an enormous victory to terrorists everywhere and a devastating effect to the free societies that are fighting terrorism.
If this were to happen, more and more civilians will die around the world because this is a testing period now. Can a terrorist organization fire thousands of rockets at the cities of a democracy? Can a terrorist organization embed itself in civilian areas? Can it dig terror tunnels from civilian areas? Can it do so with impunity because it counts on the victimized country to respond, as it must, as any country would, and then be blamed for it? Can we accept a situation in which the terrorists would be exonerated and their victims accused? This is the issue that stands not only before the international
community today regarding Israel, it stands before the international community with a wave of radical terrorists that are now seizing vast cities, civilian populations, and doing exactly the tactic that Hamas is doing. That's exactly what ISIL is doing, what Hezbollah is doing, what Boko Haram is doing, what Hamas is doing is what al Qaeda is doing. And the test now is not merely the test for the international community's attitude towards Israel, an embattled democracy using legitimate means against these double war crimes of targeting civilians and hiding behind civilians, the test is for the civilized world itself, how it is able to defend itself.
Israel accepted and Hamas rejected the Egyptian cease-fire proposal of July 15th. And I want you to know that at that time the conflict had claimed some 185 lives. Only on Monday night did Hamas finally agree to that very same proposal which went into effect yesterday morning. That means that 90 percent, a full 90 percent of the fatalities in this conflict could have been avoided had Hamas not rejected then the cease-fire that it accepts now. Hamas must be held accountable for the tragic loss of lives. It must be ostracized from the family of nations for its callous abuse of civilians.
