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Sanjay Gupta MD

Ebola Quarantine Hysteria; Assisted Suicide or Manslaughter?; Turn Your Brain Into A Super Brain

Aired November 02, 2014 - 07:30   ET

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


DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN HOST: Welcome to SGMD.

I want to spend a little bit of time today telling you what you should know about Ebola. Now, truth is, thankfully, most of you watching right now are never going to be touched by Ebola. This is still a rare disease, especially in the United States, where although it is sad, but just one person has died.

Now, admittedly, there are lots of mixed messages and there's fighting over Ebola guidelines and when and when not to quarantine people. In fact, I was in Washington, D.C., at the White House on Wednesday, and I got some news to share about that later in the program.

But let's start with some of the good news. The rate of new cases in one key country Liberia has started to slow down. The epidemic is still raging in Sierra Leone and Guinea, but at least we have a hint now that it might be possible to bring this under control.

Now, the key to all that is the health care workers on the ground in West Africa. So, the question a lot of people asking, how much would a mandatory quarantine affect these workers' desire and their ability to go back to West Africa?

I had a chance to talk about this with Dr. Kent Brantly. You remember him. He's an American medical worker who contracted Ebola while working in Liberia. He was then flown back to Atlanta and became the first person treated for Ebola on U.S. soil.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. KENT BRANTLY, EBOLA SURVIVOR: I think it absolutely would. People are going to work over there. They've got to be motivated out of compassion for their fellow human being.

But beyond that compassion, they need some incentive because it's a big -- it's a risk. It's a scary thing to leave your home, go to the other side of the world and take care of people who are dying of a deadly virus. So, I think any barrier to that is going to have an impact on people who are trying to decide whether or not they can go help.

(END VIDEO CLIP) GUPTA: Now, Dr. Brantly isn't alone in essentially condemning these quarantines. Dr. Daniel Chertow, he's also been on the front line of the epidemic.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. DAN CHERTOW, NIH CRITICAL CARE MEDICINE DEPARTMENT: I think when we talk about quarantine without getting into issues of policies, I mean, those decisions have to be based on the science and there's not a void of science. We have science to help inform those decisions.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GUPTA: Both Brantly and Chertow, both doctors, they're among a number of health care workers who were recognized by President Obama this week.

And I want to show you a picture that I took while I was at the White House. It's quite an extraordinary thing to think about. On the left, you have President Obama in the White House surrounded by health care workers many of whom had just returned from West Africa. On the right, you have Kaci Hickox also just returned from West Africa, all of these health care workers within 21 days now, all of them healthy.

So, why are the doctors on the left in the White House with the president and the doctor, the nurse on the right, phasing a mandatory quarantine? You can see why it's so confusing.

But this is where we've arrived in this country. And while physicians and health care workers are speaking out against the quarantines, the airports, they're stepping up their screening procedures.

Now, people coming into the United States from West African countries impacted by Ebola will now go through new screening measures to help prevent the spread of the virus. It's happening at five major U.S. airports -- New York, Newark, Chicago, Atlanta, and Dulles International Airport.

And that's where we find CNN's Rene Marsh. She had an inside look at how passengers are undergoing these health screenings.

Rene, thanks for joining us. Thanks for being on the program.

You know, you've been doing this for a while. How effective do you think these new screening procedures are going to be?

RENE MARSH, CNN AVIATION & GOVERNMENT REGULATION CORRESPONDENT: You know, I asked that very question to CBP today, Customs and Border Protection, because we got for the first time a face-to-face with them where they gave us a behind-the-scenes look.

Before we get there, I just want to share the numbers with you, Sanjay, since the enhanced screening started -- more than 1,100 people have gone through the enhanced screening. Only eight of those individuals were transported to the hospital and at the end of all of this, no cases of Ebola when we talk about the enhanced screening. They have not detected anyone with Ebola coming through these U.S. airports.

That being said, how effective is this? We know that the doctor in New York came through JFK where there is enhanced screening but at the time he did not have symptoms.

But when you talk to officials who are overseeing this, they say this is simply another layer. It is not 100 percent.

But back to the behind-the-scenes, we also now know how it works with the process looks like. This is the CDC questionnaire we've been hearing so much about and now we know exactly what kind of questions people have to answer once they arrive at these U.S. airports. They're asked for two e-mail addresses. Two telephone numbers, a home address, an address for where they're going to be staying for the next 21 days, and then there's some very detailed questions that the customs officer has to ask and depending on how they answer these questions that determines what happens next.

GUPTA: Yes, that's a good point. Although you do wonder obviously just how effective this will be for the reasons you just mentioned, if this person doesn't have a fever, they may not be caught here.

So, Rene Marsh, thanks so much. Appreciate it.

MARSH: Sure.

GUPTA: Now, just ahead a woman's death shocks her entire family, her entire community, really, and it launches this investigation. The question they were trying to ask, was it assisted suicide or was it murder? I got that story, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

GUPTA: You know, as doctors we are taught to heal, but in five states, it is legal for doctors to help people die. One of those states is Oregon. That's where a woman name Brittany Maynard started this big debate when she publicly announced her plan to take her own life. It could be any day now.

She's 29 years old. She was recently diagnosed with an incurable form of brain cancer.

Every story is different. But today, I wanted to look at an angle that maybe doesn't get paid enough attention to. I want to look at the impact that assisted suicide has on the rest of the family, also, the questions that it leaves behind.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GUPTA (voice-over): When Jana Van Voorhis passed away, she didn't leave much behind.

VIKI THOMAS, JANA VAN VOORHIS' SISTER: This is pretty much Jana's life, a notebook of her medical histories, doctors, hospitals, lab, prescriptions. GUPTA: This is Jana's older sister, Viki. She and her husband, Tom live in the same Phoenix neighborhood as Jana did. They saw her suffer. While Jana had trouble most of her life, it had become progressively worse.

V. HOMAS: She just -- it was just very tough for her daily. She took lots of different medicines to make her feel better.

GUPTA (on camera): Did she ever complain of physical pain?

V. THOMAS: All the time. She thought she was seriously ill.

GUPTA (voice-over): And then Viki got a troubling call one day. A woman who said she was a friend of Jana's from church.

V. THOMAS: She said to me, you know how Jana's always sick, and we're very worried about it because we can't get a hold of her.

GUPTA (on camera): It was here at Jana's house that Tom and Viki discovered the worst. They got a spare key, entered the home, and then found Jana lying in her bed. It was shortly thereafter that they suspected foul play.

TOM THOMAS, JANA VAN VOORHIS' BROTHER-IN-LAW: I think when we're going through her belongings, there were a couple things that we found. One was a brochure of "The Final Exit Network."

GUPTA: And in Jana's checkbook, another important clue. On February 13th, 2007, "Final Exit Network" membership fees, $50.

But what was "Final Exit?"

Online, they found this Web site. It says, "The Final Exit Network" serves members in all 50 states who are suffering from intolerable medical circumstances, are mentally competent, want to end their lives, and meet our official written criteria.

And suddenly it all made sense. That's when Tom and Viki realized that Jana had gotten help to kill herself.

I went to meet Dr. Lawrence Egbert. He's the man who approved Jana's request to die.

He's a retired anesthesiologist. And he was "Final Exit's" medical director at the time of Jana's death.

Eighty-seven years old, he's friendly, charming, disarming. He doesn't own a cell phone or a car. And he is passionate about this cause.

DR. LAWRENCE EGBERT, FORMER MEDICAL DIRECTOR, "FINAL EXIT NETWORK": A lot of people think of this as -- it's such a good idea.

GUPTA: According to "Final Exit's" own records, these saints, as he calls them, help hundreds of people to, quote, "hasten death." By his own account, when he was director, Egbert approved about 300 "Final Exit" applicants.

EGBERT: They would say, I'll get your name and your telephone number and somebody will call you back in a few days. And that person would then call you back and ask you why.

GUPTA (on camera): Could you approve somebody without having met them?

EGBERT: Yes. I could. And say, this is reasonable to proceed.

GUPTA (voice-over): If that all sounds unnerving, then also consider this -- according to police reports, Jana told "Final Exit" she had lesions on the liver, possible breast cancer, head injuries, removal of the gallbladder, over exposure to radiation and ingestion of rat poison.

(on camera): Did she have liver lesions?

V. THOMAS: No.

T. THOMAS: No.

GUPTA: Did she have breast cancer?

V. THOMAS: No.

T. THOMAS: Uh-oh.

GUPTA: Did she have toxic septicemia (ph), toxins from rats?

T. THOMAS: No.

V. THOMAS: No.

GUPTA: Did she have arsenic poisoning?

V. THOMAS: No.

T. THOMAS: No.

GUPTA: Did you know all of this when looking at her application?

EGBERT: I have the same record they had.

GUPTA (voice-over): The problem is Dr. Egbert took Jana at her word. No doctor ever confirmed any of those physical ailments. Jana certainly wasn't terminal. Not even physically ill.

And there was something else. In one of Jana's last psychiatric evaluations, her psychiatrist noted, this patient has become increasingly psychotic, on the last page, Jana's diagnosis, psychosis.

(on camera): Her brother-in-law and sister said she had lifelong issues of mental illness, which was relevant. They question the whole thing. Did you question, given the mental instability?

EGBERT: Sure.

GUPTA: Wouldn't that be a big red flag?

EGBERT: It's a red flag all right. The question is how big? It was very clear from her psychiatric notes al over the file that she had psychiatric problems and if I was uncomfortable with my ability to say or decide on that, I had psychiatric -- psychologists who I did not bother.

GUPTA (voice-over): No psychologists, no psychiatrists, no other doctors were consulted. Still, again and again, Egbert told me he stood by his decision and he said "Final Exit" volunteers saw nothing wrong either.

Jana's "exit guide" as the group calls it was 87-year-old Frank Langsner. He had known Jana about a month before he went to her house and watched her die.

FRANK LANGSNER, JANA'S EXIT GUIDE: So there was no question in my mind that if she wanted to go through with the event --

GUPTA: As an exit guy Langsner says he is very careful not to give specific suicide instructions.

LANGSNER: And then they may have some questions about it. But we don't touch any materials or any equipment. So they're on their own.

GUPTA: For Jana, here's what the last few days of her life looked like. March 27th, 2007, she wrote a check out to Party City for $64.84. She noted helium balloon kits. A few days later, she bought other supplies. I don't want to get too specific.

(on camera): Ever get used to seeing it? You saw this a hundred times.

EGBERT: The day I get used to it I will stop.

GUPTA (voice-over): When breathed in helium depletes the body of oxygen.

Dr. Egbert showed me how it all works. We've chosen not to show the details but to see it first hand even as a demonstration was disturbing.

(on camera): Is it horrifying to you? Because it's horrifying to me to just hear about it.

EGBERT: Yes.

GUPTA: I can't imagine being there.

EGBERT: Well, see, you haven't -- you're not talking to a guy who's suffering with pain who is smiling and saying, "Thank you. Thank you, Doctor."

(END VIDEOTAPE) GUPTA: Now, Dr. Egbert and three other Final Exit members were tried in 2011 in connection to Jana's death. Dr. Egbert was acquitted. Three other final exit members pleaded guilty to other lesser charge.

Now, quick note, you know, I was the last person to do a television interview with Jack Kevorkian before he died. In fact, there we are in front of the University of Michigan Medical School, where we both became doctors a few decades apart. You can read my blog all about this on CNN.com/Health.

Now, what if I told you this, in just three months, you could turn your ordinary brain into a super brain? I'm going to show you how. It's coming right up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

GUPTA: What if you could make your mind better and faster and stronger? Your mind. Don't you want to do that right now?

Well, this is something that I'm very interested in and I'm sure a lot of you are as well. Well, the Science Channel has gone searching for answers by taking this idea of brain games to a whole new level.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TODD SAMPSON, HOST, "HACK MY BRAIN": I'm Todd Sampson and on a quest for a better brain. I've embarked on a unique three-month experiment to see if science can turn any brain into a super brain.

After one month of training, I've already increased my speed of thinking, sharpened by attention and dramatically increased my memory.

I'm not changing the order ever.

But now, I want to turbo charge my creativity.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GUPTA: And who doesn't want all of that? And Todd Sampson joins us now.

Thanks for being here.

SAMPSON: Thanks for having me.

GUPTA: It looks like a great promo. I'm going to watch.

SAMPSON: My brain was tired just watching that promo.

GUPTA: It's part of how our brains operate, I think, nowadays. There's a lot of information, lots of activity in that promo. I get the idea that's going to be the tone of the show.

SAMPSON: Yes, it's fast. It's based on the premise that science for a long time told us that our brain rapidly develops until 7. At 30, it starts to decline and that's it. We can do nothing about it. But we now know that that's absolutely positively false. You can positively correct your brain at any age.

GUPTA: One of the things you talk about a bit in the show is the idea of creativity and how important it is, you make the comment we don't just want to be robots.

Can you define what creativity means in just a couple of sentences?

SAMPSON: Practical innovation. I mean, the ability -- the ability to look at a problem and solve it originally or laterally. I was surprised that was a very controversial episode, because there are a lot of people, artists, particularly, that wrote in and said, but you can't learn creativity, you're born with it.

That's not true. I mean, science has shown that there are ways you can improve the way you think laterally, the way you look at problems.

GUPTA: So, it can be taught is your premise. To anybody? Is anyone capable of learning this?

SAMPSON: Yes. We're particularly open to it when we're young and we have less restrictions on our mind, less constraints when we have less of the establishment pushing us down, but you can -- you can increase your creativity. You can become a more inventive person as you age.

GUPTA: You know, one of the things -- I have three small children so I think about this a lot, is that you want to build the fundamental knowledge well because ultimately creativity draws on concepts and puts them together in unusual ways. Fair description?

SAMPSON: Yes, that's a fair description. Some of the tests we do the alternative use test, if we hold up a shoe what comes to mind immediately as an alternative use to the shoe, when I do that with my children, the things they come up with are fantastic. I never two have got there on my own. But listening to them, I was like, wow.

GUPTA: It's almost like we get confounded by all the things that are thrown at us as adults.

You also talked about being faster, being able to pay more attention to things. Did you find yourself changing? What seemed to really make the deference?

SAMPSON: They spend roughly seven hours with my head in an fMRI and MEG machine to establish my baseline. And some things I was good at. Some things I was very average at.

And after the training, I did roughly three months of training, I was completely stunned by how much change there was. I was -- I thought faster, my memory which was terrible before, had improved dramatically. It was -- I had studied science at university but it was all theory. And suddenly, it became real for me.

GUPTA: So, just can you give me some examples? Like, I want to improve my memory, everybody probably does. Well, are there a couple things that stuck out at you as being particularly good tips?

SAMPSON: Attention. The fact is we pay little attention to the things around us.

GUPTA: Right.

SAMPSON: We live in this inattentive world because of overstimulation. Just simply paying attention to something can dramatically improve your memory. A lot of people forget names and faces. And I get asked a lot how would you -- you know, what's the tip on that?

Well, it's relatively straightforward in that it's visual. A third of our brain is connected to vision as you know and if you can switch that name into a visual image, like some -- I'll need to memorize John so you look for a distinctive feature on their face, it might be their eyes, and then John you might think toilet and you put toilet in their eyes and that will be lodged in their heads. As opposed to you thinking John, John, John, John, John, John.

GUPTA: And you can never take that guy seriously, though, because you always see a toilet --

SAMPSON: He's always toilet face.

GUPTA: Right.

Finally, t-shirts, everybody wants their brains, Todd. What's the deal?

SAMPSON: It's a no-brainer.

GUPTA: No-brainer, I got it.

SAMPSON: Watch the show. Watch the show, it's no-brainer.

GUPTA: I saw it in the promo as well.

I'm going to watch the show. I hope a lot of people do. Thanks so much for being here.

SAMPSON: Thanks for having me.

GUPTA: Appreciate it. Great conversation.

And still ahead, what it took to get to this finish line? A woman of strength and her amazing journey.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GUPTA (voice-over): At over 400 pounds, Sia Fiegel was revered in her Samoan culture.

SIA FIEGEL, CNN FIT NATION TRIATHLETE: I was seen as a woman of strength. There's no strength in pain, in hurt, in living with uncontrolled diabetes.

GUPTA: Complications from her diabetes even forced her to have all of her teeth removed.

FIEGEL: It was on that same day that I decided to be an activist against obesity and diabetes.

GUPTA: To jump-start her own weight loss, she joined the 2014 CNN Fit Nation team and began training for the Nautica Malibu Triathlon. On September 14th, she became a triathlete.

FIEGEL: I feel like I'm a new person. I feel like I've been rebirth, I've been baptized.

GUPTA: She finished the race with her team by her side. More than 100 pounds lighter now, she's not ready to stop.

FIEGEL: I will do it again.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

GUPTA: Now, Sia was just one member of the inspiring 2014 Fit Nation Team who fought hard for a stronger and healthier life. And you know what? You know have the chance to do the same.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GUPTA (voice-over): Seven months. Six CNN viewers. Three different sports. One race to the finish line.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You got it, girl.

GUPTA: Top coaches.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yay!

GUPTA: Devoted teammates.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Thank God my team was there. I mean, the staff (ph) were there. And they brought me in.

GUPTA: Transforming bodies and minds.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: My goal was to do a triathlon.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The hardest thing I've ever done.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: That seems like such a silly goal now, because it's so much bigger than that.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I took an oath early on if I can get through this that even if I can get through the ordeal, the journey will never be over.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

GUPTA: So, now, it's your turn. We're looking for some good people and if you think you're ready to be part of the 2015 Fit Nation team, logon to CNN.com/fitnation. Submit a video. Tell us why you deserve the chance to hit the reset button. That's what I call it. And you can cross the finish line with us.

That's going to wrap things up for SGMD today.

Time now, though, to get you back into the "CNN NEWSROOM" with Deb Feyerick.