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Repeated Mistakes By CDC Labs; How To Get Out Of Holiday Debt

Aired December 26, 2014 - 07:30   ET

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

PAMELA BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: New York City Police Department on heightened alert following the arrests of seven people. They're accused of making threats toward the Nypd. Two of the suspects allegedly targeted the home precinct, the very home precinct of two officers shot dead in their patrol car.

A public wake meantime will be held today for one of the victims, Officer Rafael Ramos, who will be laid to rest tomorrow.

The online Sony Playstation Network is still struggling to get back online this morning after apparently being the target of a hack attack. Xbox live was also knocked offline, but appears to have recovered this morning.

A group called "The Lizard Squad" took credit for the takedown. Both PlayStation and Xbox are run by companies with a hand in streaming the comedy flick "The Interview." So far, there's no evidence tying the hack with that.

Meantime, former President George H.W. Bush is waking up once again this morning in a Texas hospital. He's been there since Tuesday night when he complained of shortness of breath. Aides are saying the 90-year-old is in great spirits and doctors are keeping him hospitalized only as a quote, "precaution."

Well, a Navy ship featured in some major movies including "Top Gun" is set to be scrapped for a single penny. Officials were hoping the "USS Ranger" would be transformed into a museum, but without any takers, it's now going to be sent to Texas to be dismantled.

The "USS Ranger" was first commissioned back in 1957 and earned battle stars during the Vietnam War and "Operation Desert Storm." It's been out of use since 1993. Back to you, Poppy.

POPPY HARLOW, CNN GUEST ANCHOR: All right, Pamela, thank you. Let's talk about this really remarkable thing that just happened at the CDC. A worker there will be monitored now for three weeks, 21 days, after handling live Ebola without even knowing it.

The CDC says the virus samples were improperly sent to the wrong lab. Then the technician was exposed, they have no symptoms at this point. But the CDC says they're going to monitor and there's no chance of public exposure.

The thing is this is not the first time that something like this has happened. So how does it happen? Why does it happen? How could it be prevented especially with the risk of Ebola re-entering the United States being very real?

Let's talk to Dr. Seema Yasmin. She is not only a CNN medical analyst. She's also a staff writer at the "Dallas Morning News" and a former CDC disease detective. Thank you for coming in.

You have a very unique perspective because again, you were with the CDC. You were a disease detective there. Here's what they're saying, Seema.

The two samples were switched, basically a sample of live Ebola virus was sent to the low-risk lab, instead of a dead virus sample. How significant is this?

SEEMA YASMIN, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: It's huge mistake, Poppy and it's one that we can't afford right now because CDC is one of the agencies leading the fight against the Ebola epidemic in West Africa.

This lab where this mistake occurred has processed hundreds of samples from West Africa already this year and in fact the experiments they've been working on before they had to shut down were looking at that strain of Ebola that's spreading like wildlife right now.

Trying to learn more about it to answer some questions about it to answer some really crucial questions about how can we fight it better and so because of this mistake, the lab has been decontaminated twice and it's been closed down. And it's unacceptable that it's not doing the work that we needed to do.

HARLOW: So it's not only putting a lab technician at risk, it's actually hindering progress in terms of fighting the disease abroad?

YASMIN: Absolutely. The CDC is doing such good work overseas, and protecting us here by doing that work. And this detracts again from the good work that they're doing and the protection they're offering us, and as you mentioned, the third mistake this year.

We learned from the bird flu mistake earlier this year. That mistake probably happened because of an overworked lab worker and having worked there.

I know the CDC has a strong culture of service and commitment and working really hard. That's why you can't have safety hinge on one person, Poppy. There have to be protocols in place.

HARLOW: So let's go through those examples. The first example earlier this year, the CDC accidentally sent live anthrax to labs unequipped to handle it. Sixty two people were monitored, no one infected, still a scare.

And then you mentioned bird flu. This was a regular flu sample was accidentally contaminated with a H5N1, a very deadly strain of bird flu. I guess, you know, you said one with an overwork lab worker, for example, but what needs to change if anything systemically?

YASMIN: We need to have better protocols in place. We need to make sure that staffs are trained in how to adhere to these protocols. In this instance, for example, with the Ebola mistake, recently, the lab worker should have realized that the color coding was wrong that they should not have been seeing a test tube of that color in their lab.

So if people are making those mistakes, clearly there needs to be more training. We were assured by Dr. Friedan earlier this year that there would also be a point person at CDC who was held accountable for all safety so really, this shouldn't be happening.

HARLOW: Is there yet? Do you know, Seema, is there yet?

YASMIN: We haven't heard much about what happened in the wake of those earlier mistakes and also there were two similar mistakes in 2006 and another mistake in 2009, all involving deadly bacteria. So something needs to change and it needs to happen immediately.

HARLOW: Let me ask you, the CDC is saying with this live Ebola debacle, in terms of the sample being sent to the wrong lab, they say look, this shouldn't have happened, but the public is not at risk. Do you agree that the public is not at risk at all? I know they're monitoring the lab technician. It's unclear, though, if they are in quarantine.

YASMIN: That's probably correct, Poppy, because of the way the sample was sealed and also because we think it was just the one person that had contact. But again, that's good that the public isn't at risk and it's good that there aren't more people having to be monitored for 21 days, but it's not the first mistake and we absolutely need it to be the last mistake.

HARLOW: One thing that I think that we don't talk about enough -- is the fact that this epidemic is still raging in West Africa. Many medical experts have said there's no way to get out of the woods globally.

Maybe there's no case here in the United States right now so the media headlines aren't all about this. But how critical is it to keep the focus, the pressure, the funding on, on curbing this epidemic in West Africa right now?

YASMIN: If we don't stop the outbreak at its source in West Africa, we're likely to see more imported cases, Poppy. And it's really disturbing. Nearly 20,000 people have been infected with Ebola. More than 7,500 have died.

Since we're talking about the CDC, it seems that every year they're fighting more epidemics, epidemics keep getting bigger. Yet their funding hasn't gone up to reflect the battles they're fighting for us.

So if we're hearing that more lab workers are tired, stressed, they are making these mistakes, the agency needs more resources to fight these public health battles.

HARLOW: Because as you say obviously things need to get better safety wise, et cetera, this shouldn't have happened. But this is an agency that does incredibly good work to help all of us. You're saying they need more funding, they need more help?

YASMIN: Absolutely. Not just them, the NIH as well has suffered funding cuts, we're behind with an Ebola vaccine possibly because the NIH didn't receive enough funding absolutely.

HARLOW: All right, Dr. Seeman Yasmin, good to have you on the program. Thank you for coming in.

YASMIN: Thank you.

HARLOW: All right, guys, back to you.

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR: Thanks, Poppy. So how close are we to the next big scientific innovation, like a 3D-printed heart? We may be closer than you think. Fareed Zakaria will tell us, coming up.

Plus spent too much cash on holiday gifts this year? We are here to help. We've got tips on how to get out of holiday debt after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Welcome back, everybody. There was a time not long ago when American ingenuity reached for the stars and landed on the moon. But it's been four decades since the original moon shot, the Apollo program ended. And the shuttle program is now on the shelf as well.

So what could be the next big innovation to have all of us marveling with our families and friends? Fareed Zakaria talked to CNN's Alisyn Camerota about his year-end special, "Moon Shots" for the 21st Century, highlighting the next frontiers in science and innovation.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR, "NEW DAY": Great to see you.

FAREED ZAKARIA, CNN HOST, "FAREED ZAKARIA GPS": Pleasure.

CAMEROTA: So have you been able to identify some equivalent ground- breaking experiences today?

ZAKARIA: It is amazing how many things are going on and we had an incredible list to choose from. But we picked five that really are game-changers in just the way that the original Apollo moon shot was.

CAMEROTA: OK, let's look at your list. Number one, putting human beings on Mars, how close are we to that?

ZAKARIA: You know, we're closer than you might think. It's obviously a huge challenge. It would take the trip is three years. And one of the things that NASA is trying to figure out is how to make sure that people don't go crazy on the trip.

And so one of the things they do is they put five people in a volcano for four months in kind of a kind of extreme stress condition. And just see how they would interact. And they're learning a lot.

CAMEROTA: My gosh, we have a clip of that very thing, let's take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This is the main living space right here.

ZAKARIA (voice-over): There was a 20-minute communication delay with the outside world. Similar to what Mars astronauts would face.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is the only window that we have in the habitat.

ZAKARIA: The only time they were allowed to leave the habitat was in space suits.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK, we're in motion.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: That's incredible.

ZAKARIA: But by the mid-2030s, NASA believes there will be men on Mars.

CAMEROTA: OK, next, 3D printing of a human heart. How does this work?

ZAKARIA: Well, this is incredibly important because one of the easiest ways to solve a number of really difficult medical conditions would be organ replacement. But organ replacement is very hard because, you know, you try to get somebody else's kidneys, liver or heart, it wouldn't match.

Imagine being able to make a kidney out of your own DNA. So you're never going to have a problem of finding it. There's never going to be a problem of organ rejection.

Well, it turns out just the same process of 3D printing that takes place now a days with gadgets or little machine parts, can be applied to human organs. And a leading scientist and medical researchers think that we are probably just ten years away from being able to print a human heart.

CAMEROTA: That is a game changer, so remarkable. OK, here's something that would change the face of travel, hypersonic flight. What is that?

ZAKARIA: Well, you know, if you think about it, this is the one area where there has been very little innovation. The amount of time it takes you or me to go from New York to London or Paris is about the same as it took 40 years ago, 50 years ago.

Here we have an attempt to try to drastically short than time. The idea would be that you would be able to get from any point in the world to any other point, in four hours.

CAMEROTA: Any point in the world?

ZAKARIA: Now it would be about 18 hours, it would -- it would be a third, it would be a third the time. And it's -- in order to do it, you almost have to try to make the planes into rockets.

CAMEROTA: OK, the next is another medical breakthrough, mapping the human brain. What does that mean?

ZAKARIA: So this is the most mind-bending of all of them. You've got the only analogies I can give you are movies. Think "Total Recall" with Arnold Schwarzenegger, think "The Matrix" think "The Avatar." if you wanted to go to Paris and have a wonderful vacation, you didn't have the money.

Imagine if you could go to your local clinic and they could implant the memory of a lovely Parisian vacation that you've had. In other words, if you can get to the point where you can really understand what part of the brain has memory, what part of the brain has emotional sensation, and target specific things into it, you get to a whole different world.

CAMEROTA: You are blowing my mind, Fareed, that's some crazy stuff. Last, creating a star right here on earth to power the electrical grid?

ZAKARIA: To power everything. If you think about it, the -- you know, we are a solar-powered planet. We get all our energy basically from the sun, the plants, animals, everything takes sunlight and uses that energy.

So the idea is if that's the ultimate source of energy, why not try to create a star on earth. The process that you use is essentially nuclear fusion. But the question is can you make it work, can you sustain the action? Nuclear fusion is a very tough reaction to sustain.

Can you guard it because the heat that it produces is incredible? The one point I want to make about all of these projects, which is very interesting, which is true of the original moon shot, even if they don't work, you get huge benefits in science and technology.

You don't know what they're going to be. The Apollo space mission, it turns out the single most valuable thing that came out of it was that they needed to have very small computers.

And so, they, they created a market for the microchip, which created the market for essentially the whole world of personal computers that we have today. If not for NASA, frankly, it's not clear that that would have happened or certainly happened decades later.

CAMEROTA: Such fascinating food for thought. Fareed, thanks so much for sharing this with us.

ZAKARIA: A pleasure.

CAMEROTA: You can watch Fareed's end-of-the-year special "Moon Shots for the 21st Century." It airs at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. on December 28th. Back to you guys.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HARLOW: We'll tune in. We're talking about holiday shopping of course, the day after Christmas. All your holiday shopping, it adds up. Wait until you get your credit card bill. If you are in over your head with holiday debt, we've got you covered. Tips on how to get out of the red, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT Welcome back. Millions of you are headed out the door this morning to return gifts that didn't meet your high expectations this year. Retailers largely met their expectations especially online.

Sales up 15 percent over the last year, all this is good news for creditors and bad news for your wallet. Here to help us with ways to get out of that holiday debt, Jordan Goodman. He is a personal finance expert at moneyanswers.com.

He is the author of this great book "Master Your Debt." We are kindred spirits here. We both think you shouldn't spend money you don't have and if you do, you have to be very smart about getting out of it.

This is a tempting day, leftovers in the refrigerator. My Blackberry, my phone is full of offers. Right now, get here 50 percent off.

JORDAN GOODMAN, AUTHOR, "MASTER YOUR DEBT": Yes. There are several things you can do. First, you don't have to be paying 25 percent, 30 percent on credit cards. There are better credit cards to be had.

ROMANS: Make sure you're using the right credit cards.

GOODMAN: Correct. So here's a free web site to find the best deals, creditcardperks.com. Frequent flyer mileage, you got to get them, not wait for what shows up in the mail.

ROMANS: OK, that's really important here because what I tell people is if you can't pay it off in 30 or 60 days, you really need to think about whether you need it.

GOODMAN: Correct.

ROMANS: The whole industry is geared toward making you spend money you don't have right now.

GOODMAN: You're un-American, Christine.

ROMANS: How do you say -- I'm not here to tell you have to hold the American economy. Take care of yourself.

GOODMAN: OK, well, what you want to do is get under control and non- profit credit counsels, say you have 17 percent and 25 percent. Credit cards, credit card companies are not going to help you.

They have deals with the creditors you can't get on your own, 6 percent, 7 percent, much lower rates. You got to close the accounts and get this under control and pay the debt off, instead of just getting more debt all the time.

ROMANS: If you're in distress, an awful lot of debt, they could end up not getting paid.

GOODMAN: They'd rather get something better than nothing. My favorite place is called Cambridge Credit Counseling. Their web site is cambridgecredit.org had helped many people for a long, long time. They're not giving you a new credit card. You make one payment to Cambridge. They pay the credit cards.

ROMANS: Credit card surfing, might seem like so tempting to transfer your balance to a lower interest rate. If you have a habit of zeroing out the balance and then getting in trouble again, you should be careful of that.

GOODMAN: You should, but what people do is they get these offers for zero percent for six months or 1.9 percent something like that and you transfer one balance from one place to another. This is called surfing.

But realize they're charging you a fee, typically 3 percent to 4 percent of the amount you're doing. You may get a low interest rate, but the fee is going to be higher.

ROMANS: No one is doing anything to you out of the goodness of their heart. They are doing it because they want you to spend more money.

GOODMAN: Also if you pay late, you still got to pay, then the rate shoots up.

ROMANS: Don't sign up for 10 percent discount store cards. How many times you lost something.

GOODMAN: All the retailers, if you go in, sign up for this card you get 10 percent off and if you don't have the money to pay when it comes in and paying 18 percent. You're going to pay more than in the first place and hurting your credit report.

ROMANS: Somebody who works at one of the credit rating agencies told me -- that's a sign of financial weakness to have a bunch of store cards.

GOODMAN: You're in the mall and sign up for Macy's, Bloomingdales and Nordstroms, your credit score is going to drop 50, 100 points, which cost you more in the long run.

ROMANS: Jordan Goodman, "Master Your Debt." We're sorry to be the buzzkill for you all today as you are getting ready to have a nice breakfast on your way out the door to go shopping. Be careful. You have the rest of the year to worry about -- Poppy.

HARLOW: All right, guys, thank you. Coming up, the NYPD on high alert this morning following the arrest of seven people in New York City accused of threatening police officers, this as the department prepares to lay one of their own slain members to rest. We've got the latest on that.

Also the rising tension between communities and police, what can heal the rift? We're talking with the mayor of Berkeley, Missouri, where a teen with a gun was shot dead by a police officer.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Online terroristic threats, a growing number of threats against the NYPD.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's a great loss. These are heroes and it hurts.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The terrorists appointed governor Mosul was killed in an air strike and ISIS has a valuable bargaining chip.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The U.S. would support any effort to recover the pilot.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: "The Interview" has finally made its debut.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I got what I paid for. If it wasn't for theaters like this and people like you guys this literally would not be happening right now.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ROMANS: Good morning to you. Welcome to NEWSROOM this morning. It's Friday, December 26th, 8:00 in the east. Get up! I'm Christine Romans along with Poppy Harlow.

HARLOW: We've been up for a while.

ROMANS: A lot of work to do, a lot of big stories we're following today, among them, the New York City Police Department ramping up patrols after seven people were arrested accused of threatening cops after the execution style murder of two officers while they were sitting in their patrol car.

HARLOW: Now those officers and officers from around the world are arriving in New York and the department gets ready to bury one of their own, that funeral will be held tomorrow.

There is also a growing memorial for the slain officers in Brooklyn, a complete outpouring and Miguel Marquez has been covering this. I know as the morning proceeded more people have come. This is going on for days and gets bigger and bigger by the day. MIGUEL MARQUEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: This funeral is going to be enormous. This area of Queens will be turned into literally an ocean of blue NYPD preparing for up to 25,000 police alone to show up for this funeral.