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Amanpour

AIDS in Third World Countries; Inner Workings of Scientology

Aired March 04, 2013 - 15:00   ET

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

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN HOST: Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the program. I'm Christiane Amanpour.

Is there a cure for AIDS? It's a question we've been asking for more than 30 years now. But now hope that it may on the horizon. Today, doctors announced that an American baby born with HIV is apparently free of the infection.

She's only the second person ever to be cured. The two-and-a-half- year-old girl was given an aggressive dose of drugs within hours of being born. And within a month, the doctors say the virus was undetectable in her blood.

Today, she's not being treated anymore but remains free of the virus. The truth is, because of progress in treating pregnant mothers, here in the United States there are very few babies born that way with HIV. But the treatment is not readily available in sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere and the numbers there are staggering.

More than 300,000 babies are born each year with HIV worldwide, according to the United Nations. Back in 2006, I went to Kenya to report this story. What's astonishing is how little progress has been made since then. Take a listen.

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AMANPOUR: The sad fact is that many babies who contract AIDS need never have been infected, even if their mothers are HIV positive. There are 2 million children living with HIV around the world. And most of them contracted it from their mothers at birth.

This is very rare in countries like America and Europe, because doctors there have the treatment to stop it. But in poor places such as Africa, only 10 percent of pregnant mothers have access to those drugs.

AMANPOUR (voice-over): Steven Lewis is the U.N. Special AIDS envoy to Africa.

STEPHEN LEWIS, U.N. AFRICA, AIDS ENVOY: In the Western world we use full anti-retroviral treatment for the mother during much of the pregnancy. Then what happens, 99 percent reduction of transmission.

You rarely hear anywhere. I challenge you to think of when you have heard over the last period that an HIV-positive mother, who has given birth in the United States or in Canada, has given birth to an HIV- positive child. It does not happen.

We eliminate the transmission by the nature of the treatment. Now that is another grotesque double standard.

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AMANPOUR: In a moment, I'll talk about all of this with one of the world's leading AIDS researchers, Dr. Anthony Fauci. But first, here's a look at the other stories we're covering tonight.

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AMANPOUR (voice-over): Some celebrities swear by it. We'll go behind the walls to Oz.

AMANPOUR: What is Scientology?

AMANPOUR (voice-over): Then breaking the diplomatic ice with a basketball or a ping-pong ball or just a friendly word.

AMANPOUR: Friend.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Friend.

AMANPOUR: Friend.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Friend.

AMANPOUR: Yes, friend.

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(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: We'll get to that in a bit. But first, what does the report that an American child was cured of HIV mean for infected children here and anywhere around the world? I'm joined now by leading AIDS researcher Dr. Anthony Fauci. His pioneering work on this issue earned him the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Dr. Fauci, welcome to the program.

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, AIDS RSEARCHER: Good to be here.

AMANPOUR: How much of a revolutionary step is the story that we're focusing on right now, this baby that's been apparently cured of HIV?

FAUCI: Well, it's an important conceptual advance, Christiane, because the concept of being able to treat someone as early as possible and, in this case, within hours of infection, has always been the concept that has loomed there about whether or not one can actually cure HIV infection. So the fact that this concept has now been shown to be possible is an important advance.

The caveat to it all is that this is just one case. And we've really got to be very careful to extrapolate for broad application a single case until it's replicated on a broader way and in controlled trials, where you can observe over a period of time whether or not this is a real phenomenon. I believe it is in this case. But it still is one case. So we've got to be careful.

AMANPOUR: So I was going to ask you, because obviously some of the skeptics are saying, well, perhaps this child -- we don't know for sure whether this child was actually infected. And as you say, there has to be a lot of peer review and many more instances of trial.

How sure are you that this child was infected?

FAUCI: I think that the evidence presented that the child is infected far outweighs any skepticism that the child was not. But I don't think it's 100 percent. As a scientist looking at the data, the data seem pretty convincing that the child was infected. But it could possibly have been some spillover virus from the mother; I don't think that's the case. I think that this child was infected.

But, again, it's not 100 percent in the mind of many scientists who look at that.

But I think it's good enough evidence to assume that the child was infected.

AMANPOUR: And what about, for you -- I mean, you've been working on this for more than 30 years now. It must be an amazing day.

FAUCI: Well, it's an important day for a proof of concept. But it's always tempered by the fact that we've got to be careful when you're dealing with one patient. And remember, people might make an extrapolation that this means we now have a cure for HIV.

We really don't because most adults -- and, again, the vast majority of people who are infected are adults -- they don't know they're infected and they don't get on treatment, if they do get on treatment, for weeks to months to perhaps years after they've been infected.

And once that virus replicates for a while and establishes a reservoir, it becomes extremely difficult to eradicate that reservoir. With this child in question, the child was treated within hours of being infected.

That's a very unusual opportunity you might get. So you could say this is much more relevant to the possible curing of infection in infants born of infected mothers than it is the broad field of the cure of HIV infecting in the world, mainly among adults.

AMANPOUR: That's an incredibly important distinction, because obviously everybody is very excited that this might have extrapolations for adults as well.

You made that distinction; can I ask you was this baby treated with the same kind of drugs that already exist? Just more aggressively and more -- and earlier? Or was it a whole new cocktail?

FAUCI: No, these were drugs that are used in some protocols to treat people. The important distinction is that generally when babies are born of infected mothers, even when the mothers are treated during pregnancy, since you don't know at birth that the baby is infected or not, you don't give them a full treatment regimen.

You give them one or two drugs for six weeks and you wait to see if they're infected. If they are, then you add the third drug and you give them the full component of an aggressive regimen. If it turns out they're not infected, then you stop after six weeks. So the treatment that this baby got right from the get-go was the kind of thing you would do to treat infection for anybody.

AMANPOUR: So Dr. Fauci, let's extrapolate now across the world, because the truth is, as I said earlier, the biggest problem for these babies is around the world, 330,000 according to the U.N. last year. You know, about 1,000 a day being born with HIV. I reported a few years ago that there were 2 million. Today, the U.N. says it's 3 million kids living with HIV around the world.

What can you tell us about how this might affect their lives? And has there been any progress in slowing down the infection rate in other parts of the world?

FAUCI: Yes, Christiane, we've got to distinguish between curing someone who's infected and preventing the baby from getting infected. The real huge problem that we should be focusing on is preventing the baby from getting infected.

And the way you do that is if you have an infected mother, you put her on therapy, full therapy; you keep her on therapy through the pregnancy and hopefully for life. That, in and of itself, dramatically decreases the prevalence -- the incidence of infection that's transmitted from a mother to a baby. So the huge issue is prevention.

What we're talking about with this single case from Mississippi in the United States is a baby who was infected that you treated so early that you actually cure them. So those are the two things that seem to get confused.

AMANPOUR: Right. But you know, back in 2006, Stephen Lewis told me that there was a -- as he said -- grotesque double standard. The mothers who are infected in the U.S., in the West, are getting these drugs. Those in the sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere are not getting them.

FAUCI: He's absolutely correct. And that has to do with preventing infection in the baby by treating the mother and saving her life and dramatically diminishing the likelihood that she'll transmit it to the baby.

So what Stephen was talking about is something that actually is true. It's true disparity in that many, many women in the developing world don't have access to the kind of treatment that would not only save their lives but would prevent them from infecting their child. That is a different situation from actually curing an infected baby.

AMANPOUR: Dr. Anthony Fauci, thank you so much. Incredible day. Good to hear from you.

FAUCI: And same here, Christiane.

AMANPOUR: And though it's often forgotten now, here in New York, the fight against AIDS began in 1981 with a telephone hotline that fielded 100 calls the first night as vividly depicted in the Oscar-nominated documentary, "How to Survive a Plague."

The AIDS epidemic quickly spread around the country and around the world. Gay men, its initial victims, took to the streets, not merely to protest but literally to fight for their lives. Since then, an estimated 13 million people have died from AIDS. And today, some 34 million more worldwide are still living with HIV.

After a break, we'll turn to the world of Scientology. What lies behind the very public faces when we return.

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AMANPOUR: Welcome back to the program.

The Church of Scientology is the famous or infamous American-born religion created by science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard and best known for its celebrity followers, like Tom Cruise and John Travolta.

The church claims millions of members here in the United States and around the world, in virtually every major city -- London, Berlin, Tel Aviv, Johannesburg and more. Scientology is famously litigious, with a phalanx of lawyers keeping an eye on journalists, writers and media companies who set out to cover the church.

But now that a number of high-profile and highly placed members have left and are beginning to tell their stories, we're getting rare insight into the inner workings of the church, from Pulitzer prize-winning author Lawrence Wright. His new book is called, "Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood and he Prison of Belief."

His last book, "The Looming Tower," is considered the seminal work on the rise of Al Qaeda and that's the work for which he won that Pulitzer Prize.

But before I ask him about "Going Clear," here's what the Church of Scientology has to say about it.

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AMANPOUR (voice-over): "Lawrence Wright's book is so ludicrous it belongs in a supermarket tabloid. The book is an error-filled, unsubstantiated, bigoted anti-Scientology book."

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AMANPOUR: Lawrence Wright, welcome to the studio.

LAWRENCE WRIGHT, AUTHOR: Thank you, Christiane.

AMANPOUR: How does it feel to be introduced with that very clear denunciation, bigoted, unsubstantiated, unfair?

WRIGHT: Well, I, first of all, I sure hope we sell it in supermarkets. That would be great.

I have tried to be as fair to the church as I can. And I've interviewed more than 260 people, most of them Scientologists or former Scientologists. Many of them have been at the highest levels of the church and at the highest level of their spiritual ladder. So I think I've spoken to the experts.

AMANPOUR: You called your book "Going Clear."

WRIGHT: Right.

AMANPOUR: What does that mean? Is that the heart of the faith?

WRIGHT: It's the essential idea and it started in "Dianetics," a book that Hubbard published in 1950, in which he stated that there are two minds in our bodies. One is the rational, thinking mind that is a perfect computer. It remembers things flawlessly.

And then there's another mind called the reactive mind. And it's full of the fears and neuroses that control our behavior and cause us to do things wrongly.

And those things come from experiences we've had in the past, even in past lives. And if we can bring those things to the surface, those memories, and purge them of the power they have over our behavior, then we eliminate the reactive mind and we go clear.

AMANPOUR: Your subtitle is, "The Prison of Belief."

WRIGHT: Right.

AMANPOUR: What do you mean? What is Scientology? Is it a prison? Is it a religion?

WRIGHT: You know, you and I can talk about religion. But there's only one organization that makes the distinction, and that's the IRS. And they determined in 1993 that Scientology was a religious community.

AMANPOUR: That obviously came after a huge amount of effort by the Scientologists -- and indeed we have some video that shows the current leader celebrating many years ago when the IRS made this announcement and this decision about Scientology.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DAVID MISCAVIGE, SCIENTOLOGY CHURCH LEADER: The IRS issued letters recognizing Scientology and every one of its organizations as fully tax exempt! The war is over!

(APPLAUSE)

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AMANPOUR: The war is over. I mean, it really is an us-against-them sort of attitude.

WRIGHT: Yes. You know, when that happened, the church owed a billion dollars in back taxes. It had decided not to pay its taxes. And it didn't have a billion dollars. This was an existential moment for the church.

And so in order to save Scientology, David Miscavige, the figure you just saw, the leader of the church, launched 2,300 lawsuits against the IRS, individual agents; they hired private investigators, according to my sources, to follow individual agents around.

At conventions, they would see who drank too much, who was fooling around on the road. And all of that is part of the deal that the IRS made. Those lawsuits were dropped. The private investigators were dropped and the religious exemption was granted, on whatever merits. That was the circumstance (inaudible).

(CROSSTALK)

AMANPOUR: And why was religious exemption important to the church?

WRIGHT: It could not exist without it. You know, they -- instead of owing a billion dollars, they paid $12 million. And since then, the unbelievably great protections of the 1st Amendment of religious freedoms surround the church and all of its practices. I'm not questioning the beliefs of the church. It's the behavior inside the organization.

AMANPOUR: Did you talk to husbands and wives, parents and children, who had been separated?

WRIGHT: Oh, yes, and it's -- I mean, there were a lot of tears in this story. The number of people that have told me about family members that have turned against them, they will never speak to them again. The fear that I've detected in my sources about whether they should talk to me because what's at risk is their relationship with people they loved the most.

And they want to talk about it. And many people did talk about, placing those very relationships at risk.

AMANPOUR: This is the response about the separation from family members.

"The church encourages and helps its members to have excellent family relationships, whether they're relatives of Scientologists or not. Family members of Scientologists are always welcome to visit the church, to meet other Scientologists and to have their questions about Scientology answered."

WRIGHT: I've -- I would like to introduce them to the hundreds of family members that are unable to contact the people that were closest to them, we're talking children and -- who have been separated from their parents, husbands from spouses. It's a broad and terrible program.

AMANPOUR: The niece of David Miscavige has left the church after many, many years. And she's been talking publicly; she's written about it. Has that affected the church at all?

WRIGHT: Jenna Miscavige Hill and others founded a website, called exscientologykids.com, to talk about this phenomenon of family members being forcibly separated and also of children, the exploitation of children.

I think it's been a disaster in terms of public relations for the church to have people that are close in to the founders and also to David Miscavige, actually publicly turn their backs on the church, not so much against Scientology, but the way the church is being run now.

AMANPOUR: Well, let's talk about the powerful adherents and the very famous ones, Tom Cruise, John Travolta, I mean, you can ask for hours why this is attractive to them. But beyond that, do you think they have a responsibility to -- I don't know; what is their responsibility?

WRIGHT: Christiane, I've thought about how Scientology might be able to reform itself, how it might be able to change. It's obviously in a critical moment.

Some of these celebrity members, in particular Tom Cruise, who is the most notable Scientologist, could call for change. He, I think, has a moral responsibility. I'm not criticizing his personality or his acting or anything about it. But I'm just saying that the product that he sells -- and he's a most visible spokesperson for the church -- has some problems.

And I think it's up to him, since he's representing it to so many people around the world, he's got a moral responsibility to look at what's going on and, in his name, is being sold to people around the world.

AMANPOUR: When you decided to write the story for your magazine, "The New Yorker," what was the editors' reaction? What was Scientology's reaction? Did they try to stop you? Did they try to sue you? What happened?

WRIGHT: Well, we went into this with our eyes open, because many previous reporters have had difficult experiences with the church. "Time" magazine, for instance, published an expose in 1991, and the church sued "Time," losing at every step of the way, all the way to the Supreme Court. But it was the most expensive suit "Time" ever defended.

Other reporters had been tracked down by private investigators, framed for crimes they didn't commit. You know, these are well-established facts. And so we looked at that. On the other hand, this was a great story. This was a really interesting phenomenon. And we wanted to do it.

But we do it very carefully.

AMANPOUR: Have they come after you? Have they tried to sue you since the book has been out?

WRIGHT: No, I -- you know, we've had a number of stern letters from attorneys, from the church and some of the prominent people mentioned in the book. But in this country, you know, we're protected by the 1st Amendment, as is the church.

AMANPOUR: But you just said, they lodge many, many lawsuits.

WRIGHT: Yes. Well, I think that in order to sue me in this country, they have to prove actual malice, which means that I deliberately misrepresented the facts in order to smear the church. And I have not done that.

AMANPOUR: So now you've written the article; you've written the book. After doing all this work on Scientology, after really immersing yourself in it for so long, what is your conclusion?

WRIGHT: I think Scientology is having -- at a reckoning point. It reminds me of the Church of Latter-Day Saints in the 19th century, which was the most persecuted sect in our history.

AMANPOUR: That's the Mormon Church.

WRIGHT: That's the Mormon Church. And in fact, there was a bill in Congress to exterminate the Mormons. It was a very hated organization. And it turned. It evolved into an organization that now can have two Mormons running for president.

The -- Scientology might have a future like that. But it won't if it continues on its current path. It's got lots of money and it's got lots of lawyers. But it appears to be hemorrhaging members. And if it doesn't have a change, if it doesn't have a reformation inside it, then no matter how much money and how many lawyers they have, it's going to die.

AMANPOUR: Lawrence Wright, thank you very much indeed.

WRIGHT: It's been a pleasure. Thank you, Christiane.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: On the question of how Scientology won its religious exemption from the IRS, the church has denied reports that aggressive tactics had any effect on the agency's decision, saying the ruling was based on a two-year inquiry that showed the church was qualified for the exemption.

As for the reports that journalists have been harassed, the church has said that this dark chapter in its history was the work of renegade members who broke the law and that it's today's church leaders who are responsible for shutting down the activity.

The Church of Scientology's response is available in full at CNN.com. To find it, put the word "Scientology" in the search field in the upper right-hand corner.

And we'll be right back with a final note on some unconventional diplomacy.

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AMANPOUR: And finally tonight, you may have heard of the world's most unlikely diplomat breaking the ice with North Korea, the world's most isolated nuclear nation.

Ex-NBA star Dennis Rodman parlayed a mutual love of basketball into a courtside seat with North Korea's new young Supreme Leader, Kim Jong-un. They even knocked back a few drinks together. A few years back, there was musical diplomacy. I visited North Korea along with the New York Philharmonic. It also gave me a rare chance to speak to people in Pyongyang.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: You taught me some new words. I'll teach you a word. OK?

AMANPOUR: Friend.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Friend.

AMANPOUR: Friend.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Friend.

AMANPOUR: Yes, friend.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: The walls of mistrust around the Hermit Kingdom have not yet come down. But sometimes all it takes is a word or a basketball or even a little ping-pong ball, as it did in the 1970s, when Chairman Mao invited the American team to China to take on the world's table tennis champs, led by Zwan Zedong, who died last month.

That exhibition led to President Nixon's historic trip and the thaw in U.S.-China relations that continues to this day.

And that's it for tonight's program. Meantime, you can always contact us on our website, amanpour.com. Thanks for watching and goodbye from New York.

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