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The Lead with Jake Tapper

The Anatomy Of Violence; The Mind Of A Terror Suspect; 17 Boston Victims Remain Hospitalized; Disney Cuts Ties With Bangladesh Factories; Companies Rethink Overseas Safety Standards; Tupac's Godmother On Most Wanted Terrorist List; Vogue Launching Online TV Channel; Fail To The Redskins

Aired May 02, 2013 - 16:30   ET

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

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JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: Welcome back to THE LEAD. I'm Jake Tapper. More on our "National Lead," they are accused of unspeakable violence of ending innocent lives in a senseless act of terror. So what could have made two young men with family, friends, and limitless opportunities in this great country turn so drastically against this country? Dr. Sanjay Gupta takes us into the minds of two alleged killers to try to find out.

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DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): In the wake of tragedy come the inevitable questions. What makes a killer? Is there a switch that turns on a rampage and why? Why would someone do this?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You can just say the person's evil. I think that's 13th Century thinking. I think we've moved beyond that.

GUPTA: Adrian Raine is a criminologist. He is also the author of a new book "The Anatomy of Violence." He spent more than three decades studying cold blooded killers and says there are biological explanations for violence. And Reign is convinced that brain dysfunction may in part explain the terror unleashed in Boston.

ADRIAN RAINE, UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA: Well, were they just completely normal people who just decided one day you know what? We want to create mayhem. I don't think so. I think it's more complicated than that.

GUPTA: Raine says he first saw echoes of his own work with violent criminals when this image of 19-year-old suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was released.

RAINE: While others were running away he was just walking away as cool as a cucumber. That really struck me. I've seen this before in psychopaths and murderers in prison.

GUPTA: And then there were these photos of the brother who was killed, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, boxing. RAINE: We've found a neurological abnormality in the brain that predisposes to violence and psychopathy and it's also found in boxers. During fetal developments as the regions begin to expand and develop they compress or fuse the two leaflets together. For some people because of maldevelopment of lymphic system the gap never closes.

That gives rise to a lack of fear and a psychopathic type personality who could go and kill a number of people and not have any sense of shame or remorse or guilt about doing that.

GUPTA (on camera): Another seat of fear in the brain is this almond shaped structure called the amygdala. This is the brain of a psychopath and according to Raine's studies these blue areas over here, they shrink in psychopaths and it makes the area dramatically smaller.

RAINE: This part of the brain is very much involved in fear conditioning. You experience when you are thinking of doing something that's not right and then you get that awful feeling, no, I shouldn't do that. If that's broken then that individual is more likely to perpetrate a horrific act like Boston bombings.

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TAPPER: My friend Dr. Sanjay Gupta joins me now. Sanjay, yesterday we reported the arrest of three schoolmates of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, all three are 19 years old. Two now stand accused of obstruction of justice, the other of lying to the feds. As with the two alleged bombers we can't get into the minds of these guys, but is there anything to be gleaned from their ages, 19 years old?

GUPTA: I think there could be. You know, we talked to Adrian Raine about that as well. A couple things I'll just point out quickly, there is an area of the brain that is sort of the frontal lobe area that is responsible for judgment. That's relevant, Jake, because it really doesn't fully develop until someone is in early to mid 20s.

Here we're talking about people in their late teens. That judgment area may not be fully developed. Also the area that's responsible for emotion and sometimes rational emotion that is more fully developed so you have that combination now, fuelled emotion with less inhibition and, you know, people wonder if that could potentially play a role.

TAPPER: Now obviously, none of us are excusing what they did. We're just trying to understand this unmitigated evil. But you can imagine that the next step to this sort of science is for defense attorneys to grab on to it. The Twinkie defense from decades back, people blaming their brain, genetics for a crime they've committed. Is there any potential problem with that? Do you see that possibly happening?

GUPTA: Well, this is an emerging science with regard to what we're talking about specifically. But Jake, let me tell you what people talk about within this field. Take something like fetal alcohol syndrome, for example. The child, who is in utero, the mother is drinking and the child is born with fetal alcohol syndrome, significant damage and effect on the brain. We know based on studies that those people are 19 times more likely to end up in prison and more likely to commit crimes. You think about that. Again, there is not a right answer here, but they were exposed to the alcohol in utero. We know what life can often play out like for them.

Someone that has a tumor in the frontal lobe area, they were functioning perfectly well. They developed this tumor. All of a sudden their inhibition and their judgment was severely affected. What to do in cases like that? It's an emerging science, Jake, but those are a couple more concrete examples of what the neuroscientists in this area are talking about.

TAPPER: Fascinating. All right, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, thank you so much. Adrian Raine will join Sanjay this weekend on "SG M.D." to talk more about the anatomy of violence. Tune in or set your DVR Saturday at 4:30 p.m. Eastern, Sunday at 7:30 in the morning right here on CNN.

Conservatives swooned when Dr. Ben Carson challenged President Obama over his health care plan. Coming up next, I'll ask the Republican rising star what he thinks about gun control.

And what does it take for Disney to cut ties with an entire country? Find out how they're snapping into action after a tragedy coming up in our "Buried Lead."

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TAPPER: Welcome back to THE LEAD. There are 17 victims still hospitalized from the Boston terrorist attacks. While in Boston I visited hospitals and spoke to doctors who treated those patients. They described the shock of dozens of patients arriving all at once in critical need of intense care.

My next guest knows the pressure of treating patients in need. Dr. Ben Carson is director of Pediatric Neurosurgery at John Hopkins Hospital and author of "America the Beautiful, Rediscovering What Made This Nation Great." He joins me from South Carolina.

Dr. Carson, I'm going to get to some of the politics going on today in a second, but as a physician I want to ask, I'm sure you've seen a lot in the operating room. What was your reaction as a physician when you heard about the types of injuries that were coming in from the Boston terrorist attacks two weeks ago?

DR. BEN CARSON, DIRECTOR OF PEDIATRIC NEUROSURGERY, JOHN HOPKINS HOSPITAL: Well, I was very impressed by the readiness of the team to take care of the problems and the way that they coordinated things. They obviously were well prepared and, you know, one of the things I frequently say is the medical system here in the United States is the best in the world.

And we frequently get a black eye. People talk about our infant mortality rates and things being low. But the fact of the matter is we take all comers and a lot of other people delete out several people and consequently move up further on that scale. We have superb health care in this country and the Boston readiness is a good example of that.

TAPPER: Let me do a little hypothetical for you. If Dzhokhar was your patient, would you have had any difficulty treating him do you think?

CARSON: Can't hear.

TAPPER: If Dzhokhar Tsarnaev -- can he not hear me? Dr. Carson, can you hear me? We're going to take a quick break and get the technical issues figured out. We'll be right back with more on Dr. Carson.

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TAPPER: Welcome back to THE LEAD. We're back with Dr. Ben Carson, Director of Pediatric Neurosurgery at John Hopkins Hospital. Dr. Carson, I apologize for the technical issues, but hopefully they've been worked out. So here is the question I was asking you. It's a hypothetical. Would you have had any difficulty treating Dzhokhar Tsarnaev if he had been brought to you?

CARSON: Well, first of all, in the beginning introduction I was introduced as a Republican. I'm an independent. No, I would have had no difficulty whatsoever treating anybody, because we are taught to, as physicians, to take care of the problem first. And, you know, you don't determine what somebody's affiliation is before you decide whether you're going to take care of them.

TAPPER: The Obama administration is fighting a court ruling, one that lifted age restrictions on Plan B, the emergency contraceptive pill. The FDA has approved the pill over the counter without a prescription.

CARSON: Having that technical problem again.

TAPPER: We're having the technical problem again. Dr. Carson cannot hear me. All right, we're going to have to come back to Dr. Carson at a later date if he cannot hear me. I'm going to switch gears now to our next segment.

This is what we call the "Buried Lead." There are stories that we think are not getting a lot of play. Just weeks before the walls came tumbling down on factory workers in Bangladesh, one American company had already decided to cut ties with the country over unsafe work conditions according to the "New York Times."

Disney sent a memo to licensees and vendors back in March stating it would no longer do business in Bangladesh. That decision was reportedly in response to two factory fires that killed more than a hundred workers last November.

Now, while those fires were nothing short of horrific, last month's factory collapse killed four times as many workers and also served as a reminder that much of what we buy in this country is the result of labor abuses and low wages overseas.

Ian Robinson is a research scientist for the University of Michigan. He's done extensive research on ethical clothing. He joins us live from Ann Arbor. Ian, could Disney's move spark a trend of more American retailers ditching countries with such low safety standards?

IAN ROBINSON, RESEARCH SCIENTIST, UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN: Well, it certainly is possible. I'm sure it's tempting for the companies because to get out of there might seem like the easiest way to take public scrutiny off of them and then it might -- they might think it will rest solely on the Bangladeshi government and employers.

I think there will be a lot of pressure on the companies not to do that because, really, a lot of the problems of sweat shop reduction come from the policies of the companies and if they pull out of Bangladesh and keep the same policies, they're just going to create sweat shops everywhere they go.

So the anti-sweat shop, nongovernmental organizations and activists who have been following this for many years know that and they're not going to let the companies get away with this if they can help it.

TAPPER: I guess the big question here is we in this country like to sit in judgment about what's going on, but aren't we the problem in a lot of ways? Are Americans willing to pay what it would require for workers to not have to live and work in those conditions?

ROBINSON: Colleagues of mine here at the University of Michigan and I have been working on this for about ten years and have done a couple types of experiments, one a controlled experiment in the Sears store in Lincoln Park just outside of Detroit, and then a second natural experiment comparing American apparel here in Ann Arbor, which is widely understood to be a sweat free production situation even though some are critical of some of the aspects.

Most people who actually shop there believe it to be sweat free. So we had a kind of experimental situation in an apartment store and a natural experiment where people could go to a place they believed was producing sweat free or go to any of the other stores that sell similar stuff to American apparel.

And what we found in those two situations even though the customer base was very, very different, the one in Lincoln Park was essentially working class people, lower middle class people, the one in Ann Arbor for American apparel is essentially college students, pretty well off for the most part, we found that really you can summarize it with 25 and 50.

That is that when presented with a real option, at least what the customers understood to be a real option, of a sweat free option and for which they had to pay an additional premium, we varied the premium in some cases in American apparel it's -- it varies, too, depending what the customers think is the price difference between the goods there and the goods in the alternative stores.

But at any rate, 25 percent of the people that we interviewed in the two situations not only bought the goods that they understood to be ethically produced but were willing to pay a higher price for them and told us they bought them at least in part because they believed they were ethically produced. So that's 25 percent.

The 50 percent comes in because we realized, wow. Maybe especially in the experiment in the store maybe some of the customers didn't see the labels we put on. Maybe they thought that, you know, they didn't really realize they were given an ethical choice. We have to interview them and find out did they notice we had this good working conditions label.

That we defined what it meant and also did they notice there was a price difference and they were asked to pay more for the one labeled good working conditions. When we asked those questions we discovered that for various reasons 60 percent, a little over 60 percent, of the customers in that department store hadn't met one of these critical preconditions of being an ethical consumer.

When we looked just at the 40 percent left and said, what share of them bought the -- paid the premium and bought the good working conditions stocks it turned out to be around 50 percent. When we asked the same question, did you know that American apparel claims to be sweat free? Did you believe that in fact that's the case? Of those folks, as they exited the store, 50 percent of those who actually knew that reputation and trusted it were buying sweat free.

TAPPER: All right, Ian Robinson, thanks so much, an eye opening perspective.

In other national news, the final piece of the new One World Trade Center has been hoisted up in Lower Manhattan. Construction crews raised the flag draped final sections of the spire to the top of the tower. Once in place, it will bring the building to a very symbolic height of 1776 feet. Get it, 1776, the tallest tower in the western hemisphere and the third tallest in the world.

Tupac Shakur may have presented himself as a hard core thug, but he had nothing on his own godmother. Joann Chesimard, yes, the godmother of the rap icon is now the very first woman ever to land on the FBI's most wanted terrorist list.

Now 65 years old she was convicted of gunning down a New Jersey state trooper on this very day in 1973, but she escaped from prison in 1979 and the FBI says she is currently in Cuba. Chesimard was a member of the Black Liberation Army, which the FBI calls one of the most violent militant groups of the 1970s.

Up next, what's in a name? For the Washington Redskins some might say a racial slur. Is it time to update the franchise? That's ahead.

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TAPPER: Welcome back to THE LEAD. The "Money Lead," the bible had its own TV show. It only made sense a magazine seen as the bible of the fashion industry is about to get one too. "Vogue" is about to launch an online TV channel that will feature scripted and unscripted web shows as part of a huge new digital campaign being launched by Condi Nast. Other brands like "Vanity Fair" and "Wired," they will get their own channels too. They are expected to roll out over the next few weeks.

He doesn't carry a cell phone and doesn't even have a computer at his desk, but today 82-year-old Warren Buffet sent out his first tweet. Warren is in the house. The fourth richest man in the world already has more than 159,000 followers in just a few hours all of them hoping it will be their most valuable follow yet.

The "Sports Lead," you might get your teeth knocked out if you went up to a Native American and said redskin. Many consider the word a flat out racial slur. It's also the name of one of the most valuable sports franchises in the world. And now an independent D.C. city council member is leading the latest charge to change the name of the NFL team to the Red Tails.

A nod to the Tuskegee airmen the group of African-American pilots who served the U.S. in World War II. The council member said the transition would be seamless and even fits right into the fight song, hail to the red tails. It's not clear how much power the D.C. council has in this since the Redskins currently play in Landover, Maryland, and have their team offices in Virginia.

That's all the time we have. Thanks so much for watching THE LEAD. I will leave you in the able hands of Wolf Blitzer. We'll see you tomorrow, 4:00 p.m. Eastern, 1:00 p.m. Pacific. Mr. Blitzer, take it away.