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Five Players, Five Fans Charged in Brawl; Experts Fear New Epidemic
Aired December 08, 2004 - 14:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CO-HOST: Live pictures now out of Pontiac, Michigan.
All of us here at CNN are quite impressed by the Oakland County prosecutor's presentation there. Talk about TV friendly, looking at the video and looking at the players and the fans that now formally have been charged with assault and battery.
You'll remember the Indiana Pacers game with the Detroit Pistons and that fight that broke out in the stands and on the court. Now, finally, charges have been filed. We're going to talk about what it means for the players and what it means for fans and what it means for the game of basketball -- Fred.
FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CO-HOST: And we heard the Oakland County prosecutor, of course, justify the charges. Now let's get a better understanding of why these charges and what might be next, with legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin.
Jeffrey, you had a chance to hear from the prosecutor there. So far, we've got the NBA with its suspensions. We've got misdemeanor assault and battery charges coming down. One felonious charge.
Does it seem the charging of 10 people, involving the fans and the players, seems to be justified? These types of charges?
JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: It certainly was a persuasive and, I thought, a rather hypnotizing presentation. It seemed sort of like a cross between the Zapruder film and a Three Stooges video.
I mean, it was just -- I mean, it was very -- it was very easy to follow what was going on.
And I think there are two ways of looking at this. One way of looking at it is as a strictly legal matter. And we can talk about that. The other way is kind of as a real world matter.
WHITFIELD: Yes.
TOOBIN: Let's start within the real world.
In the real world, it is very likely that none of these cases will go to trial, that everything will be pled out in a way that no one goes to prison, people get a certain degree of punishment, but they get to go on with their lives. This was sort of the world's most elaborate bar fight, I think it's safe to say. And those bar fights rarely wind up with people going to prison. You saw that misdemeanors carry a maximum penalty of, I think it said, 93 days in prison. That's...
WHITFIELD: Right. And a $500 fine.
TOOBIN: That's true in most states. Crimes like that, people generally don't go to prison. I think virtually everyone charged here, as far as I know, has no criminal record.
So I think in the real world it's likely that this will all just -- just sort of go away.
As a legal matter, some of the charges seem very clear: that moron who threw the chair. I don't think he has much of a defense.
WHITFIELD: And that was Bryant Jackson.
TOOBIN: Right. Mr. Green, who -- who threw the initial drink, that, I think, is not -- there's not much of a defense there.
WHITFIELD: And we heard the prosecutor say that even though there weren't any serious injuries, the throwing of drinks, these liquids, that constitutes battery.
TOOBIN: Right.
WHITFIELD: That alone. So then you have to wonder, there was a lot of throwing of liquid and drinks outside of the purview of the videotape that we saw. So it might be a little bit difficult -- much more difficult for them as they continue this investigation to try to, perhaps, pinpoint other fans who are just as culpable as the five fans that were charged today.
TOOBIN: Well, that's true. It is not a defense that other people did it, too. And you didn't prosecute them. But it is true that there were lots of thrown drinks that were not -- that were not prosecuted.
But I think, certainly, the John Green situation, who was the first guy. Mr. Gorcyca, the prosecutor made, I thought, a very persuasive case that, had that drink not been thrown, the whole thing wouldn't have happened.
WHITFIELD: So.
TOOBIN: So you can see why he's being prosecuted.
WHITFIELD: Yes. Well...
TOOBIN: But...
WHITFIELD: OK, go ahead.
TOOBIN: I'm sorry, go ahead. WHITFIELD: Well, you mentioned it's not a defense that other people were doing it, too. But you have to wonder that a defense might be, on behalf of the fans or even the players, that perhaps security wasn't there to prevent something like this from happening.
Won't we likely be hearing from any of those who were charged, their attorneys, who will say, wasn't it up to the stadium, the palace to do more to promote some sort of security so there is some sort of safety barrier between fans and players for -- to prevent something like this from happening?
TOOBIN: Well, that's certainly an issue. And -- and for some of the charges that as we were watching the video, you could see that there were arguable defenses out there.
There is the defense that, "Well, I was just trying to break it up," or "I was pulling away." Or "if I wasn't" -- it's interesting to remember that self-defense and defense of others is -- is a legitimate defense.
So some of these people may say, "Well, I wasn't trying to protect myself. I was trying to protect other people." Those are the kind of things that would be raised in the unlikely event this goes to trial.
But keep in mind, Fred, I think you started to hint at this when you talked about the responsibility of the security guards and the police. The criminal portion of this is just chapter one.
WHITFIELD: Yes.
TOOBIN: There will be civil suits. And the people who were hit, particularly the people in the audience and especially (NO AUDIO) they will have lawyers who will soon everyone under the son. They'll sue the Pistons and the management of the stadium. They'll sue the security guards. They may well sue the police for failing to create a -- an environment that was safe enough.
WHITFIELD: All right. So this perhaps just might be the beginning again. All right. Jeffrey Toobin, thanks so much.
TOOBIN: OK, Fred.
WHITFIELD: Kyra.
PHILLIPS: Straight ahead, to prevent a flu epidemic in the United States, you need to give shots to people in China, according to an expert on outbreaks. We'll go in depth with her on bird flu and what you need to know.
Also ahead, losing the loot. A police chase caught on camera. We'll show you if the toss technique worked.
And later on LIVE FROM, doing time to daytime TV. Martha Stewart may have a new job waiting for her when she gets out of prison.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
WHITFIELD: Back now to Kuwait where Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld may have wished he had put on a flak jacket before his visit with battle weary U.S. Troops. Pay problems, stop-loss distress and lack of armor gave the G.I.'s plenty of ammunition when the boss opened the floor to questions.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Our soldiers have been fighting in Iraq for coming up on three years. A lot of us are getting ready to move north relatively soon. Our vehicles are not armored.
We're digging pieces of rusted scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass that's already been shot up, dropped, busted, picking the best out of this scrap to put onto our vehicles to take into combat. We do not have proper armament vehicles to carry with us north.
DONALD RUMSFELD, SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: As you know, you go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time. Since the Iraq conflict began, the Army has been pressing ahead to produce the armor necessary at a rate that they believe -- it's a greatly expanded rate from what existed previously, but a rate that they believe is the rate that is all that can be accomplished at this moment.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What is the Department of Defense, more specifically, the Army side of the house, doing to adjust shortages and antiquated equipment that National Guard soldiers, such as the 116th Cav Brigade, the 278th ACR, are going to roll into Iraq with?
RUMSFELD: The -- now settle down. Settle down. I'm an old man and it's nearly the morning. I'm just gathering my thoughts here.
In any organization, you're going to have equipment and materials and spare parts of different ages. And -- and I am told, and no way I can prove it, but I'm told that the Army is breaking its neck to see that there is not a differentiation as to who gets what aged materials in the military, in the Army, as between the active forces, the Guard and the Reserve.
I'm told that they are, instead, trying to see that the equipment goes to those that are in the most need and who are most likely to be using it, the equipment.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: My husband and myself both joined a volunteer Army. Currently, I'm serving under the stop-loss program. I would like to know how much longer do you foresee the military using this program?
RUMSFELD: Stop-loss has been used by the military for years and years and years. It's all well understood when someone volunteers to join the service. It is that something you prefer not to have to use, obviously, in a perfect world. But if you think about it, the whole principle of stop-loss is based on unit cohesion. And -- and the principle is that in the event that there's a -- a -- something that requires a unit to be involved, and people are in a personal situation where their time was ending, they'd put a stop-loss on it so that the cohesion can be maintained.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
WHITFIELD: Within the past hour, the Pentagon press corps took up where the soldiers in Kuwait left off.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
LAWRENCE DIRITA, PENTAGON SPOKESMAN: What the policy is, and I spoke to the officer in Kuwait responsible for ensuring that units in and out of the theater are -- are equipped as appropriate, the policy is that -- that units that are going into Iraq, if they're going to drive their vehicles into Iraq, they drive in armored vehicles.
If their vehicles aren't armored, the policy is that they are convoyed on other vehicles. They are put on the back of trucks. And they're used for operations around the base. In other words, not -- not moving around the city where there may be more of a danger to IEDs.
That being said, the IED threat is a real threat. It's one in which we're spending an enormous amount of time and energy to try to understand better and develop counter measures to.
You know, there are other things than IEDs. There are mortars, and there are other things that might be a danger. And mortars can certainly come into a base, a base camp, in which an unarmored vehicle could be destroyed.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIPS: Switching gears now and talking health news, researchers say about 60 percent of the genes in a chicken have close cousins, if you will, in your own DNA, the building blocks of life.
Findings are in the journal "Nature."
Researchers say the decoded chicken genome might help scientists better understand the human version. And also bird flu, a viral disease found in chickens. Some fear that bird flu might set up off a worldwide outbreak of human flu.
Well, Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson also is worried about the threat of bird flu.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TOMMY THOMPSON, HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES SECRETARY: There has been 40 individuals that have come down with avian flu, and 30 have died. That is huge lethality. No other -- no other disease has had that kind of lethality before. And we do not have a vaccine. This is a really huge bomb out there that could adversely impact on the health care of the world.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIPS: A huge bomb that could be triggered from anywhere in the world: from overflowing sewage in Cairo or a war zone in Rwanda, even an energy efficient office building in California or a pig farm in China.
Being prepared demands understanding. And the Centers for Disease Control reports that in the flu outbreak from 1918 to 1919, the flu virus killed 500,000 Americans. Could the flu be that devastating again?
Laurie Garrett is the author of "The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance." She joins us live from New York.
Laurie, good to see you.
LAURIE GARRETT, AUTHOR, "THE COMING PLAGUE": Good. Thank you.
PHILLIPS: Well, you briefed the national Security Council on this issue, and you say that this concern over the flu is missing the point. What do you mean?
GARRETT: Well, we've never been able to make sufficient vaccine to vaccinate all the people who need it in the United States, for that matter in the world. At best, we make 260 million doses a year, when everything goes right. That certainly isn't adequate if we had a pandemic that would afflict roughly six billion people on planet Earth.
PHILLIPS: All right. So you talk about two main issues here: improving the vaccine output and attacking flu at its source. Let's start with attacking flu at its source. You say, hey, it all comes down to China.
GARRETT: Absolutely. Influenza is a bird flu disease, mostly seen in aquatic migratory birds that go along the path from southern Asia up into the interior of China.
Most of those animals no longer have natural ecologies they can stop in where they can get water and food, because China has so devastated its environment. And so they stop on chicken farms. They stop on pig farms, wherever, and they poach food away from the domestic livestock.
When they do so, they pass their virus on to the domesticated livestock. And then we see the virus undergo some mutation when it gets into such animals as chickens and pigs in these livestock settings. That makes the virus a little closer to being a humanly infectious virus.
Each round of passage through another species takes it up a notch, and it's always arising out of southern China and its immediate neighbor areas. PHILLIPS: So interesting. Is it -- so attacking the problem, if you want to get down to it, is it telling those folks in southern China, "Hey, look, you've got to be better environmentalists," and letting the wild have its own environment, versus having these chicken farms or pig farms?
Because it sounds like anybody that walks through these farms becomes infected. And then it's like a domino effect, and it starts spreading throughout the world.
GARRETT: Well, there's a few bits and pieces in which you said. The first is, yes, China needs to take its ecology seriously, and it has to improve its flyways for migratory birds.
But also, China is the fastest growing GDP, or gross domestic product, in the world. It's a booming economy, and many of its neighbor states are also booming. What that means is that the Chinese people are eating chicken now on a routine basis, whereas not long ago, a decade ago, a chicken might have been a coveted precious meal that was rarely affordable. And so chicken production is skyrocketing as we speak.
Add to that, those who were even a little wealthier are now eating more pork, the preferred meat in China and in Chinese culture. And that consumption level is also skyrocketing.
And all these animals are being raised in really substandard conditions, totally non-hygienic. And, worse yet, it is culturally the norm in that region that animals are sold live in live marketplaces, not as slaughtered meat in packages in supermarkets. And so you have a huge number of people exposed to a potentially flu- carrying animal.
PHILLIPS: All right. And then part two, improving the vaccine output. We've seen the shortage. Is it -- is it possible to fix that?
GARRETT: Not on the scale that we need. We will never be able to make sufficient vaccine, because you have to make it on sterile chicken eggs. Or the eggs are not sterile, but the environment the eggs are stored in has to be sterile.
And so there's only so many chicken eggs, and there's only so many places in the world that have the capacity to grow virus on these eggs in conditions where you don't get cross-contamination with anything else. It's very tough.
PHILLIPS: Laurie Garrett, she's the author of "The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance." Fascinating research. Doesn't surprise me you're Pulitzer Prize winner.
Thank you so much, Laurie.
GARRETT: Thank you.
WHITFIELD: Well, a big announcement about Martha Stewart is expected next hour.
Plus, a dog fight under way in Canada. Are pit bulls suitable pets?
And next hour, Wolf Blitzer joins us with his one-on-one interview with the interim president of Iraq.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
WHITFIELD: Well, you might think a job where you can take it easy would be the best line of work.
PHILLIPS: But a new survey suggests otherwise. Rhonda Schaffler joins us live from the New York Stock Exchange for that interesting report -- Rhonda.
(STOCK REPORT)
WHITFIELD: Thanks a lot, Rhonda.
PHILLIPS: All right. Check your calendar. December means you're going to be hammered with those inescapable lists of the top whatever of 2004. And here at LIVE FROM we're very proud to get it started for you.
WHITFIELD: All right. Well, you frequent web surfers out there and e-mailers will experience some deja vu here. It's CNN.com's top 10 e-mailed news stories of the year. Here they come from the top.
No. 10, woman finds fingertip in salad. Eww. Yuck. It was not a crouton, people
PHILLIPS: No. 9, study finds dogs understand language.
WHITFIELD: Eight, Canadians open arms to Americans.
PHILLIPS: No. 7, dog saves woman's life by calling 911. Still prefers to drink out of the toilet, though.
Six, wedding guests eat victim.
Five, frequent sex cuts cancer risk. Related story, new pickup line fails in every state.
WHITFIELD: And No. 4, pup shoots man, saves littermates.
And No. 3, swimmer drives with shark latched onto the leg.
And No. 2, Barbie and ken call it Splitsville. Malibu Dreamhouse at center of legal fight, apparently.
PHILLIPS: And the No. 1 story, e-mailed the most by you, the CNN.com user, bear guzzles 36 cans of beer...
WHITFIELD: On the wall. PHILLIPS: ... passes out at a campground before he can call his old girlfriends. Well, it happened in Seattle, caught on camper cam. A little early hibernation, I guess.
WHITFIELD: He slept really good for that winter.
PHILLIPS: No hangover.
WHITFIELD: All right. Well, get ready for more Martha Stewart television.
PHILLIPS: We're standing by for an announcement this hour. Don't go away. Live pictures from the scene.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
Aired December 8, 2004 - 14:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CO-HOST: Live pictures now out of Pontiac, Michigan.
All of us here at CNN are quite impressed by the Oakland County prosecutor's presentation there. Talk about TV friendly, looking at the video and looking at the players and the fans that now formally have been charged with assault and battery.
You'll remember the Indiana Pacers game with the Detroit Pistons and that fight that broke out in the stands and on the court. Now, finally, charges have been filed. We're going to talk about what it means for the players and what it means for fans and what it means for the game of basketball -- Fred.
FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CO-HOST: And we heard the Oakland County prosecutor, of course, justify the charges. Now let's get a better understanding of why these charges and what might be next, with legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin.
Jeffrey, you had a chance to hear from the prosecutor there. So far, we've got the NBA with its suspensions. We've got misdemeanor assault and battery charges coming down. One felonious charge.
Does it seem the charging of 10 people, involving the fans and the players, seems to be justified? These types of charges?
JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: It certainly was a persuasive and, I thought, a rather hypnotizing presentation. It seemed sort of like a cross between the Zapruder film and a Three Stooges video.
I mean, it was just -- I mean, it was very -- it was very easy to follow what was going on.
And I think there are two ways of looking at this. One way of looking at it is as a strictly legal matter. And we can talk about that. The other way is kind of as a real world matter.
WHITFIELD: Yes.
TOOBIN: Let's start within the real world.
In the real world, it is very likely that none of these cases will go to trial, that everything will be pled out in a way that no one goes to prison, people get a certain degree of punishment, but they get to go on with their lives. This was sort of the world's most elaborate bar fight, I think it's safe to say. And those bar fights rarely wind up with people going to prison. You saw that misdemeanors carry a maximum penalty of, I think it said, 93 days in prison. That's...
WHITFIELD: Right. And a $500 fine.
TOOBIN: That's true in most states. Crimes like that, people generally don't go to prison. I think virtually everyone charged here, as far as I know, has no criminal record.
So I think in the real world it's likely that this will all just -- just sort of go away.
As a legal matter, some of the charges seem very clear: that moron who threw the chair. I don't think he has much of a defense.
WHITFIELD: And that was Bryant Jackson.
TOOBIN: Right. Mr. Green, who -- who threw the initial drink, that, I think, is not -- there's not much of a defense there.
WHITFIELD: And we heard the prosecutor say that even though there weren't any serious injuries, the throwing of drinks, these liquids, that constitutes battery.
TOOBIN: Right.
WHITFIELD: That alone. So then you have to wonder, there was a lot of throwing of liquid and drinks outside of the purview of the videotape that we saw. So it might be a little bit difficult -- much more difficult for them as they continue this investigation to try to, perhaps, pinpoint other fans who are just as culpable as the five fans that were charged today.
TOOBIN: Well, that's true. It is not a defense that other people did it, too. And you didn't prosecute them. But it is true that there were lots of thrown drinks that were not -- that were not prosecuted.
But I think, certainly, the John Green situation, who was the first guy. Mr. Gorcyca, the prosecutor made, I thought, a very persuasive case that, had that drink not been thrown, the whole thing wouldn't have happened.
WHITFIELD: So.
TOOBIN: So you can see why he's being prosecuted.
WHITFIELD: Yes. Well...
TOOBIN: But...
WHITFIELD: OK, go ahead.
TOOBIN: I'm sorry, go ahead. WHITFIELD: Well, you mentioned it's not a defense that other people were doing it, too. But you have to wonder that a defense might be, on behalf of the fans or even the players, that perhaps security wasn't there to prevent something like this from happening.
Won't we likely be hearing from any of those who were charged, their attorneys, who will say, wasn't it up to the stadium, the palace to do more to promote some sort of security so there is some sort of safety barrier between fans and players for -- to prevent something like this from happening?
TOOBIN: Well, that's certainly an issue. And -- and for some of the charges that as we were watching the video, you could see that there were arguable defenses out there.
There is the defense that, "Well, I was just trying to break it up," or "I was pulling away." Or "if I wasn't" -- it's interesting to remember that self-defense and defense of others is -- is a legitimate defense.
So some of these people may say, "Well, I wasn't trying to protect myself. I was trying to protect other people." Those are the kind of things that would be raised in the unlikely event this goes to trial.
But keep in mind, Fred, I think you started to hint at this when you talked about the responsibility of the security guards and the police. The criminal portion of this is just chapter one.
WHITFIELD: Yes.
TOOBIN: There will be civil suits. And the people who were hit, particularly the people in the audience and especially (NO AUDIO) they will have lawyers who will soon everyone under the son. They'll sue the Pistons and the management of the stadium. They'll sue the security guards. They may well sue the police for failing to create a -- an environment that was safe enough.
WHITFIELD: All right. So this perhaps just might be the beginning again. All right. Jeffrey Toobin, thanks so much.
TOOBIN: OK, Fred.
WHITFIELD: Kyra.
PHILLIPS: Straight ahead, to prevent a flu epidemic in the United States, you need to give shots to people in China, according to an expert on outbreaks. We'll go in depth with her on bird flu and what you need to know.
Also ahead, losing the loot. A police chase caught on camera. We'll show you if the toss technique worked.
And later on LIVE FROM, doing time to daytime TV. Martha Stewart may have a new job waiting for her when she gets out of prison.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
WHITFIELD: Back now to Kuwait where Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld may have wished he had put on a flak jacket before his visit with battle weary U.S. Troops. Pay problems, stop-loss distress and lack of armor gave the G.I.'s plenty of ammunition when the boss opened the floor to questions.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Our soldiers have been fighting in Iraq for coming up on three years. A lot of us are getting ready to move north relatively soon. Our vehicles are not armored.
We're digging pieces of rusted scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass that's already been shot up, dropped, busted, picking the best out of this scrap to put onto our vehicles to take into combat. We do not have proper armament vehicles to carry with us north.
DONALD RUMSFELD, SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: As you know, you go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time. Since the Iraq conflict began, the Army has been pressing ahead to produce the armor necessary at a rate that they believe -- it's a greatly expanded rate from what existed previously, but a rate that they believe is the rate that is all that can be accomplished at this moment.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What is the Department of Defense, more specifically, the Army side of the house, doing to adjust shortages and antiquated equipment that National Guard soldiers, such as the 116th Cav Brigade, the 278th ACR, are going to roll into Iraq with?
RUMSFELD: The -- now settle down. Settle down. I'm an old man and it's nearly the morning. I'm just gathering my thoughts here.
In any organization, you're going to have equipment and materials and spare parts of different ages. And -- and I am told, and no way I can prove it, but I'm told that the Army is breaking its neck to see that there is not a differentiation as to who gets what aged materials in the military, in the Army, as between the active forces, the Guard and the Reserve.
I'm told that they are, instead, trying to see that the equipment goes to those that are in the most need and who are most likely to be using it, the equipment.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: My husband and myself both joined a volunteer Army. Currently, I'm serving under the stop-loss program. I would like to know how much longer do you foresee the military using this program?
RUMSFELD: Stop-loss has been used by the military for years and years and years. It's all well understood when someone volunteers to join the service. It is that something you prefer not to have to use, obviously, in a perfect world. But if you think about it, the whole principle of stop-loss is based on unit cohesion. And -- and the principle is that in the event that there's a -- a -- something that requires a unit to be involved, and people are in a personal situation where their time was ending, they'd put a stop-loss on it so that the cohesion can be maintained.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
WHITFIELD: Within the past hour, the Pentagon press corps took up where the soldiers in Kuwait left off.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
LAWRENCE DIRITA, PENTAGON SPOKESMAN: What the policy is, and I spoke to the officer in Kuwait responsible for ensuring that units in and out of the theater are -- are equipped as appropriate, the policy is that -- that units that are going into Iraq, if they're going to drive their vehicles into Iraq, they drive in armored vehicles.
If their vehicles aren't armored, the policy is that they are convoyed on other vehicles. They are put on the back of trucks. And they're used for operations around the base. In other words, not -- not moving around the city where there may be more of a danger to IEDs.
That being said, the IED threat is a real threat. It's one in which we're spending an enormous amount of time and energy to try to understand better and develop counter measures to.
You know, there are other things than IEDs. There are mortars, and there are other things that might be a danger. And mortars can certainly come into a base, a base camp, in which an unarmored vehicle could be destroyed.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIPS: Switching gears now and talking health news, researchers say about 60 percent of the genes in a chicken have close cousins, if you will, in your own DNA, the building blocks of life.
Findings are in the journal "Nature."
Researchers say the decoded chicken genome might help scientists better understand the human version. And also bird flu, a viral disease found in chickens. Some fear that bird flu might set up off a worldwide outbreak of human flu.
Well, Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson also is worried about the threat of bird flu.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TOMMY THOMPSON, HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES SECRETARY: There has been 40 individuals that have come down with avian flu, and 30 have died. That is huge lethality. No other -- no other disease has had that kind of lethality before. And we do not have a vaccine. This is a really huge bomb out there that could adversely impact on the health care of the world.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIPS: A huge bomb that could be triggered from anywhere in the world: from overflowing sewage in Cairo or a war zone in Rwanda, even an energy efficient office building in California or a pig farm in China.
Being prepared demands understanding. And the Centers for Disease Control reports that in the flu outbreak from 1918 to 1919, the flu virus killed 500,000 Americans. Could the flu be that devastating again?
Laurie Garrett is the author of "The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance." She joins us live from New York.
Laurie, good to see you.
LAURIE GARRETT, AUTHOR, "THE COMING PLAGUE": Good. Thank you.
PHILLIPS: Well, you briefed the national Security Council on this issue, and you say that this concern over the flu is missing the point. What do you mean?
GARRETT: Well, we've never been able to make sufficient vaccine to vaccinate all the people who need it in the United States, for that matter in the world. At best, we make 260 million doses a year, when everything goes right. That certainly isn't adequate if we had a pandemic that would afflict roughly six billion people on planet Earth.
PHILLIPS: All right. So you talk about two main issues here: improving the vaccine output and attacking flu at its source. Let's start with attacking flu at its source. You say, hey, it all comes down to China.
GARRETT: Absolutely. Influenza is a bird flu disease, mostly seen in aquatic migratory birds that go along the path from southern Asia up into the interior of China.
Most of those animals no longer have natural ecologies they can stop in where they can get water and food, because China has so devastated its environment. And so they stop on chicken farms. They stop on pig farms, wherever, and they poach food away from the domestic livestock.
When they do so, they pass their virus on to the domesticated livestock. And then we see the virus undergo some mutation when it gets into such animals as chickens and pigs in these livestock settings. That makes the virus a little closer to being a humanly infectious virus.
Each round of passage through another species takes it up a notch, and it's always arising out of southern China and its immediate neighbor areas. PHILLIPS: So interesting. Is it -- so attacking the problem, if you want to get down to it, is it telling those folks in southern China, "Hey, look, you've got to be better environmentalists," and letting the wild have its own environment, versus having these chicken farms or pig farms?
Because it sounds like anybody that walks through these farms becomes infected. And then it's like a domino effect, and it starts spreading throughout the world.
GARRETT: Well, there's a few bits and pieces in which you said. The first is, yes, China needs to take its ecology seriously, and it has to improve its flyways for migratory birds.
But also, China is the fastest growing GDP, or gross domestic product, in the world. It's a booming economy, and many of its neighbor states are also booming. What that means is that the Chinese people are eating chicken now on a routine basis, whereas not long ago, a decade ago, a chicken might have been a coveted precious meal that was rarely affordable. And so chicken production is skyrocketing as we speak.
Add to that, those who were even a little wealthier are now eating more pork, the preferred meat in China and in Chinese culture. And that consumption level is also skyrocketing.
And all these animals are being raised in really substandard conditions, totally non-hygienic. And, worse yet, it is culturally the norm in that region that animals are sold live in live marketplaces, not as slaughtered meat in packages in supermarkets. And so you have a huge number of people exposed to a potentially flu- carrying animal.
PHILLIPS: All right. And then part two, improving the vaccine output. We've seen the shortage. Is it -- is it possible to fix that?
GARRETT: Not on the scale that we need. We will never be able to make sufficient vaccine, because you have to make it on sterile chicken eggs. Or the eggs are not sterile, but the environment the eggs are stored in has to be sterile.
And so there's only so many chicken eggs, and there's only so many places in the world that have the capacity to grow virus on these eggs in conditions where you don't get cross-contamination with anything else. It's very tough.
PHILLIPS: Laurie Garrett, she's the author of "The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance." Fascinating research. Doesn't surprise me you're Pulitzer Prize winner.
Thank you so much, Laurie.
GARRETT: Thank you.
WHITFIELD: Well, a big announcement about Martha Stewart is expected next hour.
Plus, a dog fight under way in Canada. Are pit bulls suitable pets?
And next hour, Wolf Blitzer joins us with his one-on-one interview with the interim president of Iraq.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
WHITFIELD: Well, you might think a job where you can take it easy would be the best line of work.
PHILLIPS: But a new survey suggests otherwise. Rhonda Schaffler joins us live from the New York Stock Exchange for that interesting report -- Rhonda.
(STOCK REPORT)
WHITFIELD: Thanks a lot, Rhonda.
PHILLIPS: All right. Check your calendar. December means you're going to be hammered with those inescapable lists of the top whatever of 2004. And here at LIVE FROM we're very proud to get it started for you.
WHITFIELD: All right. Well, you frequent web surfers out there and e-mailers will experience some deja vu here. It's CNN.com's top 10 e-mailed news stories of the year. Here they come from the top.
No. 10, woman finds fingertip in salad. Eww. Yuck. It was not a crouton, people
PHILLIPS: No. 9, study finds dogs understand language.
WHITFIELD: Eight, Canadians open arms to Americans.
PHILLIPS: No. 7, dog saves woman's life by calling 911. Still prefers to drink out of the toilet, though.
Six, wedding guests eat victim.
Five, frequent sex cuts cancer risk. Related story, new pickup line fails in every state.
WHITFIELD: And No. 4, pup shoots man, saves littermates.
And No. 3, swimmer drives with shark latched onto the leg.
And No. 2, Barbie and ken call it Splitsville. Malibu Dreamhouse at center of legal fight, apparently.
PHILLIPS: And the No. 1 story, e-mailed the most by you, the CNN.com user, bear guzzles 36 cans of beer...
WHITFIELD: On the wall. PHILLIPS: ... passes out at a campground before he can call his old girlfriends. Well, it happened in Seattle, caught on camper cam. A little early hibernation, I guess.
WHITFIELD: He slept really good for that winter.
PHILLIPS: No hangover.
WHITFIELD: All right. Well, get ready for more Martha Stewart television.
PHILLIPS: We're standing by for an announcement this hour. Don't go away. Live pictures from the scene.
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