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McCloy Improving; Black Market Breast Milk; Debutante Murder Is Shocking; Massachusetts Boy On Crusade For Equality
Aired January 27, 2006 - 15:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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BETTY NGUYEN, CNN ANCHOR: I want to get straight to Tony Harris in the CNN news room, working on a developing story. Yet another fire, Tony.
TONY HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: Another fire. First earlier today it was midtown Atlanta. That situation has been quieted, but now we want to show you some pictures from just a short time ago, Betty.
To Edison, New Jersey -- let's take you there -- where a brush fire has been burning for about an hour now in a marshy area very near the Raritan River, kind of adjacent to it. No reports of injury. A local fire department is working, we understand, with the New Jersey Division of Forestry to coordinate a water drop and finish this off and to put it out.
But -- some black smoke there, but -- and more recent pictures a lot of white smoke which is always a good sign, Betty, because that means the firefighters are gaining an upper hand on the thing. News 12 New Jersey with the pictures. We'll keep an eye on it. More to come.
NGUYEN: Thank you, Tony.
HARRIS: Sure.
NGUYEN: Definitely improving -- that is the word on Randal McCloy on his first full day in a long-term rehabilitation center in Morgantown, West Virginia. Doctors say it will still take time to know whether the only survivor of the Sago Mine explosion suffered brain damage from all that carbon monoxide, but they are encouraged by the way he's responded so far.
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DR. LARRY ROBERTS, W.VA. UNIV. MEDICAL CENTER: Randy is awake. He responds to his environment. He, yesterday in physical therapy with a great deal of assistance, was actually able to stand for the first time in three weeks. I will acknowledge he required a great deal of support to do that.
When offered food, he can actually take food and chew it and swallow. He has some purposeful movements and he responds to his wife especially well, but to others additionally.
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NGUYEN: Well, you may recall McCloy was trapped underground for more than 40 hours. Twelve other miners were killed.
Baby Noor is back out of the hospital. The Iraqi infant being treated in Atlanta for spina bifida was released in good condition yesterday, doctors saying her recovery is still going well.
She had surgery January 9th, but returned to the hospital nine days ago with swelling in her back. Doctors say it appears to have been from tissue fluid not spinal fluid, which could have been life- threatening. She will have another check-up on Tuesday.
Imagine you're a new mother determined, even desperate, to give your child the best, especially the best nutrition. If you couldn't provide your own, would you ever consider black market breast milk?
CNN's Elizabeth Cohen discovered such a thing. It does exist and it abounds with risks and rewards.
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ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Someone once paid this woman $300 for a bottle of her breast milk, and that was just one offer.
(on camera): How much money would you say you made from your breast milk?
JACQUELINE GIANNONE, SOLD BREAST MILK: Probably $1,000, enough to buy all the baby furniture.
COHEN (voice-over): Breast milk, the stuff of life, that bond between mother and child, has become a commodity on a mother's milk black market, to be sold and shared, not one mom for one baby, but, sometimes, as many as 20 mothers for one baby.
Meet some of the women who are redefining the world of breast- feeding: Jenn, whose son nursed at the breast of four different women; Kelly (ph), who recruited 20 women to give breast milk to her baby; and Cathy, whose little girl has drunk the milk of six different moms, including one who shipped it in from nearly 1,000 miles away.
It is called milk sharing. And, in this world, Jenn Connel is known as a founding mother, of sorts.
JENN CONNEL, FEEDMYBABY.COM: Children that are breast-fed are healthier, are smarter, have less ear infections, have less problems with gastrointestinal problems, less problems with allergies. Why wouldn't I want to breast-feed my child?
COHEN: But Jenn couldn't. She lost both her breasts to cancer three years ago.
CONNEL: And that was most difficult part about my surgery, was not really losing the breasts. It was losing the ability to feed. COHEN: So, when Jenn gave birth to her son Grayson a year later, she started this Web site, feedmybaby.com, explaining her plight. The responses poured in. In all, 35 women donated milk to her sons.
CONNEL: I had three moms that came over one day. And we were just hanging out, and all three of them breast-fed Preston. And I don't even know why this makes me so sad, but it is just something that I couldn't do. It was so beautiful.
COHEN: Beautiful perhaps, but also dangerous, according to some doctors.
DR. LAWRENCE M. GARTNER, AMERICAN ACADEMY OF PEDIATRICS: There is a real risk involved when somebody simply takes milk from another mother. The biggest risk is for HIV, the viruses and the bacteria that may get into the milk.
COHEN: The American Academy of Pediatrics says mothers who can't breast-feed should use milk banks, where mothers like Mary Anna Goran (ph) donate milk that has been tested, pasteurized, and sold for $3 to $4 an ounce. The pediatricians strongly discourage unsupervised milk sharing.
CONNEL: Any doctor that would say that I'm being dangerous with my children or that formula is safer than breast milk, I would say you're insane.
COHEN: Jenn says she was smart. She asked her donors for proof they tested negative for HIV and other diseases. Still, experts say, what if a milk donor tested negative and then contracted the disease after the fact?
GARTNER: Any one of them, if they were infected, could give the infection to the infant.
COHEN: But women who take milk from others say they get to know their donors.
Kelly Faulkner (ph), who is raising her son Loren (ph) on donated milk, didn't just screen her 20 donors. She got to know the ones who live nearby, like Kim (ph) and Lauren (ph). And she talks on the phone to Lilly (ph) and other donors who live far away. The women try to build a community, a throwback to the days when women nursed each other's children or even hired wet nurses.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Can I get a hug?
COHEN (on camera): But how can you really know 30 different women?
CONNEL: I can't. How I can know 30 different cows?
COHEN: Jacquie (ph) Gilstrap had so much extra milk for her daughter Holly (ph), she and her husband, Jason, went on the Internet trying to sell it. JASON GILSTRAP, WIFE SOLD BREAST MILK: When I first typed in "breast milk for sale" or "selling breast milk," it was literally thousands of, you know, hits for that.
COHEN: We found trails of moms selling, sharing, swapping on craigslist, the La Leche League bulletin board, mom chat groups, dad chat groups, sex sites and parent blogs.
The Gilstraps sold a few bottles for $50 each. Then interest began to wane. Then they saw an e-mail from Cathy Lundgren, who was looking for breast milk from her baby, adopted from Guatemala.
CATHY LUNDGREN, USED DONATED BREAST MILK: Hi, pretty girl.
COHEN: Profit turned to charity. Jacquie and others stepped up.
(on camera): Six different women gave your baby breast milk. How did you know that they were all healthy?
CATHY LUNDGREN, USED DONATED BREAST MILK: That's just a risk that I was willing to take because I know -- I felt the benefits of the milk far outweigh the risks.
COHEN: A risk to get baby Hannah (ph) what Cathy can't provide, milk from a mother. Elizabeth Cohen, CNN, Lakeville, Minnesota.
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NGUYEN: On a related note. How is that biological clock? Scientists in Britain say they can help women learn whether there's is still ticking. The Plan Ahead test, as it's called, is supposed to be measured -- or is supposed to measure, that is -- the number of egg in a woman's ovaries and project what the number might be in two years.
That would help women decide how long they can put off trying to conceive. Right now it's only available in Britain at a cost amounting to $320. Critics point out there are lots of hard to quantify factors involved in fertility. Interesting nonetheless.
Well she was a debutante one minute, dancing with her father; the next, the subject of a mystery that has shocked Savannah, Georgia. We'll bring it to you when LIVE FROM returns.
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NGUYEN: Savannah, Georgia, is famous for its tree-lined squares, majestic mansions and Southern hospitality. It's not exactly a stranger to sensational crime. Remember "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil"? But now it's reeling again. This time a beautiful young woman, a debutante, murdered.
CNN's Candy Crowley has the mystery.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) CANDY CROWLEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): This part of town is a time capsule, a series of squares tended by live oaks laden with Spanish moss, streets lined with million dollar homes of the old South. It is the sort of place where dances are still called cotillions, where girls can be debutantes.
Nineteen-year-old Jennifer Ross and her friends left a cotillion at 3:00 a.m., Christmas Eve, headed for a friend's house. They crossed through Orleans Square in the heart in the heart of historic Savannah. That's where the muggers were.
OTIS JOHNSON, MAYOR (D), SAVANNAH: It was reported that the perpetrators were black, and these were the sons and daughters of prominent citizens in our community. So that created a firestorm which we are now getting over.
CROWLEY: Jennifer died from a single gunshot wound a week after the assault. She was the daughter of a prominent Savannah doctor and his wife.
David Simons is a family friend.
DAVID SIMONS, POLITICAL CONSULTANT: For many of us, we never get to see the crime on a daily basis. And all of a sudden, there it was for us, unfortunately in the white population and the upper end population. Now we could put a face with crime.
CROWLEY: At the family's request, Simon sent out an e-mail to galvanize the business community for an anti-crime effort. In the historic, mostly white, mostly affluent area of Savannah, people like Elizabeth Patterson heard the call.
ELIZABETH PATTERSON, DOWNTOWN BUSINESS ASSN. PRES.: Well, the business people that are friends of Jennifer's dad and her mother and Jennifer, herself, feel like they just have to do something so that her young life doesn't seem to have been wasted.
CROWLEY: In the mostly African-American, mostly poor neighborhoods and housing projects flanking the downtown area, the call to action hit a different nerve.
BENNIE MITCHELL, REVEREND, CONNORS TEMPLE BAPTIST CHURCH: Black life has always been cheap. So at this particular time, it's the same thing. It's young, white family, white girl and one who's a respected family that's in town. That's when everybody gets upset.
CROWLEY: Inside a city that trades on the charm of its Southern past, a racial fault line cracked open.
MICHAEL PORTER, COLUMNIST: I believe that communities that are very entrenched in the antebellum type of a spirit can sometimes take on an antebellum type of attitude.
CROWLEY: Savannah's population is 57 percent black, 39 percent white; and most of its crime is black on black. SIMONS: We apologize. We were wrong. We were late getting to the table. We're here now. What can we do to help? That hasn't met the type of acceptance that we had expected it would.
CROWLEY: A family tragedy became a town's ugly, and Savannah became a town that couldn't talk to itself. On crime, Simons told a newspaper, "We don't really care if a couple of crackheads want to shoot each other." The mayor called it racist. Simons says it wasn't.
SIMONS: If you would want to get engaged in drug activity, whether you're black or white, we don't care. We just prefer you get off the street, whether you go by hearse or by police vehicle.
CROWLEY: And when black leaders called for vocational courses and job opportunities...
JOHNSON: So if you are poor, unemployed, a high school dropout and cannot find a job, then you may be tempted to look at the affluent in the middle of the city and say, well, you know, those folks have money, I don't have any, maybe I need to go and mug somebody.
CROWLEY: Some in the white community hear excuses. His honor says it's not.
JOHNSON: That's not an excuse and it will never be an acceptable excuse.
CROWLEY: Savannah is looking for even keel, there are additional cops on the street and the push is on for more. The mayor's six month old anti-crime study, including anti-poverty plans, is getting another look.
Jennifer Ross' murderers are still at large.
Candy Crowley, CNN, Savannah.
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NGUYEN: In other news, cell phones can do almost anything. They can take pictures, play games, send e-mail, even make a phone call. So the Mobile Adult Content Congress was probably inevitable. The group met this week in Miami as dirty dialing, cell phone porn, just starts to get off the ground in America. It's huge in Europe and Asia.
So-called mobile sex content generated $1.2 billion last year worldwide. Only $30 million of that was in the U.S., but insiders think the U.S. figure could reach some $400 million by the end of the decade. So far, most of the big U.S. cell phone companies have shied away from X-rated content.
Well, sometimes carrying a business card is not good for business. Nope. An alleged crack cocaine dealer in Leavenworth, Kansas, was passing out cards showing a boxing glove hitting an alarm clock with a slogan "For a quick hit on time, call boss." Well, police got ahold of the card, called the number, set up a buy, and the 21-year-old entrepreneur was charged with possession with intent to sell.
Up next, the latest skirmish in the high school gender war. But this time it's a boy who says he's being discriminated against. We'll tell you how when LIVE FROM returns.
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NGUYEN: A high school student in Massachusetts is on a crusade for classroom equality. He claims the academic deck is stacked against him and other boys, and he wants the school district to reshuffle.
CNN's Dan Lothian reports.
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DAN LOTHIAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): Seventeen-year-old Doug Anglin is a senior at Milton High School near Boston where the 1,000 plus student body is almost evenly split by gender. But Anglin claims the treatment is anything but equal.
DOUG ANGLIN, HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT: I think the Milton High School system is designed to the disadvantage of males. The teachers assume that they're lazy and that they have bad work habits.
LOTHIAN: He argues that makes it easier for girls to succeed academically. So the B student, who plays soccer and baseball, has filed a federal civil rights complaint with the U.S. Department of Education. But school principal John Drottar says gender never impacts the way students are treated.
DR JOHN DROTTAR, HIGH SCHOOL PRINCIPAL: We don't discriminate. We want to have every student given the equal opportunity to be as successful as they can be.
LOTHIAN: He admits that girls do outnumber boys on the honor roll and in advanced placement classes, but says that's part of a bigger issue educators nationwide are grappling with.
DROTTAR: It's part of, you know, many studies that will tell you and discuss and try to delineate where the differences are.
LOTHIAN: Studies show boys are increasingly falling behind girls and that they differ in their learning styles and behavior in the classroom.
Harvard Medical Schools's Dr. William Pollack, author of this book on the subject, says differences need to be addressed in order for boys to catch up to girls.
DR. WILLIAM POLLACK, HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL: But we're not taking the data we have and acting on it and creating curricula, new reading environments, new learning environments that boys will run to. LOTHIAN: As for Anglin's complaint, which was filed with the help of his attorney father, the Department of Education says it is still under evaluation to determine if it is appropriate for an investigation. Milton's principal says this controversy provides educators with a great opportunity.
DROTTAR: To recommit to helping everybody do the best they can.
LOTHIAN: Dan Lothian, CNN, Milton, Massachusetts.
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NGUYEN: Time now to check in with CNN's Wolf Blitzer. He is standing by in Washington to tell us what's coming up at the top of the hour in "THE SITUATION ROOM." Hi, Wolf.
WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Hi, Betty, thanks very much. Lots of news going on, including a Supreme battle. John Kerry and Hillary Clinton now say they'll both filibuster Samuel Alito. Is all this, though, just posturing for 2008?
Middle East democracy, a double-edged sword. Will President Bush punish the Palestinians for electing Hamas?
And Ford puts the squeeze on their own employees. Find out how they're punishing employees who don't drive company cars. Is this fair? Our Velshi has "The Bottom Line."
And Michelle Kwan, should she be allowed on the Olympic team even though she missed the main competition? We're watching for the decision coming out of Los Angeles shortly.
All that coming up right here in "THE SITUATION ROOM."
NGUYEN: A lot of people have opinions on that either way it goes. So it will be interesting to see. Thank you, Wolf.
Financial aid to find a bride. It's happening in one part of the world. We have that story next.
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NGUYEN: Romance can be tough anywhere, but men in one part of the world are so lonely they're getting government aid to find mates. A rural province in South Korea will help farmers pay for mail-order brides. This is no joke. Local women, it seems, aren't keen on the area, so the farmers have been looking elsewhere in Asia. But they'd better act fast. Unlike true love, the government support, it won't last forever.
Well, this story now comes with an adults only warning only. If you're a panda, that is. A couple in a Thailand zoo seem to need a little help in making a love connection. It looks as if they had a little something going on last week, but nothing came of it. So the zoo's administrator is going to plan B or should we say plan XXX? Panda porno, in hopes that the explicit examples might encourage the lagging lovebirds. You can use your imagination for the rest, folks.
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