New Breakthrough May Cure Cancer
BALDWIN: A possible extraordinary breakthrough on the fight against cancer. Scientists may have figured out a way to take your own cells and turn them into serial killers on diseases like leukemia. This discovery could change everything. Our senior medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen is here to explain how this works. This has the potential of being just tremendous. Explain this.</s>ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: OK, so there were three people who had cancer, Brooke. They had leukemia, a particular type of Leukemia. And they were almost at the end of the road. They had cancer. They got treated. They went into remission, and then it came back. And there wasn't a whole lot that they could do. Doctors said, you know what, let's take their t-cells, which is the body's natural sort of fighter cells and let's ramp it up or amp it up, I guess I should say, and turn them into assassins. So imagine if you give those cells guns that they can go and shoot the cancer cells. That's basically what they did.</s>BALDWIN: Shoot those cancer cells.</s>COHEN: Shoot those cancer cells, and quickly within just a couple of weeks two out of the three patients went into a total remission.</s>BALDWIN: Wow!</s>COHEN: And one of them went into basically a partial remission.</s>BALDWIN: Are they cured?</s>COHEN: You know, I never like to use what our medical journalists call the "c" word, because you don't know. These people have had cancer go and come back before. And that could happen again. That's a possibility. It's only been 10 months to year. I would hate to use the "cure" word.</s>BALDWIN: Could this, because there's so many people out there who doesn't know someone who suffers from leukemia. Could this work with other people?</s>COHEN: You know, it is possible, and so they are going to start studying it at some point in other patients with cancer. It could be work for leukemia. It could work for other patients as well. There is a bit of a danger here. These patients did get a little bit sick. I mean, nothing horrifically horrible, but they had fevers and diarrhea. And it could have been a threat to their life, but they caught it quickly. So you want to make sure when you're doing a treatment like this that you're doing more good than harm. So you want to proceed carefully because this is new, and you don't want to just all of a sudden give it to everybody. You want to give it to people who don't have a whole lot of other options.</s>BALDWIN: The other part is they used a modified version of HIV to alter the t-cells.</s>COHEN: Right. It sounds crazy. You've got someone already sick and you're going to give them an HIV cell.</s>BALDWIN: That's what they did?</s>COHEN: Well, they modified it. So they took this HIV cell. They stripped it of all of its sort of toxic and harmful properties, and then used it as part of the genetic manipulation. So it was just kind of like a part of the machine that made this whole thing happen, but they made it so that it was harmless</s>BALDWIN: I know we don't want to use the "c" cure word, but this is encouraging.</s>COHEN: It's very encouraging, and it's something that they will look into further. So I'm going to be kind of the -- I don't mean to be the "e" word here. It is encouraging. They're going to look into it further. But you and I might be sitting here a year from now saying, god forbid, it didn't turn out that well. Those three patients have gotten cancer again. That's a possibility.</s>BALDWIN: I definitely want to follow through.</s>COHEN: Cross your fingers that this really does work.</s>BALDWIN: OK, Elizabeth Cohen, thanks.</s>COHEN: Thanks.</s>BALDWIN: And now this.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do you realize that you're biting the hand that feeds you? And I said, yes, but I also realize it's the hand that's killing me.</s>BALDWIN: Mountaintop coal mining, it is the primary economic engine for southern West Virginia, at least coal mining overall is. It's a "living hell," though, as one worker calls it, and another calls it a much-needed job. But at least one researcher calls it the state's biggest public health problem. Soledad O'Brien, she's going join me here live in a moment. She's going to take us inside this battle. Her exclusive report is next.