ROSE-SHOW-01
with Matthew Heineman - Part 2>
1
Milken, Matthew Heineman>
race for both Republicans and the Democrats. Michael Milken is one of the
biggest medical philanthropists in our country, he is chairman of the
Milken Institute a nonprofit think tank that focuses on some of society`s
most urgent causes such as medical research and public health; the senate
is scheduled to evaluate the 21st Century Cures Bill, the legislation would
accelerate regulators` review of new medical treatments and boost funding
for the National Institutes of Health by nearly $9 billion over five years.
The drug war in Mexico continues to claim lives as it shows no signs of
abating, a recent study showed that male life expectancy rates have dropped
by an average of seven months throughout the country; more than 100,000
died in the drug war over the past decade, a new documentary shows the
struggle to end the violence.>
Health and Medicine; Technology; Crime; Drugs; Government>
I am pleased to have Michael Milken back at this table. Welcome.
MICHAEL MILKEN: Charlie, it`s great to be back with you.
CHARLIE ROSE: Tell me this -- where are we? I want to talk about public health. And I also want to talk about where we are in terms of -- for the lack of a better phrase -- combating major illness in 2016.
MICHAEL MILKEN: Well, you`ve had a front row seat in the last 20-some-odd years as to these amazing developments and promise that`s occurred, and if you remember, we had the March in `98 with the help of thousands and President Clinton signing into the law a doubling of the NIH budget, tripling of the National Cancer Institute budget. And this enormous investment we`ve made is paying off and we`re seeing the benefits today.
And there`s been many heroes along the way. One of them was Elizabeth Glaser who founded Elizabeth Glazer Pediatric AIDS Foundation.
CHARLIE ROSE: Wife of the actor Paul Glaser.
MICHAEL MILKEN: An unbelievably brave woman. She got HIV/AIDS from a transfusion -- her daughter, her son. She passed away. Her daughter has passed away. Her son lives today. But the legacy today, a woman has a 2 percent chance of passing AIDS on to her child due to modern science versus over 90, and it`s changed the world. Two-thirds of everyone living with AIDS in the world live in sub-Saharan Africa, and we`re going to see life expectancy in sub-Saharan Africa potentially double in one generation. So it`s an amazing thing to see.
CHARLIE ROSE: Because of the development of --
MICHAEL MILKEN: Treating AIDS, not passing on to your children, dealing with many of the other diseases which the Gates Foundation has taken the lead on. You know, median age in Uganda is 15. Median age for all sub- Saharan Africa is 19.
And so many of these diseases by applying treatments, public health, diseases we now have solutions for they will be able to deal with many other challenges of life but not what has been killing them for the last century, particularly, and hopefully they will have good governments.
CHARLIE ROSE: I just realized that over this week because of things we were doing because of what`s happening today is that the mosquito is the most heinous, disease-causing species on the planet.
MICHAEL MILKEN: Well, it`s passing on disease.
CHARLIE ROSE: Right.
MICHAEL MILKEN: But modern science and technology -- and it`s an issue of what we`re going to do -- you can develop ways that a mosquito cannot breed, cannot reproduce. So the question is, if you eliminate the mosquitoes, what else have you done?
CHARLIE ROSE: What`s the damage?
MICHAEL MILKEN: Yes, what other roles have they played in life. So we need to make sure we`ve figured out, when you eliminate what they`re doing negatively, is there anything they have been doing positively.
But, obviously, the questions surrounding a virus in South America, central America and what`s going to occur here surrounds with mosquitoes today.
But there is two forms -- there is do we know how to stop a disease, known solutions today, and much of what has occurred in Africa and South Asia has been applying things we know -- polio vaccine, et cetera.
The other element is there are thousands of diseases we don`t know the solution for today, but we are on the doorstep, on the doorstep today of bringing those under control.
So, if you remember, the first sequencing of the human genome took 13 years, Dr. Collins, and cost over $3 billion. Some young --
CHARLIE ROSE: Dr. Collins, now president of the National Institutes of Health.
MICHAEL MILKEN: Correct. And some young PhD sequenced the genome in 7.3 seconds in the fourth quarter of last year down in Georgia Tech.
CHARLIE ROSE: 7.3 -- so, therefore, the sequencing of the human genome is all of a sudden becoming affordable and fast?
MICHAEL MILKEN: My guess, within a year or two, you won`t be treated for many life-threatening diseases until you`re sequenced. And I believe in the next 12 months we will discover, which we already know from our scientists, that you don`t have breast cancer, you have a mutation. You don`t have prostate cancer, you have one of 28 types of mutations.
We now know that, for maybe as many as 70 percent of ovarian cancers, that they have similar mutations to a form of prostate cancer and there`s been an effective drug for that form of prostate cancer that women who have ovarian cancer some time this year will be taking. And we also know now that those with the BRCA 1 or BRCA 2 gene, the highest risk for breast cancer, that mutation they have also matched against a form of prostate cancer.
So we will be treating you for your disease, not the location of the disease. And I think many of our doctor scientists will relearn treatment because we will be able to sequence you and tell what is your disease not where your disease is located.
CHARLIE ROSE: And we`ll know your genetic makeup.
MICHAEL MILKEN: And you`ll know your disease`s genetic makeup. And so it`s going to change the way we treat people. And one of the greatest advances we`ve had has been the reopening of phase 2 failed clinical trials where only 4 percent or 3 percent or as many as little as 1 percent of people had a positive outcome. Well, those drugs were never approved or those treatments because we didn`t know who they would work on.
Now when you reopen them and you sequence them and you found, in the case of cystic fibrosis, with Kalydeco, that if you had this mutation, this pill works for you. It won`t work for anyone else. So you now know with a high degree of accuracy that you can approve things that maybe only 1 percent of the population has a positive response for because you know that it will work.
And that is why, today, we are so optimistic about death rates dropping for melanoma or prostate cancer or other forms of cancer or other forms of life-threatening diseases.
CHARLIE ROSE: OK. Tell us in terms of combating cancer -- immunotherapy.
MICHAEL MILKEN: It`s hard not to be unbelievably excited about it today. And there is a theory I first engaged with in `95, `96, with a man named Jim Allison who was at Berkeley.
CHARLIE ROSE: Yes, I know. I`d interviewed him. He`s a wonderful man.
MICHAEL MILKEN: And Jim was at Berkeley and his funding was running out. And his concept was when he spoke to me for the first time, that you know, our immune system is smarter than any disease and smarter than any drugs we`ve created. It`s been doing a fantastic job almost our whole life. And somehow, it`s missed this mutation or this disease. If we could energize our immune system or train it to kill that disease or make that disease look like the measles or some other disease, wouldn`t it be great some day if we substantially had a reduction in surgery, radiation, chemotherapy, and we just energized our immune system or trained --
CHARLIE ROSE: Using our own body.
MICHAEL MILKEN: Right.
CHARLIE ROSE: OK. So in that whole context, that`s all having to do with what`s going on with genes and what we know about genes and how we`re understanding how to use our own genes.
MICHAEL MILKEN: Well, I would say one other thing. Understanding our genes, understanding our disease, understanding our biome, is more the second area -- let`s call it precision medicine.
CHARLIE ROSE: Exactly.
MICHAEL MILKEN: So we`re going to define who you are at a molecular level and what your issue is, and then we`re going to precisely deliver something. Immunology is we`re going to energize your immune system to deal with your disease. The third area is what`s happening in stem cells.
CHARLIE ROSE: Right.
MICHAEL MILKEN: Those three will revolutionize the way we`re treated --
CHARLIE ROSE: So what`s your role in all this? I mean you launched something called Faster Cures. What`s that?
MICHAEL MILKEN: Many years ago we launched, as you know Charlie, something called CAP Cure, the CA stood for all forms of cancer, P prostate, cure all life-threatening diseases. After the government increased in funding between `98 and `04, we separated into three groups. Faster Cures which longer name is the center for Accelerating Medical Solutions, essentially what can we bring to bear to accelerate solutions for life-threatening diseases.
It involves the building of disease-specific research organizations, the strengthening of those groups, the training of those groups. It involves a lot of education and Congress and government. It involves convening of our leaders to solve a problem and try to get -- if you`re going to look at a problem, let`s get academics there, let`s get disease groups there, let`s get pharmaceutical companies, bio, find investors.
CHARLIE ROSE: Industry, government --
MICHAEL MILKEN: Everybody.
CHARLIE ROSE: -- academics, philanthropists, foundations --
MICHAEL MILKEN: And we have a conference every year here in New York called Party (ph) for Cures where everyone comes together to see what role we can play to accelerate. One of our major efforts was to educate and show the importance of getting the government to approve the National Center for Advancing Translational Science. And that was approved. It got through the Senate with the leadership of Harry Reid, and through the House, at the time with the leadership of Eric Cantor, and was signed by the President.
CHARLIE ROSE: Right.
MICHAEL MILKEN: No one took credit for it, and it has a chance to greatly accelerate science. I mean I think there is a promise that this enormous investment by Americans and others around the world is paying off as it meets technology -- computers a millions times faster, data storage costing one billionth of what it cost. And then laying-in, eventually, focused on public health.
So 50 percent of all economic growth in the world has come from public health advances and medical research.
CHARLIE ROSE: Let me close this by talking about this point. We talked about collaboration, talked about the academy and philanthropy and the government and private sector in terms of collaborating in terms of both cures and preventions.
What`s this conference about on March 1 in which you`re bringing all these people together for what purpose?
MICHAEL MILKEN: The purpose is the same coordination that occurred in medical research, we want to see in public health. The 60, 80 of the world`s leading schools of public health, their deans, the people that are training the next public health officials here, their curriculum. Instead of competing with each other, how can they work, how can we create best practices?
Consumer products companies: Unilever, Nestle, Kraft, General Mills, Kellogg`s, Coke, Pepsi. Today the products that they`re making we can sequence your genome. They`re all fully aware of it and we can see what the changes are in your body. Most of the genes in your body are not human, they`re bacteria.
So if I`m a consumer products company and someone said, well, taking this product was doing damage or it was doing good, they say, well, prove it, tell me what`s happening. Because we can sequence your biome, we can start to see the changes in your body in a short period of time just a couple of months from what you`re eating and what you`re drinking so the consumer products companies, the retailers, the products they`re selling, the insurance companies who are insuring your life and your health, the parent companies, the companies you work for, what are they serving in the cafeteria? Not everyone, such as Bloomberg, has healthy vegetables and fruit and everything in the cafeteria.
CHARLIE ROSE: Let me just make this point because I`m out of time. What you`re looking for at this conference and this collaboration is to focus on public health and better approaches to issues like obesity, global health security, ebola and Zika, other threats, antibody resistance, hypertension, infectious and chronic diseases and brain disorders to address those kinds of domestic issues like rural and inner city health care as well as sustainable development efforts emerging -- that sense of the wide compass of public health.
MICHAEL MILKEN: 70 percent of all healthcare expenditures, the largest part of our United States economy, are lifestyle-related -- how you live your life.
CHARLIE ROSE: A1nd this ought not be a partisan issue.
MICHAEL MILKEN: It isn`t and, not only that, we should get collaboration. This isn`t one group against another. As a group, we have enough knowledge now and can prove it due to molecular science and technology that we can help people help themselves.
What`s so amazing is the number one cost of obesity to our country is depression. It`s not diabetes and it`s not cancer, two that have a major effect, but absenteeism, presenteeism, there are so many challenges. We have solutions to obesity and what we need to do is have an approach where everyone is involved in that process.
CHARLIE ROSE: Thank you for coming.
MICHAEL MILKEN: Thank you, Charlie. Great to see you.
CHARLIE ROSE: This is March 1.
MICHAEL MILKEN: March 1 and 2, Washington, D.C.
CHARLIE ROSE: OK.
Back in a moment. Stay with us.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CHARLIE ROSE: The drug war in Mexico continues to claim lives as it shows no signs of abating. A recent study showed that male life expectancy rates have dropped by an average of seven months throughout the country. More than 100,000 died in the drug war over the past decade. A new documentary shows the struggle to end the violence.
Here`s the trailer for "Cartel Land".
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There is an imaginary line out there between right and wrong, good and evil. I believe what I am doing is good and what I am standing up against is evil.
(SPEAKING SPANISH)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It`s the cartels. They`re the ones terrorizing their own country and now they`re starting to do it over here
(SPEAKING SPANISH)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The cartel scouts keep getting away.
(SPEAKING SPANISH)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They`re taking back what is theirs from the cartel. That`s the way it should be done up here, too.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Anybody touches me, drop him.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We`re the lucky ones.
(SPEAKING SPANISH)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CHARLIE ROSE: The film is nominated for an Academy Award for best documentary feature. Matthew Heineman is the director. "The New York Times" said he has guts and nerves of steel.
I am please to have had him at this table for the first time.
How did this come about?
MATTHEW HEINEMAN: I was actually riding the subway in New York and I read a "Rolling Stone" article that featured these vigilantes on the U.S. side of the Mexico border. And it talked about a world I knew nothing about. I knew nothing about the drug war. I knew nothing about the border. And I felt like there had been so much coverage of the drug wars. And media in many ways glorified in TV shows and movies.
And what I really wanted the try to do with "Cartel Land" was to put a human face to the subject and not talk about it from the outside, not talk about through talking heads but talk about it through the eyes of the very people who are affected by this violence.
CHARLIE ROSE: And so, what did you do?
MATTHEW HEINEMAN: So, I first reached out to the journalist who wrote this article. He introduced me to Tim "Nailer" Foley who operates a group called Arizona Border Recon on the Arizona side of the Mexican border. I filmed there for about four months.
And then my father actually sent me an article about the Autodefensas, a group of citizens who were rising up against the Knights Templar Cartel in the Mexican state of Michoacan.
CHARLIE ROSE: One of the smaller cartels.
MATTHEW HEINEMAN: Yes. They`re associated with a larger -- yes.
CHARLIE ROSE: Compared to Sinaloa -- right.
MATTHEW HEINEMAN: And you know, right when I read this article, I knew I wanted to create this parallel portrait of vigilantism on both sides of the border. The next day I was on the phone with El Doctor, a small town physician who is leading this group. And two weeks later I was in Mexico filming. I thought I was going to be there for about one or two weeks. And one or two weeks turned into nine months.
CHARLIE ROSE: And during that nine months you found yourself in the middle of gunfire that you never imagined. And so all you did was keep shooting?
MATTHEW HEINEMAN: Yes, you know, I`m not a war reporter. I`ve never been in any situation like this before. So it was an absolutely terrifying journey. I was in shootouts between the vigilantes and the cartel. I was in meth labs in the dark desert night, places of torture, places I never could have ever imagined ever being in.
CHARLIE ROSE: Places of torture means what?
MATTHEW HEINEMAN: You know, part of what happens in the story is, at first, it seems like the story of good versus evil, of every day citizens rising up against this evil cartel in the face of ineffective government. And over time --
CHARLIE ROSE: That`s the romantic story.
MATTHEW HEINEMAN: That`s the romantic story. That`s what I thought the story was at first. And then over time these lines between good and evil, these lines became quite blurry.
And I think that`s part of the unfortunate tale of what I experienced, at least, was what it originally was this goal to get rid of the Knights Templar Cartel created a vacuum, a power vacuum and within that vacuum somebody needed to fill it. Unfortunately, you know we see by the end of the film, the cycle just repeat itself.
CHARLIE ROSE: How close could you get? Not in terms of seeing the action but knowing and having them trust you so that they are unrestrained, uncensored in what you hear and see?
MATTHEW HEINEMAN: You know, I probably shot, I don`t know between 100 and 120 days. I was down there for nine months. So much of what I was able to get was through the rapport that I was able to create with my characters and also the time that I spent to let them become comfortable with me being down there.
CHARLIE ROSE: And that includes Jose Manuel Mireles.
MATTHEW HEINEMAN: That includes our main character, yes. Jose Manuel Mireles, the leader of this group. It includes people on all sides of this, you know, the cartel and everything in between.
One of the things I tried to do when I first stepped foot down there was I tell them, I have no agenda, I have no goal in mind, I have no sort of preconceived notions of what I want the story to be.
CHARLIE ROSE: I`m here to find the story.
MATTHEW HEINEMAN: I`m here to find the story, and I think that`s what allowed me to sort of get in with all different sides.
CHARLIE ROSE: But is it simply a story of everybody`s corruptible?
MATTHEW HEINEMAN: I don`t know if everyone`s corruptible. I think what we see in the film is that power does corrupt some. I don`t think everyone was corruptible. I think there are still many, many good forces. And I think part of what drove me also to keep going down there and make this film is I really fell in love with the people of Michoacan, the people that I was filming with and I was deeply saddened by the suffering that I saw.
CHARLIE ROSE: This is mainly the people of Autodefensas?
MATTHEW HEINEMAN: The people of Michoacan, the people, you know, who originally rose up because the government was failing to protect them. I mean they`re really living in lawless society.
CHARLIE ROSE: They`re not protecting them because they were taking money from the cartel or --
MATTHEW HEINEMAN: For many reasons. I mean you really felt -- I mean the title of the film is not an accident. You really felt like you were in "Cartel Land". You really felt like you were in a place that was controlled by the cartels. They acted with impunity. They controlled every aspect of civic society from the local judicial system to local police. They extorted everyone from local tortilla makers to multi- national corporations.
CHARLIE ROSE: And do it for money and fear.
MATTHEW HEINEMAN: Money and fear. And that`s why this movement rose up. In some ways it`s an incredibly timely story and in some ways this is a timeless story. We`ve seen the story play out through history and all across the world today.
CHARLIE ROSE: Is the cartel always going to win?
MATTHEW HEINEMAN: It`s hard to say. You know, I`m an eternal optimist. I believe in the goodness of humanity. I wanted to believe in the story, I think. Unfortunately, my optimism was beaten out of me over the nine months I spent there.
CHARLIE ROSE: Your optimism was beaten out of you?
MATTHEW HEINEMAN: I hate to say that. But, you know, I think it`s a deeply complex problem and, you know, we`re all complicit in some way in this problem. You know, I think one of the things that I tried to do with this film is, you know, we`ve become obsessed with ISIS and all these conflicts around the world, but there`s a war that`s happening in the country just south of us. A war in which 100,000-plus people have been killed, 25,000-plus people disappeared, gone, never heard from again.
CHARLIE ROSE: Including journalists.
MATTHEW HEINEMAN: Including journalists -- dozens of journalists who have been working there for a long time and trying to tell their d stories. So you know we`re connected to this war. We`re funding this war through our consumption of drugs. So I really wanted to shine a light on what`s happening down there and provide a window into this world and to see how it`s affecting every day people.
CHARLIE ROSE: Tell us about the woman who watched her husband suffer the most extraordinary torture and death and what she said it did to her.
MATTHEW HEINEMAN: That was one of the hardest things for me, you know, the shootout, the torture, those are all terrifying, exhilarating moments, but that moment that you just described is something that stuck with me to this day. I have nightmares about it.
And, you know, sitting in the room with this woman, looking at her and seeing a body that was there, it was almost as if the cartel had sucked her soul out of her. You know, she was kidnapped alongside her husband. She witnessed him being mutilated and burned to death --
CHARLIE ROSE: Right.
MATTHEW HEINEMAN: -- and then they molested her. And her punishment in almost, you know, in an utterly sadistic way was to live with her madness, that they let her free for the rest of her life.
CHARLIE ROSE: They said that to her.
MATTHEW HEINEMAN: Yes.
CHARLIE ROSE: And the worst thing we`ve done to you is what we`ve done to your mind.
MATTHEW HEINEMAN: Right. And to sort of sit in this room with this woman and to hear her describe these horrors and to think that we`re this species of human beings that would do that to other people, that mentally stuck with me.
CHARLIE ROSE: Who was "Papa Smurf"?
MATTHEW HEINEMAN: At first he was a bodyguard essentially of our main character the doctor. And then ultimately about halfway through the film the doctor gets into a plane crash and he almost dies. And he`s forced to go into hiding in Mexico City and recover.
And in an almost Shakespearean way, he tells Papa Smurf to take over his role. In many ways, Papa Smurf did the best he could but he was a somewhat weak leader and what ended up happening was that many of the Autodefensas started to fight for power. With the doctor gone, the doctor was really the glue that sort of held.
CHARLIE ROSE: -- holding within.
MATTHEW HEINEMAN: -- factions within started to fight. The government started to infiltrate the group and, you know, like the doctor says the old sort of Roman concept of divide and conquer. The group just really became fractured and ultimately that`s what led to their downfall.
CHARLIE ROSE: OK. Take a look at this. This is clip number two. Clip number two -- Dr. Mireles calling on citizens to arm themselves. Here it is.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
(SPEAKING SPANISH)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CHARLIE ROSE: So there he is -- your main character. Tell me about him.
MATTHEW HEINEMAN: He`s an incredibly charismatic doctor in a small town called Tepalcatepec in the state of Michoacan. And like many others after years of terror living under the Knights Templar cartel, he decided to rise up.
At first when they rose up, everyone was wearing masks. He`s a tall man. I think he`s probably six-two or six-three, much taller than the people in the town. Everyone started saying, "Hey, Doctor, thank you for joining the movement." So since everyone sort of knew who he was he decided -- he took off the mask and he sort of became the de facto leader.
CHARLIE ROSE: And is part of the story that you don`t know -- you don`t know in the end, necessarily, because of corruption and fear and all kinds of cross currents of power who you`re talking to?
MATTHEW HEINEMAN: As a filmmaker, as a journalist, that was the scariest part about shooting down there is that by the end I really didn`t know who I was filming with. I don`t know if I was with the cartel. I don`t know if I was with the Autodefensas. I don`t know if I was with the government or some version of all three.
CHARLIE ROSE: Because you don`t know who owns whom?
MATTHEW HEINEMAN: I don`t know who owns who. I don`t know who`s paying who. In the end the Autodefensas literally put on the government uniform. Many people of whom the doctor says that the Mexican government essentially organized and legalized the formation of a new cartel.
CHARLIE ROSE: So where is it today?
MATTHEW HEINEMAN: I think that`s sad -- one of the sad stories is that, unfortunately, what everyone feared, which is anarchy and revenge, has in fact, taken place. Killings continue, kidnappings continue, criminal enterprises continue to fight for power in this region. It`s incredibly resource-rich area.
If you go out tonight and have a taco, the avocados probably come from Michoacan. If you go have a mojito, the limes are coming from Michoacan. If you go do meth, the meth is coming from Michoacan. It`s a really resource rich area that cartels for many, many years have fought over.
CHARLIE ROSE: Thank you for coming.
MATTHEW HEINEMAN: Thank you so much.
CHARLIE ROSE: Matthew Heineman.
Thank you for joining us. See you next time.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
END
(Copy: Content and Programming Copyright 2016 Charlie Rose Inc. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Copyright 2016 CQ-Roll Call, Inc. All materials herein are protected by United States copyright law and may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, displayed, published or broadcast without the prior written permission of CQ-Roll Call. You may not alter or remove any trademark, copyright or other notice from copies of the content.)