MORNING-06
companies and the government are racing to develop ways to prevent
infection. This week phase one of human clinical trials began for a Zika
vaccine developed by scientists at the Walter Reed Army Institute of
Research.>
ANTHONY MASON: Time now for Morning Rounds with CBS News chief medical correspondent Doctor Jon LaPook and CBS News contributor Doctor Tara Narula. First up, Zika vaccines. In the fight against the virus researchers for both private companies and the government are racing to develop ways to prevent infection. This week phase one of human clinical trials began for a Zika vaccine developed by scientists at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research. It will be tested at their trial center in Maryland. Jon, clinical trials just beginning. What should people know here?
DR. JON LAPOOK (CBS News Chief Medical Correspondent): Well, this is an activated vaccine so the viral particles themselves have been inactivated, so the people can`t get Zika, but the protein coat that surrounds the virus is intact, so the idea is you give it to somebody and it`s the protein coat that teaches the immune system how to go after the Zika virus.
JAMIE YUCCAS: Tara, I was reading that there`s promise when it comes to rats with this vaccine, but is this the first human trial that we`re seeing with the vaccine?
DR. TARA NARULA (CBS News Medical Contributor): So there`s actually two other human clinical trials right now. The first is vaccine produced by a company called Inovio Pharmaceuticals and not human clinical trials started in June. The second is a government-produced vaccine and that trial started in August. The interesting thing about these vaccines is unlike the type that Jon described, these are called DNA vaccines and they basically work by taking a small piece of DNA and reengineering it to put inside that little circular DNA pieces of genes that code for Zika proteins. When you then give that to a human, for instance, then the human body cells produce that protein, the body mounts an immune reaction against it. This technology has been around since the 1990s. We don`t have any DNA vaccines currently on the market, but there is hope for these two. And if they do come around, they`re easily produced, easily stored, easily transported.
DR. JON LAPOOK: It`s a technological tour de force. And I have to say for the Zika piece that we did for 60 MINUTES this past weekend--
ANTHONY MASON: Mm-Hm.
DR. JON LAPOOK: --I was actually there in August when the very first volunteer got the very first injection of this vaccine. And then a month later, I stood there with Tony Fauci, head of Infectious Diseases for the NIH, as we saw whether or not the tubes were going to turn blue or not. If they turned blue, it meant she made an antibody response and we held our breath and it turned blue. And I turned to Tony and I said, "What would you have done if it didn`t turn blue-- blue?" He said, "I would have fainted right in front of you, Jon."
JAMIE YUCCAS: No kidding.
ANTHONY MASON: So are there any other new developments, Jon?
DR. JON LAPOOK: There is a bunch of other approaches. One that`s really interesting, it happened down in Brazil at the time that I was down there was genetically modified mosquitoes. So these are mosquitoes that are modified so that they can only survive in the lab because they need an antibiotic called tetracycline to survive. They`re the males. The males don`t bite. So they release them out into the wild, they mate.
ANTHONY MASON: Yeah.
DR. JON LAPOOK: They produce larvae that have the same genetic defect and then they die.
ANTHONY MASON: Yeah.
DR. JON LAPOOK: So this is an interesting approach. There was a referendum just this past Election Day down in Florida to see whether or not the local community would accept this and there`s still some controversy, even though the referendum passed in the county, the place where, specifically, it was going to be given voted against it.
JAMIE YUCCAS: Oh, interesting.
DR. JON LAPOOK: And so there`s still a lot of controversy about what are the unintense-- possible--
JAMIE YUCCAS: Yeah, you don`t know.
DR. JON LAPOOK: --consequences of this.
JAMIE YUCCAS: Okay. Moving on now, let`s talk about e-cigarettes and teens. Much remains unknown about the health effects of using e-cigarettes or vaping, especially when compared to conventional tobacco smoke. But are teens more likely to use regular cigarettes if they frequently vape? The answer, it turns out, could be yes. The Journal of the American Medical Association reports on a study that surveyed tenth-graders at the start of a school year and again six months later. It found that nearly twenty percent or one in five of those considered frequent vapers became frequent smokers and almost twelve percent of the frequent vapers became infrequent smokers. I found this interesting because I think a lot of people assume that e-cigarettes are the healthier way to go, but if you`re turning from e-cigarettes than to tobacco use, then there`s really no point.
DR. TARA NARULA: Right. The jury is still out on whether they are going to be a good route to help people who want to quit smoking, but there are potential health hazards for those people who are nonsmokers, particularly, adolescents. When you think about what`s in the e-cigarette, there is the aerosol component. That component in some e-cigarette brands has been found to contain heavy metals, toxic chemicals, carcinogens. The nicotine itself is addictive, can have cardiovascular effects, and effects on the brain of growing adolescents that can lead to long-term cognitive and behavioral problems. And then the flavorings that a lot of these e-cigarettes have, they`ve been tested and-- and are considered generally safe for ingestion, but not for inhalation. In fact, there`s one type of flavoring that`s been shown to cause scarring of the lung.
JAMIE YUCCAS: Oh.
ANTHONY MASON: Uh-huh.
DR. TARA NARULA: There`s also a lot of variability in quality. So when you smoke an e-cigarette, how much nicotine am I getting? Is it really what it says I am getting? The good news in all of this is that the FDA this year finally did step in and say they will be regulating e-cigarettes the same way they regulate other tobacco products, meaning kids under eighteen can`t purchase them. There will be a warning label about nicotine`s effects. And, hopefully, better oversight about quality.
ANTHONY MASON: But, in the meantime, Jon, how prevalent have they become?
DR. JON LAPOOK: Well, in 2015 sixteen percent of high-schoolers were using e-cigarettes. That`s a ten-fold increase compared to just 2011. In adults, much less, 3.5 percent. And, you know, as Tara was implying, the issue here is, for adults, okay, it`s one kind of controversial issue, can it help you stop smoking regular cigarettes, which, of course, are so horrible for us. But the fear is that you`re starting to use nicotine in teenagers and young adults.
JAMIE YUCCAS: It`s almost like a gateway.
ANTHONY MASON: Yeah.
DR. TARA NARULA: Right.
DR. JON LAPOOK: It could be a gateway and also there`s some evidence that it could affect the developing brain, so there`s some real issues here.
ANTHONY MASON: Finally, men, women and memory. When it comes to the battle of the sexes-- sexes, who holds the advantage for remembering? I have a feeling I`m going to lose here. As reported in the Journal--
JAMIE YUCCAS: Not so fast.
ANTHONY MASON: As reported in the Journal of the North American Menopause Society, a study comparing middle-aged men and women found that women outperformed men in all memory measure-- memory measures. I knew it. But some of that memory advantage declined for women after menopause.
DR. TARA NARULA: Did we really need a study? Really?
ANTHONY MASON: No, I didn`t.
DR. TARA NARULA: Any of us--
ANTHONY MASON: I have forgotten what this segment was about already.
DR. JON LAPOOK: It wasn`t-- it wasn`t emotional intelligence. We know women are better at that.
JAMIE YUCCAS: I did wonder if it was selective memory.
DR. JON LAPOOK: But, you know what--
DR. TARA NARULA: It`s a good point.
DR. JON LAPOOK: --it`s-- it`s very interesting because this-- two-thirds of the people in the country, more than five million who have Alzheimer`s are women. And it`s not felt to be just because there are more women because women live longer.
JAMIE YUCCAS: Mm-Hm.
DR. JON LAPOOK: There`s a lot of research into the effect of estrogen, other very difficult, complicated pathways, hormones, neurotransmitters.
DR. TARA NARULA: That`s right.
DR. JON LAPOOK: We`re just starting to look into this. It`s going to be really interesting and very important as the years go by and the number of people with dementia increases dramatically.
ANTHONY MASON: All right. Doctors Jon LaPook and Tara Narula, thank you both. Up next, Donald Trump made foreign trade deals and the loss of American jobs a winning centerpiece to his presidential campaign. But could certain decisions kick off an international trade war? We`ll take a closer look. You`re watching CBS THIS MORNING: SATURDAY.
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PRESIDENT-ELECT DONALD TRUMP: Ohio has lost one in four manufacturing jobs since NAFTA, a deal signed by Bill Clinton and supported strongly by Hillary Clinton.
ANTHONY MASON: Donald Trump speaking last month in Springfield, Ohio, and pressing a consistent element of his successful campaign, renegotiating or withdrawing from international trade deals and pressuring U.S. companies to bring jobs home, a message that obviously resonated with American workers.
JAMIE YUCCAS: But what will it mean if Trump manages to do all he promised? Let`s ask Derek Thompson, senior editor for The Atlantic. Good morning to you, Derek.
DEREK THOMPSON (The Atlantic Senior Editor): Good morning.
JAMIE YUCCAS: Thanks for joining us. You know, jobs, jobs, jobs--that`s what Donald Trump talked about on the campaign trail the entire time. How does he actually move the economy forward and create these jobs?
DEREK THOMPSON: Right. Well, first, you`re asking me to predict the future of Donald Trump and governance. So I want to foreground the statement--
JAMIE YUCCAS: You don`t have to (INDISTINCT) with you today? Okay.
DEREK THOMPSON: --for the world`s biggest asterisk. But, look, there are three things that he`s been really consistent on when it comes to economic policy. Consistent on tax cuts, pretty consistent on wanting an infrastructure bill, an infrastructure stimulus and then pretty consistent on the fact that he wants to renegotiate trade deals and maybe slap tariffs on-- on countries that don`t participate. So you put all of this stuff together, will it help the common man? Surely you would think that some of these things might give people more money in the short term. But you`re adding a lot of uncertainty, a lot of chaos to the economy right now. And it should be said that before we get to a Trump administration, this is a private sector that`s been adding jobs for the last seventy consecutive months--
ANTHONY MASON: Right.
DEREK THOMPSON: --so we are in the middle of a very sustained thermostatic recovery.
ANTHONY MASON: Well, there`s also the question of how, you know, how achievable are some of these goals in terms of, you know, particularly in terms of job growth. If you-- if you want to cut taxes and have an infrastructure spending bill, you`re losing money there net.
DEREK THOMPSON: Yeah. The math here is incredibly complicated because, on the one hand, you know, the tax policy center, basically, looked at his tax cut and said this is going to add six trillion dollars to the deficit over the next ten years.
ANTHONY MASON: Yeah.
DEREK THOMPSON: On top of that he wants to grow military spending, grow infrastructure spending, preserve Social Security spending, and preserve Medicare spending. That means you, basically, have to take six trillion dollars out of a very small part of the governing budget. So it`s-- it`s going to be really-- really interesting to see what happens in the next few years.
JAMIE YUCCAS: You know one of the other things he talked about quite a bit was bringing jobs back to America from some of these places. What industry, specifically, benefitted? It would seem the auto industry would be one of the biggest.
DEREK THOMPSON: Yeah. Right, exactly. You look at the auto industry. You know, the-- the head of the-- of the UAW just came out and said, you know what, I-- I didn`t vote for Trump but I`m interested to see what he does for some of these trade deals. But I think it`s a mistake to say as some people sometimes do that there are some products that are made abroad and some products made in the U.S. Instead, what you have is a global supply chain.
JAMIE YUCCAS: Sure.
ANTHONY MASON: Yeah.
DEREK THOMPSON: You`ll have an American car that`s made with Canadian timber and Asian rubber. And so once you start slapping tariffs on-- on some of these imports and once you start trying to renegotiate these trade deals, what you do is raise the price of imports and raise the price of domestically produced goods. Prices go up for all consumers.
JAMIE YUCCAS: Yeah, things got very expensive.
DEREK THOMPSON: Right. And consumers don`t want that.
ANTHONY MASON: A big part of the campaign, of course, was-- was-- was the-- was issues of trade deals. And he`s talked about unwinding NAFTA. He called it the worst trade deal in U.S. history. Does it survive a Trump presidency?
DEREK THOMPSON: I don`t think it survives a Trump presidency in its current form. You have had this president-- now, essentially, say that he is president-elect say for a long time that this is one of the most important issues to him. Now, it`s possible that he starts negotiating with Paul Ryan and the Republicans and they decide he just leave it in the background, but I-- I think he`s going to do some sort of action. I don`t think it`s going to remain in its current state for a long time. And I think that what you`re seeing right now is just that there is so much uncertainty because you have all of these promises that he`s made in the campaign trail but he doesn`t have a record of public policy accomplishments. And we don`t-- we don`t have a record of him dealing with Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell, so there is a lot of uncertainty going forward over the next four years.
JAMIE YUCCAS: Well, we`re going to get you a crystal ball for next time.
DEREK THOMPSON: Thank you.
JAMIE YUCCAS: Derek Thompson, thanks so much. Coming up, a song written thirty-two years ago finally hits the charts. The story behind a victory anthem that`s got an entire city singing. You`re watching CBS THIS MORNING: SATURDAY.
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