Tornado in Mississippi; Preemies Study; Chaplain Gave POWs Will to Live
BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: Shocking allegations. The government accused of doing experiments on premature babies without telling the parents about the risk. CNN investigates. The IRS says it can read your e-mails without a warrant. And, in a fight between a gun and bat. Bat wins. Plus --</s>ADAM GADAHN, AL QAEDA SPOKESMAN (ph): You can go down to a gun show at the local convention center and come away with a fully automatic assault rifle. So what are you waiting for?</s>BALDWIN: The words of an American terrorist. The problem is, he's wrong on one thing. And, what's day in America without a little controversy. Today the new Barbie making waves. I'm Brooke Baldwin. The news is now. Hi, there. I'm Brooke Baldwin. Good to be with you. Beginning with breaking news on this Thursday. Reports of a tornado right now moving over Mississippi, Chad Myers, into Alabama.</s>CHAD MYERS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: That's correct.</s>BALDWIN: Tell me what you know.</s>MYERS: Very close to the small town of Macedonia, Alabama. It was on the ground and has been on the ground for a long time. It produced one fatality we had confirmed here at CNN in Kemper County, Mississippi. And the storm continues to be on the ground as it travels to the east of Columbus, Mississippi. These are kind of rural areas, thank goodness, because this is probably an F-3 or an F-4 tornado on the ground. It did hit a town near Macon, Mississippi, earlier, but it is now kind of moving on up toward a very rural area north of Reform, Alabama. They're already putting some of the kids out of school, taking them out of school already in Alabama. The last time this happened we remember the vivid pictures of Tuscaloosa.</s>BALDWIN: Yes.</s>MYERS: Those kids are going home.</s>BALDWIN: Chad Myers, thank you. We'll come back to you as soon as you get more information here. As you have been reporting, one death confirmed, Kemper County, Mississippi. We're making phone calls. We'll try to get some videos as soon as we possibly can. I want to move along, though, because I just want to give you the heads-up. Any moment, history in the making today. President Obama will present the Medal of Honor to the family of an American priest who died more than six decades ago. You hear the music. These are live pictures inside the White House. This is where the ceremony will take place. Let me just tell you though, this story here is absolutely fascinating because, among other heroic acts, he stole food for POWs during the Korean War without firing a single shot. You will hear emotional memories from this man's fellow soldiers. Stay right here for that. But first, the federal government is under fire for research it funded that may have risked the lives of the most vulnerable, extremely premature infants. Thirteen hundred of them to be precise. The consumer advocacy group Public Citizen is reporting on this. Says these little ones were exposed between the years 2005 and 2009. Public Citizen just sent a letter to the head of the Department of Health and Human Services demanding an apology for mishandling a study that examined oxygen levels in preemies. It accuses researcher of not telling parents that their newborns could be at higher risk of blindness or death if the families took part in the research. A co- author of that letter released a statement saying this, quote, "the word unethical doesn't even begin to describe the egregious and shocking deficiencies in the informed-consent process for this study. It is highly likely that had they been appropriately informed about the nature of the research and its risks, many, if not most, parents would not have allowed their babies to be in this city. I want to talk about this with CNN's senior medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen. A lot of questions. The first being, why would the government do this sort of research in the first place?</s>ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Because there's a big question that needs to be answered.</s>BALDWIN: Which is?</s>COHEN: Which is, when you have what's called a micropreemie, so smaller than two pounds 12 ounces, all right, so that's very small, a lot of those babies need oxygen. Well, how much oxygen do you give them? That's the big question. So what they decided - because here is the problem. If you give too much oxygen, high levels of oxygen can cause blindness. But if you give low levels of oxygen, that can cause death. So what neonatologists do is they try to, you know, with each individual baby, they see how much they need and they give them just what they need and hopefully no more because they don't want to cause blindness. What this study did was they said, you know, we don't know exactly what levels are right. So we're going to assign these babies, half of them are going to get a relatively low end of that range and another half are going to get a relatively high end of that range. So we're going to randomize them, one group or the other, randomly chosen to get either relatively high levels or relatively low levels of oxygen. And what Public Citizen says is that's unethical. You should be gauging oxygen levels by what that baby needs, not by just randomly assigning them to a group.</s>BALDWIN: But not only that, when you read this and you hear about the risks, how could they not tell the parent?</s>COHEN: Aha. And that is the part that actually the National Institutes of Health is upset about. The NIH actually wrote a letter to all of these doctors saying, hey, we looked at your consent form and you didn't warn parents that high levels could cause blindness and low levels could cause --</s>BALDWIN: Why?</s>COHEN: Well, because the researchers have basically said, look, we were within the range that's considered safe. We were within the range that doctors give babies all the time. We just sort of skewed to the high end for one group and skewed to the low end for another group. We weren't giving them crazy highs or crazy lows.</s>BALDWIN: Is that good enough for the parents?</s>COHEN: Well, it's certainly not good enough for Public Citizen.</s>BALDWIN: Yes.</s>COHEN: It's actually, in many ways, not good enough for the NIH. I mean this letter really says to them, hey, you didn't warn about the risks the way you were supposed to. And, in fact, the University of Alabama, which has been the lead researcher on this, they said, "we will ensure that any future consent form clearly delineates risk." That's what they've written in response. In the future, we will make sure that forms clearly tell parents, or study subjects, what the risk is, which makes you kind of thing, maybe this time they didn't quite get it the way they should have.</s>BALDWIN: Right, if they're changing it for a future --</s>COHEN: Right. Exactly.</s>BALDWIN: What about the babies? How did they fair?</s>COHEN: You know, the doctors say that the babies have done great and the doctors say that the babies actually have done better than babies who weren't in this study. Some people, Public Citizen, would argue with that. It kind of depends how you look at the numbers. And what's interesting is the results they got were pretty much what you'd expect. Babies who were on the high end had -- were more likely to get a disease that can result in blindness. Babies on the low end were more likely to die. And Public Citizen and others say, why did we put babies through a study and experiment on them to figure out what we already knew? What was the purpose of that study? How is it going to help any baby?</s>BALDWIN: It sounds like a valid question.</s>COHEN: It -</s>BALDWIN: I never heard, micropreemies, less than two pounds.</s>COHEN: Less than two pounds, 12 ounces.</s>BALDWIN: Two pounds, 12 ounces. Wow.</s>COHEN: Right. Right.</s>BALDWIN: Elizabeth Cohen, thank you so much for that.</s>COHEN: Thanks.</s>BALDWIN: In a matter of moments, as we mentioned a moment ago, an army chaplain who stole food for POWs during the Korean War will be awarded the Medal of Honor more than 60 years after his death. And want to share just a picture here. This is a picture of him. He is on the right. He is helping - you see them carrying this exhausted soldier off the battlefield. President Obama will honor him and his family very, very soon. But first, CNN's Barbara Starr with a closer look at this extraordinary man -we go to live pictures from the White House -- this extraordinary man who served our country.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE (voice-over): Rations and water are scarce.</s>BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): In the winter of 1950, the Korean War was tough going for often overwhelmed U.S. troops. Here on the right, an extraordinary soldier who never fired a shot. And now, more than 60 years after his death, Emil Kapaun is receiving the Medal of Honor, the nation's highest award for valor in action. For Father Emil Kapaun, a Catholic Army chaplain, the sole weapon, faith. Mike Dow (ph), now 85, was a young lieutenant.</s>STARR (on camera): You still, to this day, keep his photo on the wall.</s>MIKE DOWE, KOREAN WAR POW: Yes. That's - that one picture is the one I like of him holding his pipe when it was shot out of his mouth.</s>STARR (voice-over): Captured in November 1950, Dowe met the priest as they carried the wounded on the long POW marches north.</s>DOWE: There was a fellow on the back of this stretcher that we - I was in the front of. And I said, I'm Mike Dowe. What's your name? And he said, Kapaun.</s>STARR: Father Kapaun's nephew, Ray, is accepting the medal, in part for the men who were there.</s>RAY KAPAUN, REV. EMIL KAPAUN'S NEPHEW: Even though this Medal of Honor is for Emil, it's for these guys as well too. They would tell everybody and anybody, you know, they didn't want the story to die.</s>STARR: Stories of a priest rescuing the wounded.</s>KAPAUN: It didn't matter if there was mortar shells falling around him and bullets flying by.</s>STARR: Mike Dowe says he survived being a POW because of Father Kapaun.</s>DOWE: He was able to engender a spirit of loyalty and meaningfulness to being a captive by resisting your captors and maintaining your faith with your country that enabled you to keep your will to live.</s>STARR: The priest regularly stole food for the starving men.</s>DOWE: He'd come around saying, "hot coffee," and give hot water to all of us there. And, man, that was - it may not sound like much today, but that sure meant a lot under those circumstances.</s>STARR: The enemy, the North Koreans and Chinese, began to fear the now ailing catholic priest.</s>KAPAUN: The Koreans came in and told him that, you know, they're going have to take him to the hospital. And the hospital - I mean you ask all the guys, the hospital was just a death house.</s>STARR: But his friends could not save him. Father Kapaun's final moments with his flock of POWs, as he was carried away, difficult even now for Mike Dowe.</s>DOWE: He turned to me and said something to the effect, Mike, don't worry. I'm going where I always wanted to go. And when I get there, I'll say a prayer for you.</s>STARR: To this day, his remains are buried in a mass grave in North Korea. His nephew says, still, the family would like to bring him home.</s>BALDWIN: Again we are -</s>STARR: And this -</s>BALDWIN: Forgive me, Barbara. We are awaiting history here, go ahead, as we watch these live pictures.</s>STARR: Yes, as we await the president in the next few minutes. This is just really a remark story. If this story isn't enough for you. In fact, the Vatican has Father Emil Kapoun's story under investigation. They are looking at the prospect of naming him a saint of the Catholic church, of canonizing him.</s>BALDWIN: Wow.</s>STARR: Over the last 60 years, these men have fought to get him the Medal of Honor. And many people of the faithful who have prayed to Father Kapoun have testified to the church about miracles that they believe have occurred in his name. It is just a remarkable, remarkable story. These men never gave up, Brooke.</s>BALDWIN: What a proud day for, obviously his family, his friends, the Army, for chaplains. We are awaiting this posthumous honor here there at the White House. History in the making. You do not want to miss these moments. Ninety second break. Back in a moment.