Discussing Underground Powerlines; Disappointment for U.S. Olympians; New Study Suggests Self-Exams Are as Effective as Mammograms
BERMAN: All right, welcome back, everyone. The breaking news from the South right now: 143,000 people are without power at this minute. That number is going to grow. It could grow by a lot as this storm continues to move north. It will shut out the lights, the modems, stoves, everything.</s>PEREIRA: You can bet that that is going to happen. And as it moves north, we are going to see it up here in the northern part of the country. It is about to happen. Here's the question. It is 2014. Haven't power companies figured out how to protect their lines from mother nature? We wanted to discuss this and the idea of preparation ahead of time with retired General Russel Honore. He joins us. Of course, he led the military response to Hurricane Katrina. What a pleasure to have you with us, sir. How are you, sir?</s>RUSSEL HONORE, REITRED GENERAL: Doing great. It looks like everybody is weathering the storm a little bit better this time. We've survived the first phase of this thing.</s>PEREIRA: Let's hope so. Let's hope so. So let's talk about this. General, why is it that we can't have the power lines burying the lines? We look at other countries around the world, taking Germany, for example. They have buried power lines. They have inclement weather. They don't have the outages that we have face.</s>HONORE: No, I have lived in both Germany and in the Netherlands in Holland. And they average maybe two hours a year of power outage because they put the utilities underground. Eighty percent of our power lines in America are above ground. And I speak a lot with the power companies, talk to preparedness and resiliency. And they discuss these things. It come down to cost. For one mile of power lines in a new subdivision, about $200,000, above grown. If you put it underground, it is double that, nearly $400,000 to put a mile of power underground. So it comes down to cost and dollars and whether they warrant to reinvest in existing neighborhoods. Because they go back into older neighborhood where most of us live, Michaela, it would cost three times the cost of just putting it above ground.</s>BERMAN: Still, it seems like an investment in our future for our cities and towns across America, especially when we see these trees coming down, we see these power outages. Hurricane Sandy Last year, when it came out here, power was out for a week, 10 days, two weeks with all these trees. And people are just wondering why, why? Won't the power companies pass on the cost to us anyway?</s>HONORE: They do and they normally do and get credit for it. But, again, the issue is, how do we build resiliency? If the state laws don't require them to do it, they're not going to do it. You know, it's all about profit and loss statements and balance sheets. But what we have pushed along with the Red Cross and Alliance for Safe Homes and many others is to build resiliency in the community by having critical buildings like schools, drug stores and gas stations with generators. And only Florida has a generator law that requires critical infrastructure to have a generator. So we know you can lose power. You know, we put a man on the moon, but we haven't created a transformer that a squirrel can't trip. It can be set at any time and the power will go out. So how do we build resiliency in the community?</s>PEREIRA: And that's obviously something we need to do, especially when you look at all the money that is spent on relief after the fact when one of these disasters happen. We want to say a big thank you to retired General Russell Honore joining us today from Baton Rouge. Thank you so much for your time today, sir.</s>BERMAN: Thanks, General. You know, there was another big story that just jumped off the pages of the newspaper when I woke up this morning. And it's about mammograms in a new giant study that questions whether these mammograms actually save lives. This study says, no, that mammograms do not prevent deaths from breast cancer, and in some cases could actually do more harm than good.</s>PEREIRA: It is making me a little crazy right now. Researchers tracked 90,000 women over a 25-year period, which makes it one of the largest studies ever done on the procedure of mammography. Our doctor Sanjay Gupta joins us from Atlanta with details on it. Sanjay, I have to ask you -- and you can understand this. I know that you can hear the frustration. I'm a woman over 40. I had my mammogram, my yearly exam last week. It is making so many women crazy. And they're probably shouting at the TV right now, do we? Don't we? Do we? Don't we? And then a research paper like this comes out and it muddles the issue further. How do we make sense of it?</s>SANJAY GUPTA, MD, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: It does. It's very confusing. Look, and I think I have been reporting on this almost as long as I have been a medical correspondent. Let me cut to the chase, Michaela, to your question, which is</s>BERMAN: The part that was really confusing and really glaring, startling in a way to me, Sanjay, was the claim that in some cases, getting a mammogram can do more harm than good. Explain to me the reasoning behind that in the study and what you make of that.</s>GUPTA: When we talk about screening tests, John, what we're talking about is obviously trying to find cancers and find them early. Screening tests can have false positives. They can have false negatives. False negatives is you don't find something that's there, and a false positive is you find something that subsequently is not found to be cancer. So it's some sort of anomaly on the mammogram that then warrants a lot of anxiety, first of all, on a woman's behalf, and then possibly a procedure, a biopsy, even an operation all because of what turned out to be a normal variant. And that's where the harm part comes in. And that's a problem with any screening test. No screening test is going to be perfect in terms of that false positive, false negative thing. I should point out with a big study like this, since you asked the question, there are all sorts of different variables. One is that this study was conducted some time ago back in the 1980s. When the study was started, mammography wasn't as good as it is today. Also, on a more positive note, treatments have gotten a lot better. So even cancers that are found later can still have the same -- as good an outcome as cancers that are found earlier. That may make it sound like mammography is not that useful because finding it early doesn't seem to make as big a difference. That's because the treatments have gotten better.</s>PEREIRA: It doesn't have to be a death sentence. My concern -- we'll leave it here, Dr. Gupta. We appreciate it. My concern is that we have gotten so much awareness about breast cancer now. Women are checking themselves; they're getting checked regularly. I worry that this will damage that, and I don't want us to go backwards. Do you know what I mean? We are taking our health into our own hands. This just worries me a little bit.</s>BERMAN: You know, one important thing in this study, it's not saying, don't be curious. Don't ask questions about breast cancer and the risks if you are a woman in the age group. In fact, it's comparing mammography to self-exams and saying the self-exams can do almost as much as the mammograms. So that's one interesting point here, too.</s>PEREIRA: Shall we talk Olympics?</s>BERMAN: Let's talk Olympics.</s>PEREIRA: We haven't yet. And you know I kind of wanted to.</s>BERMAN: It's a tough time for the</s>U.S.A. PEREIRA: But I'm OK. I'm OK.</s>BERMAN: Canada is doing well.</s>PEREIRA: Yeah! We want to warn you if you haven't looked at the coverage or you haven't checked your DVR yet, a bit of a spoiler alert. We're gonna rattle off a little bit of medal info right now. Shield your eyes. Shield your ears. Let's take a look at the count.</s>BERMAN: Yeah, let's look at the medal count right now. And it's ugly for the United States. On top right now, Norway leading with 12 medals, four of them gold. Canada, leads the world in crack-smoking mayors but also number two in the medal count there with 10. Down in third, the Netherlands -- I guess the Netherlands tied for second also. Then behind that --</s>PEREIRA: The U.S. and host nation of Russia are tied, seven medals a piece. Germany, we should really give a shout-out to Germany. Germany's got the most gold. They've got five gold medals.</s>BERMAN: Yeah, really one of the biggest stories of this Olympics so far is a little bit of disappointment for the United States. One of the biggest stars, maybe the biggest star, Shaun White, failing to medal in the halfpipe. Just a few minutes ago, speed skater, Shani Davis, shocked the world also, failing to medal in the 1,000 meter speedskating. Bode Miller didn't do well. A little bit of a mess for the United States.</s>PEREIRA: Level of expectations so very high.</s>BERMAN: However, there is one category where the United States is leading. It's not the color gold, though.</s>PEREIRA: Oh yeah. Oh, that.</s>BERMAN: It is the color pink.</s>PEREIRA: Yeah, you wanna see a little bit of pink going on. You probably have already seen it. NBC host Bob Costas, bless his heart, has not one but has two pink eyes. He's got a case of pink eye, my friend.</s>BERMAN: Yeah, Matt Lauer filled in for him. I don't think it's quite that bad. Matt Lauer filled in for him last night. He is doing it again tonight also.</s>PEREIRA: The internet has been having a little bit of fun. They gave him a Terminator eye.</s>BERMAN: God bless your soul, Bob Costas, speedy recovery to you, sir.</s>PEREIRA: Yeah, feel better. All right, we're going to take a short break here. Ahead at this hour, we're going to hit the road or sort of we will. When I say we, it's the royal we. We're gonna hit the road to see how the South is dealing with this major ice storm. We will give you a live view from our live, roving vehicle up next.