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Pigs Being The Future Of Human Organ Transplants; Republicans Hoping To Impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas; House Democrats Releasing A 29-Page Report Defending Mayorkas; Interview With Representative Carlos Gimenez (R-FL); Exploration Team Believes They Found Amelia Earhart's Plane. Aired 1:30-2p ET

Aired January 30, 2024 - 13:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[13:30:00]

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): He's also the recipient of a heart transplant.

DR. ROBERT MONTGOMERY, TRANSPLANT SURGEON, NYU: I had a heart transplant five years ago. I had seven cardiac arrests, and I still wasn't sick enough to be able to draw an organ.

DR. GUPTA (voice-over): That experience became a rallying cry for him.

DR. MONTGOMERY: We need a sustainable, renewable source of organs from something else other than humans dying.

DR. GUPTA: Are animals the answer to that?

DR. MONTGOMERY: I think animals are the answer to that.

DR. GUPTA (voice-over): Specifically, pigs. Besides the size similarities, pigs also have several piglets with each pregnancy, making them a quickly scalable source of organs. One day, you might even see facilities like this all over the country.

DR. MONTGOMERY: We've been doing research on xenotransplantation for decades. Pig organs into monkeys, and doing gene edits, and that work has progressed. But there was still this question of, are those results translatable to a human?

DR. GUPTA: Had we learned everything there was to learn about transplanting these organs into non-human primates?

DR. MONTGOMERY: I think there were diminishing returns.

DR. GUPTA (voice-over): The problem was the FDA still wasn't ready to give the green light to transplanting a pig organ into a human being. So, Montgomery proposed a provocative idea. What if the first human recipient was brain dead?

DR. MONTGOMERY: Their heart is still beating. They can be maintained on the ventilator and you can really see what the human response is going to be. DR. GUPTA (voice-over): On September 25, 2021, Montgomery performed the first ever genetically modified pig kidney transplant into a brain-dead human. And it worked, for 54 hours. But each time they tried, the results got better and better.

DR. MONTGOMERY: We've done this five times. The first four, two kidneys and two hearts were just for three days. But this last kidney was for two months.

DR. GUPTA (voice-over): He and his team shared the findings from their last patient with me.

DR. MONTGOMERY: See that red?

DR. GUPTA: Yes.

DR. MONTGOMERY: That's hemorrhage. We did have a mild rejection. And we were able to test to make sure that we can treat that, you know, using sort of conventional anti-rejection drugs.

DR. GUPTA (voice-over): Then, in January of 2022, for the first time in history, a team at the University of Maryland Medical Center transplanted a genetically modified pig heart into a living human being, someone who is not brain dead. It was allowed by the FDA's Compassionate Use Pathway for Experimental Treatments, something used when a patient has no other options left.

MIKE CURTIS, CEO, EGENESIS: In a patient imminently facing death. Why wouldn't you try?

DR. GUPTA: But how far are we still to this becoming a reality?

CURTIS: I think for the right patient, we're going to see it in the next couple of years.

DR. GUPTA (voice-over): Pigs that could save human lives.

DR. GUPTA: So, these are large whites.

DR. MONTGOMERY: These are the sows that we use to do the embryo transfers in.

DR. GUPTA: You know, I never expected to feel like I was immersed in a really scientific sort of place in the middle of a pig barn.

DR. MONTGOMERY: There's the equivalent of five or six Nobel Prize discoveries. Cloning is one of them. The discovery of CRISPR is another one. Allotransplantation. All Nobel Prize-winning discoveries. We're integrating all of those to make this a reality.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

DR. GUPTA (on camera): I got to tell you, I mean, it's just an incredible science and really has the potential to change the way we think about transplantation overall, as you heard, maybe even within the next couple of years.

I will say, look, there can be ethical challenges here. How much should we interfering with the genomic sequence of an animal? How much should we be relying on animals to try and preserve and protect human health? Big questions. I mean, we couldn't even show you where we were exactly because of security concerns. But I think what we learned is that this is happening, it's happening quickly, and it's poised to make a big difference in terms of how we look at transplant in the future.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: An incredible eye-opening report. Dr. Sanjay Gupta, thanks so much for bringing that to us.

Stay with "CNN News Central." We're back in just a few moments.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:38:40]

SANCHEZ: House Republicans taking a big step today in their effort to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Right now, Republicans on the House Homeland Security Committee are preparing to move ahead with a resolution that could make Mayorkas the first cabinet secretary to be impeached in nearly 150 years.

The two articles in the resolution accuse him and his handling of the southern border of refusing to comply with the law and breaching the public trust. Mayorkas is defending his record saying this in a letter addressed to the committee's chairman, "Your false accusations do not rattle me and do not divert me from the law enforcement and broader public service to which I remain devoted."

House Democrats have released their own 29-page report defending Mayorkas saying that they found no evidence of any impeachable offense. Let's discuss with a Republican member of that committee, Florida Congressman Carlos Gimenez joins us now.

Congressman, thank you so much for being with us. Secretary Mayorkas serves at the pleasure of the president. He follows the guidance that's outlined by the White House on how they enforce immigration policy. So, if he doesn't set that policy, what proof do you have that he's committed a high crime or misdemeanor?

REP. CARLOS GIMENEZ (R-FL), HOMELAND SECURITY COMMITTEE: Well, listen, he's hiding behind changing policy and not upholding the law. The law says pretty clearly that anybody asking, seeking parole, seeking asylum in the United States needs to be detained either inside the United States or in a third country. He's violated that right now.

[13:40:00]

The law also says very clearly that you don't issue parole on a mass basis. You issue it on a case-by-case basis. He obviously clearly violated that. The law also says that when you have a deportable alien, criminal, that that individual be deported. He put out a new policy that says, well, you have to take other things into consideration, because that's a violation of the law.

And so, he's clearly violated the law. He's hiding behind policy. And the Democrats are saying there's a policy discussion, not really a policy discussion, it's really a violation of the law. They changed the policy, which in turn, we think, violated the law.

He's also breached his duty to protect the American homeland. You know, there is no doubt that Fentanyl seizures have increased by 500 percent, which means we've had a 500 percent increase in Fentanyl here in the United States during, you know, Mayorkas' reign as the chief of -- the Secretary of Homeland Security has killed over 150,000 Americans. And the number one duty of government is to protect the American citizens and to protect the United States of America.

SANCHEZ: Well, multiple well-respected constitutional scholars have weighed in, and they point out that he is essentially following guidance. He's not setting that policy and acting unilaterally.

I want to highlight one of them. Jonathan Turley, he's a well-known conservative. He's someone who testified multiple times against the impeachment of Former President Donald Trump. Now, he argues that the border is a mess, but he says you don't really have a case. And he adds that there's a danger to this, that this could potentially lower the bar for future Congresses to impeach cabinet secretaries over actions that do not amount to crimes.

Are you concerned about setting a precedent?

GIMENEZ: Look, here's what I'm concerned about. What I'm concerned about is that the southern border is chaos. We're being overrun. That it puts America at risk. I'm concerned about enriching the multinational cartels down in Mexico, where they used to be making $500 million a year. Now, they're making a billion dollars a month on illegal human trafficking.

I'm concerned about those migrants that are crossing the border, many of which perish. I'm concerned about the minors that are crossing the border unaccompanied. Many of those are being used for forced child labor or, worse, sex trafficking. I'm concerned about all of that.

And I'm also concerned that the secretary -- and yes, I do believe that he's following the orders of the president on violating the law for a means or an end, which I still haven't figured out. But look, I've been saying for a long time that this on purpose. This in not by accident. We've had many people come in front of the committee saying, hey, we've told the secretary exactly what he needs to do in order to get this under control, he refuses to do it.

And so, I've said this on purpose. So, he's violating the law on purpose. And if it's at the direction of the president, then he's violating the law also.

SANCHEZ: So, it sounds like you're not concerned about the question of a precedent, but there is the question of whether you'll have enough votes to actually impeach him. Republicans, as you well know, have a very narrow majority. You can only afford to lose two votes. Either way, if he is impeached, he's not getting convicted in the Senate. So, ultimately, isn't this just a symbolic political move?

GIMENEZ: No. We have to do what we have to do. Our duty -- and the only recourse that we have here in Congress is to hold Secretary Mayorkas responsible and impeach him.

Now, what happens at the Senate, happens at the Senate. But my conscience is clear that I'm going to to abide by my duty. I want to try to protect America and the American people. Then it's up to the Senate to do what they need to do. That's out of my hands.

SANCHEZ: A question on what's happening in the Senate, specifically the deal that we're expecting to see the text of soon on immigration, also tying in aid to Ukraine and Israel.

The lead Republican senator behind the deal, James Lankford of Oklahoma, says that it is by far the most conservative border security bill put forward in decades. He has expressed concern that some House Republicans aren't open to supporting it because Donald Trump doesn't want to, in his words, give the White House a win in an election year.

Are you open to seeing what's in this deal? And what's your response to Senator Lankford?

GIMENEZ: Absolutely. I'm open to seeing what's in the deal. I don't know what's in the deal. If it's a conservative, the most conservative, you know, border security, you know, to come out of Congress, I'll be certainly happy to see it.

Now, obviously, it's subject to interpretation, whether it's conservative or not. But if it turns out to be what he says, very conservative, I'm certainly open to the idea of supporting it when it gets to the House. So, you know, I haven't seen it. So, right now it's just speculation.

[13:45:00]

SANCHEZ: Congressman Carlos Gimenez, we have to leave the conversation there. Look forward to having you back to talk about the deal once we see the text.

GIMENEZ: Fair enough. OK.

SANCHEZ: Thanks. So, after 87 years, have we finally found Amelia Earhart's missing plane? A deep-sea exploration company believes they may have located it. We're going to speak to that company's CEO in just a few minutes.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:50:17]

SANCHEZ: There's a new clue in a decade's old mystery. Could this be Amelia Earhart's long-lost plane? An expedition group from South Carolina thinks it is. The team captured this sonar image after an extensive deep-sea search using a high-tech drone to survey thousands of square miles across the Pacific Ocean floor.

Now, it is fuzzy, but you can make out with the right kind of eyes what looks like an aircraft the group thinks just might be Earhart's.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: Earhart, of course, vanished more than 80 years ago as she tried to circumnavigate the globe. And finding out what happened to her has sent explorers on quests ever since. And of those explorers is Tony Romeo, who is joining us live now to talk about this. He is the CEO of Deep Sea Vision, the company that led the expedition team that captured this new image.

All right. Tony, talk to us a little bit about the expedition and the technology that used to conduct the deep-sea search and this image that you're seeing here.

TONY ROMEO, CEO, DEEP SEA VISION: Sure. Thanks for having me on. Well, first, let's talk about the image. There's three things about it that we really like that you posted on the screen there.

The twin vertical stabilizers in the back are very clear on the sonar image, and those were very distinctive of Amelia Earhart's aircraft, and we were very happy to see those. The second thing is the aircraft, the target that we got the sonar image of, was on a very flat sandy surface. So, to see anything protruding up or sitting on the sea floor would have been very unusual. And then thirdly, the size of the target was actually fit very closely to what we'd expect from her aircraft.

The technology that we used was a HUGIN 6000. There's only a handful of them in the world. And the 6000 means 6,000 meters. So, it can go all the way down to full ocean depth with the 6,000 meters to the bottom of the ocean, and then basically flies like a drone back and forth, scanning the seafloor for anything interesting.

SANCHEZ: Does the discovery geographically track with what's known about her disappearance? Like are there other details that lead you to believe this close to conclusive?

ROMEO: We do. And verified by third-party sources. Well, the Smithsonian in the Scripps Institute, a large group of folks have studied Amelia's last flight. Most believe that she was very close to her destination, and I think it's a testament to how good of a pilot she was.

We found the target within about 100-mile radius of Howland Island, and that's where we've always expected her to be.

KEILAR: So, how will you work to test this hypothesis, to see if this really is the real deal? This her plane?

ROMEO: Sure. Yes. Well, we need to get back to is a couple of steps now that we need to take. First is confirmation. We need to go and take a look and put a camera basically on the target. We need different equipment, probably an ROV, to go down there with some arms and some pictures that can take a look at the target, take a look at how it's sitting in the soil, in the mud, on the sand, on the sandy bottom of the seafloor. And then confirm this, in fact, her plane. You know, it could be another plane. But what we're going to be looking for those numbers, the NR16020. Once we see that, we can positively identify the plane. And then the next step would be to curate the site. And -- in other words, take a look at what debris is around the plane, how it's sitting on the seafloor, and we can engineer a solution to possibly bring it up.

SANCHEZ: That effort sounds challenging and expensive. What is the process going to be like to getting that confirmation?

ROMEO: Well, we're looking for partners. We don't have the equipment. We don't have an ROV. We have an AUV, but not an ROV. We're looking for media partners. We're looking for folks with the skill sets to go down and do that.

KEILAR: Why is it so important to you, Tony, to answer this question, this great mystery?

ROMEO: Sure. Well, I think she's America's favorite missing person. She's been gone for 87 years. And, you know, some people call it one of the greatest mysteries of all time, I think is actually the greatest mystery of all time. And until her plane is found, there's going to be somebody out there looking for it or concocting some crazy idea of what happened to her.

SANCHEZ: I guess this might be a dumb question, but I'm curious. Why do you think it's taken so long to figure this out?

ROMEO: No, it's a great question. And actually, it's a key to the whole thing is that such a remote part of the world. If she had crashed in Lake Michigan, we would have found her years ago. But it's such a remote part of the world to mount an expedition, to go out and search for is incredibly difficult.

KEILAR: Yes, it certainly is. I can't believe that, honestly, this a question that has not been answered. So, Tony, we wish you all the luck.

[13:55:00]

SANCHEZ: And if you need resources, Brianna is an excellent swimmer. She can hold her breath underwater a long time.

KEILAR: For like 30 seconds. I will be of no help. But, Tony, will be watching very carefully, because I know this going to interest so many people. A lot of people want to know what happened. Thank you so much for being with us.

ROMEO: Great. Great. Thank you. Appreciate it.

KEILAR: So, Elon Musk says that his startup has implanted a chip in a human brain for the first time. We're going to take a closer look at his claim, and we're going to talk about what this chip actually does ahead.

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