johannes mehserle, convicted of killing oscar grant in california, the victim's family calling the release a travesty and police in oakland and los angeles prepared for protests. right now time for the good doctor. good morning, i'm dr. sanjay gupta. welcome to the show. our investigation of cell phone safety and a possible link to cancer. it's triggered a lot of questions. i'm going to answer as many as i can this morning. also a neuro scientist who is literally peeling back your subconscious. put it this way, you don't have as much control over yourself as you think you do. we'll explain. a top race car driver beating diabetes with the help of his dad and a little ingenuity. but first picture this --

a family loses a beloved sister and then discovers it was suicide. and then they realize someone else helped her do it. we're going to hear from them in a moment and from the man who some people are calling the new dr. death. the original dr. death, of course, was dr. jack kevorkian who died last week of natural illness at the age of 83. in his last tv interview ever, he revealed a pretty grim view of life in general. >> shopenauer said it nicely, what crime has this child committed that it should be born? >> that's a profound -- it's a deeply pessimistic thing to hear. >> it's very sensible. >> according to a gallup poll, >> americans are split down the middle, as to whether assisted suicide is morally okay. while the public is evenly divided only two states, organ oregon and washington, have laws alowing doctors or anyone else for that matter to assist in suicide and even then, only under some circumstances. more than 40 states explicitly forbid it and yet it happens more than you might think.

jana van vorheese had a long history of menl illness and when she was 58, she took her life. according to the final exit network, she is one of hundreds they have helped along to a peaceful death. vicky doesn't see it that way. >> i think jana would be here if final exit had not been involved. >> reporter: jana submitted her application to final exit. at the time dr. lawrence eggbert was the group's medical director and determined jana was ready to die. >> they had what she sent them which said odd things about her health. it said liver cancer and what else did it say? >> rat poison. >> yes. >> and all sorts of real strange things. >> reporter: one day in march of 2007, vicky received a suspicious call asking them to check on jana. >> a day or two later we did go over to check on jana because we weren't able to reach her by

phone and we found her dead. >> reporter: jana died by suffocating herself with a tank of helium. it's final exit's method of choice. >> their theory is that they don't want to be part of any physical activities with the person that's going to die, so they explain how to do it. show them how to open the valves and have them do the valves themselves. >> reporter: ultimately eggbert, along with three final exit members were tried with conspiracy to commit request manslaughter. two members entered plea agreements and because of a hung jury, the third will be retried. as for eggbert, the jury found him not guilty. >> you remember where this was? >> reporter: for the thomases, there are only pictures left. >> everybody's all dressed. look at jana, she looks great. >> and the doctor tried but acquitted in jana's case, joins me now from baltimore. thanks for joining us, doctor. you know, some folks have taken

to calling you the new dr. death. i know that's not a term that sits well with you. the starting point, how would you explain what you do? >> i explain it very simply by saying it's something that somebody desperately wants to have happen. there are a lot of people who are suffering, there are a lot of people who have suffered, and have come to the point where they can't handle it anymore so they want out. >> you don't like the term suicide, even, i understand. why not? >> well, suicide has a lot of negative connotations, especially from a religious point of view, and so basically the reason we try and use the word like hastening death, for example, the -- is because of the stigma associated with it. you know, just a few years ago, this was illegal. a supreme court judge said it's immoral right now, so that the

idea, there's a very powerful people who are very uncomfortable with the idea from a religious point of view. >> you're referring to justice scalia, suicide, referring to it as immoral. want to ask you about jana's case, now that the trial is over you can talk about this. the family says they were never contacted or consulted. is that right or fair? they said also she suffered from a history of mental illness. was she of sound mind to even consider this idea of ending her own life? >> well, was she of sound mind? we thought so. she was sufficiently sound to get along in society. she had friends, she had a car, she kept a lovely house, she was a person who officially is of sound enough mind to get along in society. she's not incarcerated. she has had mental therapy. so we were considering her of a sound mind. >> during your tenure with the final exit network, how many applications did you review and how many did you actually approve?

>> well, in the four or five years roughly, i don't -- i didn't keep a tally of the numbers, so that the president of the organization, dr. denson, would be a better source. i would guess around 300 patients, people that applied for this service. >> and can you give a percentage? if someone applies, how likely are they to be approved? >> well into the 90%. >> most people. >> everybody -- pardon? >> most people get approved. what criteria are you considering when you look at one of these applications and does someone have to be terminal, does someone have to be physically suffering? how do you measure that? >> people invariably are suffering. mostly it's physical, a lot of it is psychological, a lot of it -- of the people that i talked with and the people that i met,

and the people that i read about, all of them have been suffering not just a while, but for a long while. >> when you're actually seeing someone die, because of your decision, what is that like for you as a doctor? >> well, i never got used to it. i was telling someone sometime, a colleague of mine, a psychologist, i just don't seem to get used to this and she chuckled and laughed at me and said when you get used to it, that's the time you ought to quit. >> dr. egbert, it's a fascinating discussion, a polarizing one, as you better than anyone knows, but a appreciate you spending time with us. >> sure. at bayer, we've been relieving pain for over 100 years.

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brought the case and in january they won. a federal judge struck down a key requirement that everyone buy insurance coverage if they aren't already covered through an employer, medicaid or medicare. that judge's ruling is on hold while the case is appealed. that requirement, like a lot of the law, doesn't go into effect until 2014. but according to a new cnn opinion research poll, it's already unpopular. 44% for it, 54% against. in that same poll after the economy, people said health care is the most important issue in their vote for president. so joining me now from new york to talk about this, cnn's senior legal analyst jeffrey toobin. thanks for joining us, jeff. >> hi, sanjay. >> so jeff, we've talked about this before, but what happened in this hearing here? did the judges sound like they would support the law or throw it out like the judge in the first trial? >> well, you know, this one was a little hard to tell. just to put this all in a little perspective, there have been a lot of these cases all over the country, kicking around the federal courts.

so far, three district court judges have upheld the law, said it's constitutional, two district court judges have said it's unconstitutional, including the one in florida. >> right. >> and these cases are starting to move through the appeals process. this summer there are four federal appeal courts hearing these appeals. one was heard about a month ago. the one was this week in atlanta. the first one that was heard, sounded like the judges were pretty sympathetic to the constitutionality of the law. this one i think it was more ambiguous. but it's always hard to read from judges questions how they're ultimately going to vote in the case. i don't think we can say anything conclusive at this point. >> let's put a little bit of specifics on what we're talking about here. the law is this grand bargain, a safety net, insurance companies required to cover anyone, even if they have a serious or chronic illness. the tradeoff is you have to carry insurance. you can't just wait until you get sick.

if the judge throws out the insurance buying requirement, this mandate so to speak, what happens to the rest of the deal? >> that's very hard to say. and, in fact, that's one of the key arguments even in both sides, because the anti-health care law advocates say look, this part of the law is so integral to the whole system, that you have to throw out the whole thing. and one of the judges, in fact, did that. all the other judges have said you can separate this. but as a political matter, if you get rid of the mandate, and don't wind up forcing all those millions of new people into the system, there is a sort of political question of how it's going to work because all other parts of the law, like the part that says kids can stay on their parents' insurance until they're 25, the part that says you can't

be denied insurance because of a preexisting condition, those benefits are more or less contingent on getting all those new customers into the insurance system. so it's very hard to know how to work. by the way, let's be clear, it's not at all clear that the supreme court, which almost certainly will get this case, will strike down any part of this law. the last word is a long way away. >> thanks a lot. appreciate your time. another story back in the headlines this week as well, cell phones and cancer. we've been covering this for some time. we're continuing to ask the question, is your cell phone safe? you know in the past, the world health organization has said there's no way cell phones can be problematic. problem is, they don't say that any more. they say cell phones are possibly carcinogenic, to say they could cause cancer. earlier this week i sat down with ryan seacrest on his radio show, he asked me to come on and asked me if parents should postpone getting their kids a cell phone? >> i'm delaying getting my kids cell phones, in part because of

this and in part because, you know, i just think they spend more time on a device that has all sorts of games and other things on it, which i think is another issue, but i also think we, you know, these types of problems that we're talking about, potential brain cancers, take 20 to 30 years to develop. there's only been cell phones really in popularity in this country over the last 15 years. our kids will use them their entire life. >> the scale and exposure is what's going to be exponentially different from our kids compared to us. it's not just ryan seacrest asking these questions. my e-mail, my twitter, we've been flooded with lots of messages from all of you viewers looking for advice. i wanted to say, really all boils down to this. as silly as it sounds try to keep your cell phone away from your body as much as possible. use your speakerphone when you can, a corded earpiece or text to keep your phone away from your head and out of your pocket. protecting your brain from knowing what's going on inside of it.

i'm fascinated by this. just how much control do you have over your own mind? new research suggests a lot less than you might think. stay with us.

most of us want to know why we do what we do. sure we know our decisions are made in the brain ostensibly, but research is shedding light on how many of those decisions are made at the subconscious level, more so than maybe you think. dr. david eagleman is author of the new book "incognito" the secret lives of the brain." great title. >> thanks. essentially that's what's going on. so much hidden machinery under the hood there, and it started to fascinate me to realize how much goes on that we have no awareness of.

>> is this something you can study? when you think about subconscious level decision making, how do you start even thinking about that? >> well, here's the simplest example. when you move your arm or something it feels like it's effortless. you and i know there's a whole light ning storm of neural activity that underpins that. and if it weren't for the fact that we were a neuroscience, we wouldn't even suspect the existence of cells and muscles and electrical signals, right? wouldn't even suspect the existence of cells and muscles and electrical signals. right? well, turns out that everything in our lives is like that. there are lots of examples of this. for example, i was impressed by a study i saw many years ago when i first got into neuro science, men were asked to rate the attractiveness of women's faces in photographs. in half the photos the women's eyes had been dilated. now the men uniformly found these photographs more attractive but none of them were able to say, oh, i noticed her eyes -- her pupil is a millimeter wider here but their

brains knew they were more attractive here, their behavior was steered appropriately even though they had no idea why. turns out most of our attractions and desires and so on is like that. >> you had another experiment as well where you have people actually do something to give them an idea of how their subconscious mind is is thinking about. mimicking motions? >> i was going to ask you to do this. so put your hands on the steering wheel. i'd like to you make a lane change into your left lane. you're driving and you want to move over one into the left lane. like almost everyone else, you got it wrong. turns out the way you make a lane change is you go to the left, back to the center and all the way just as far to the right. what you did just steered you off into the side -- >> didn't turn far enough to the right. >> exactly. there are many things that your brain takes care of almost everything in your life your brain takes care of and we don't even have conscious access nomo

of it. most of what you do you don't even recognize you're doing it. when you recognize the way your father walks or your child's voice, your conscious mind is like a little stow-away on a transatlantic steam ship and it is taking credit for the whole thing and not giving credit to the massive engineering that's under foot. >> what does someone do with it? i guess if it is at the subconscious level that's where it is relegated but is there a lesson here? >> yes. it turns out that your brain is like a team of rivals that's always battling it out. and the important thing for us when we are trying to understand ourselves is how do we negotiate with ourselves to manage this. so we all have short-term tempt acheses, whatev temptations whatever it is in our own live. think hard about how we set up these structures so long-term decision making it win. for example alcoholics who are trying to quit need to get rid of all the alcohol in their house, or people who are trying to lose weight can go to these websites now where you give let's say $100 to these total

strangers and you say i promise that i'm going to lose ten pounds by this date and if i don't, you guys keep the money. otherwise i ge the money back. your present self is giving away the money so your future self has to work hard to get it back. that's the way we can tip the battle between short and long-term parts of our brain. >> you mentioned alcohol a couple of times. my sense is alcohol could make you less likely to exercise conscious good judgment. are there things that can act in the opposite way, medications or anything else you've found that -- >> really it is just this issue of being part of the community fabric. i think having the right sort of community around you is what gives you that. >> surround yourself with peers whose valued you emulate. >> yeah. >> you're a fascinating guy. you're so young, too. i expected you to be older for all you've done. >> well, i eat my spinach and broccoli. >> good stuff. still ahead, an inspiring story about overcoming life's

obstacles. you'll meet the first indy driver to race with diabetes. we'll see how he's managing his disease. the stronger the rapids, the more we loved it.

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[ female announcer ] wake up to sweetness with honey nut cheerios cereal. kissed with real honey. and the 100% natural whole grain oats can help lower your cholesterol. you are so sweet to me. bee happy. bee healthy. we like to think professional athletes have it made. they're young, healthy, seemingly invulnerable. but after this story you might think twice. this saturday night, indy car race at the texas motor speedway in car number 83 there is a driver who went through some serious twists and turns before he even made it to the starting

line. >> frgrowing up, i wanted to ra in the indianapolis 500. >> he is 10.9 seconds behind the race leader. >> this year charlie kimball finally fulfilled his dream. in order to get here though he had to overcome a big hurdle. four years waeg he was told he had diabetes. he had to cope with his diagnosis and figure out if he could race with diabetes, something indy car officials said it was a first. to qualify for these races he not only had to be fast, he had to be healthy. >> if i go too high, my reaction time is slow and i'm not competitive. if i go too low i get light headed. go low enough, i could pass out and cause an accident. >> his diabetes led him to a sponsor. kimball's pit crews consist of mechanics, engineers, and his doctor.

he has to make sure his body is ready, along with his car, which now has special equipment. >> i wear a continuous glucose monitor which is a sensor that i have on my body and it reads blood glucose, wirelessly transmits to a pager-like display that i velcro to the steering wheel. >> reporter: and he has a back-up system designed by his father, just in case. >> i've got a drink bolt mounted in the car. fill it with orange juice which is full of shugar. the tube runs right into my helmet. without taking my hands off the steering wheel i can drink that and i don't have to stop. >> reporter: kimball's determined to get the message out that diabetes doesn't have to stand in the way of your dreams. >> i'm living proof that you can do almost anything you want in life with diabetes. even drive a race car at a couple hundred miles an hour. >> great stories of people overcoming abc cal