good morning to you, happy st. pat's day. cpac wrapped up their conference with a hockey mom and straw poll. a spirited attack on president obama. she went, though, after members of her own party in washington, as well, who said lost touch. after palin attendee to see pat picked their flag bearer in a straw poll. rand paul finished first with 25%. you see the whole pole there. florida senator marco rubio was a close second with 23%. okay, now, some stuff that you have to see. if you know much about the "titanic" legend has it that the band played as the ship sank. we knew that much. the virx oorx olin whose owner

that song has been discovered in the attic. after years of testing sea water composites were comparable to other items that survived. connecting it to its original owner, he died in that disaster, along with more than 1,500 others in 1912. the violin's current interest in selling the instrument and the offers are pouring in. something you have it see here off the coast of seattle, washington. little fellows. look at too cute for tv. a few sea lion pups decided to hop on and take over a wind surfing board, so the owner mounted a camera to catch the invasion. isn't that adorable? just something to make you smile this morning. i'm going it see you back here at the top of the hour, "sanjay gupta md" starts right now.

hey, there, thanks for joining us. the new pope had a health scare that cost him part of a lung. he is 76 years old. what does that mean for him now? prescription medications to improve concentration. a new warning out there which drives home this point, you should only do this with medical supervision, what does that mean for your kids in school and you, as well. a father with a dilemma was his son dangerous or just misunderstood. his son was facing 60 years in prison. let's get started.

first up, though, an update on a boy that has become a friend of mine. his name is usef a painful reminder. part of my reporting at cnn is to remind you and to tell you that in wars, families and children suffer and he is one of them. the story that led him to me is this unbelievable tragedy. they came to his home, put kerosene and set him on fire. six years later his story isn't so much about the cruelty, but strength and resilience and also the pursuit of happiness. >> this is our classroom. i sit in that seat over there. >> reporter: what a typical american 10-year-old kid he has become.

>> reporter: this was yusef, just 5 years old. he was attacked by masked men in front of his home in baghdad. they poured gasoline on his face and set him on fire. what's the first thing you remember about all of that? >> i just, like, remember a doctor getting a sponge. >> reporter: in iraq? >> i think they scratched it on me or something. >> reporter: they were trying to take off some of the burned skin. >> yeah. >> reporter: his parents were desperate to see their boy smile again. just months after the attack they came to the united states with a single suitcase. their living expenses and medical expenses, all of it was paid for by the kindness of

strangers. we have followed their journey since 2007. yusef has had 19 operations, a total of 61 procedures to help correct the burn damage. if you were going to have more operations what would you want to have done? >> like over here. >> reporter: on your right ear? >> yeah. >> reporter: let's see. you want it more like your left ear? >> yeah. >> reporter: do you tell people what happened to him? >> i have to tell them when they ask. sometimes it bothers me when they don't ask and just keep looking. it bothers me. >> reporter: it doesn't bother yusef. he's a happy kid. he's smart, confident. his parents say he never complains. he never asks about the scars on his face. >> i hope he's not going to ask even when he grows up. that's going to really bother me a lot. if he's going to come to me

and say, like, why my face is that? i don't know what i'm going to answer. >> this one, i can see there's one, two, three. >> reporter: his parents say all of this feels like a dream. have you had a hard time making friends at all? >> no. when a new kid comes, the next day we're just friends. >> reporter: is that right? >> yeah. >> reporter: is anybody mean to you? >> no. >> reporter: he's been at the same school with the same kids since 1st grade. come june he'll say good-bye to this familiar place. up next is middle school. do you worry about when he goes to a new school now that he's going to get teased? >> yes. >> how does a father prepare his son for that? >> we have to be strong. we have to make him strong, too. >> reporter: once victims, now a family full of strength.

today the family appears safe, even happy. yusef's operations are covered by the california state children's services if you're curious as they would be for other children who live in california as well. with many immigrant families, they do face significant financial challenges. most items you saw were donated by people from all over the country. if you want to help out, or donate directly, you can reach them on twitter @youssifiraqi. you couldn't miss the excitement in rome over the new pope francis. what you may not know is that pope francis also had part of one lung removed when he was a very young man. we're going to talk about it more. dr. kotri from the cleveland

clinic, thanks for joining us. appreciate it. >> thank you. >> we don't have the details about this. he had h a serious infection in his 20s and had part of a lung removed. this is your area of expertise. what did you think when you heard that? how common was this at the time? >> when i heard how long ago it was and when i think about how wonderful he looked on the balcony and how inspiring he was, i thought what a role model not just as a healer in his role as the new pope francis, but also from the fact that someone who perserved from a childhood illness and had surgery and it didn't cripple him. that was encouraging. >> most people don't realize that you are born with excess lung capacity. the body is resilient and redundant. most people use 30 to 40%. it's not like your heart where

the whole muscle is crucial. you can remove a portion or maybe a whole lung without hurting the ability to breathe. pope francis, this hasn't slowed him down. he's also 76 years old and missing part of a lung. >> right. what would you advise for health concerns? >> what he's doing seems to be working well. talking to my pulmonary patients staying active, staying physically fit is helpful. making sure the rest of your body is fit and other chronic illnesses are managed well like diabetes or hypertension. basically making sure you are taking proper precautions. getting your vaccinations, treating infections early. he'll be in the public so it will be difficult to avoid being around sick people. as long as he takes care of himself and gets proper care and immunizations he should be okay. >> get your flu shot, too. >> i say it every year. >> we'll remind the pope of that. thanks so much for joining us. >> happy to be here.

tank you. coming up, something interesting known as cosmetic psychiatry. taking medicines you don't need so you can function better. dentures are very different to real teeth.

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last week this story got my attention, i think in part because i have kids. two mom launched an online petition calling on kraft to remove two ingredients from the popular mac & cheese. a few hundred thousand people signed on to this campaign. >> we found out kraft is using two ingredients in the u.s. version of mac & cheese, yellow number 5 and 6. but they are not using it overseas. >> yellow number 5 and 6 are artificial colors. they are fda approved but some critics say they are not benign. >> food dyes trigger hyper activity, inattention, temper

tantrums, those behavior changes in some subset of children. even the food and drug administration now agrees with that. >> we decided to talk to kraft as well. they say, quote, the safety and quality of our products is our highest priority. we take consumer concerns very seriously. the company sells plenty of mac & cheese identical in taste and nutritional values that does not have the added food colors. for now the products are still in the box. we'll keep you posted if they are removed. under the microscope today, cosmetic psychiatry is the use of prescription medications by people who don't need it. often times just to improve their focus, concentration. there is a new report that says it is parents pushing their kids to take the medications. parents need to listen to the story. joining me to talk about it from san diego, dr. allen francis of duke university and author of

"saving normal." thanks for joining us, doctor. >> my pleasure. >> i have kids. you know, this is one of the most common topics when parents get together, it seems. let me start off with this question. with regard to the medications, are they risky to a child's health? >> well, the kid needs the medication, it's a great thing to have. it can be very, very helpful. but most of the kids who are getting treated for attention deficit disorder now don't need it. certainly the cosmetic use of these medications for performance enhancement makes no sense at all. >> does it put their heart -- it's essentially amphetamines which is a type of speed to put it in context for the audience. is it risky? >> it can cause anxiety, sleeplessness, weight loss. in some kids it causes cardiac problems. the long-term effects are largely unknown. in some kids it may provoke

manic episodes. in others it could be a risk factor for substance dependence, but i want to underscore the fact that the medication can be remarkably useful when used well for someone who is carefully diagnosed. what's happening now though is many kids aren't carefully diagnosed and they are getting the medicine unnecessarily. >> along those lines, a little bit of history. in 1994 you were chairman of the group that wrote what's known as the dsm-4, the bible, the manual that determines the criteria for various types of disorders. since that manual came out, doctor, the diagnoses of adhd tripled. that feeds into the point that parents say, look, every child now has adhd. is it because of the looser, broader definition of adhd? >> the rates have gone from 3%

to 10%. 4% of kids get medication. we predicted a 15% chance. why has it tripled? two things happened we didn't anticipate -- expensive new drugs on patent came to the market. this gave the drug companies the means and motivationing to advertise very, very heavily. at the same time congress gave the drug companies a complete carte blanche to directly advertise to consumers as much as they wanted. we are the only country in the world that allows drug companies this degree of freedom. they took advantage of it. they marketed it aggressively to doctors, to parents and teachers. this has created a bubble of add diagnosis with many kids inappropriately diagnosed and inappropriately medicated. >> i think you make a good point. it's interesting. we hear about this all the time with regard to adhd. other disorders as well. patients, doctors, teachers coopted in a way, thinking they are doing the right thing.

but often times not. doctor, thank you. thanks for joining us. you know, a lot of parents out there, myself included. i think it's important to hear what you have to say. good luck with the book as well. >> thank you very much. appreciate it. coming up, we'll talk to a father who wrote movingly about being diagnosed with asperger syndrome and realizing he passed it to his son as well. they're both here to talk to us about it. sec ifor fast relief. cue up alka-seltzer. it stops heartburn fast. ♪ oh what a relief it is!

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misfit, truant, delinquent. my next guest said he wasn't a model child and is not a model dad either but has plenty of parenting advice. he's a best selling author with a new book called "raising cubby" a father and son's adventure with asperger's trains, tractors and high explosives. thanks for joining us. john joins us with his son, cubby, from chicopee, massachusetts. >> thanks for having us on with you. >> let me talk about asberger's. all your life you knew you were different in some way, why until age 40 were you not diagnosed with asperger syndrome? why did it take so long for you? >> remember, i was born in '57. asberger's wasn't really talked about by psychologists and therapists in america until the late '90s. i was 40 at the time. when my son was born in 1990 i

didn't know about asperger's or autism either, but i saw in him the same behavioral differences i remember from my childhood though i didn't know they were autism. i knew how i'd had struggles, i tried to advise him as best i could based on my experience, being the same way. >> cubby, i want to talk to you in a second. john, if i could ask about that. what were the behavioral things you recognized. cubby, i'm fascinated this, again, as part of a neuroscientist, what were you looking for? >> well, first of all, i'd say i wasn't looking for anything. like any parent, you always hope your kid's better than you, he's brighter and cuter and smarter, but when i would like go with his mom and we'd put him down at day care, there might be two or three other kids right on the floor next to him, and i sort of thought well maybe this would be like pouring goldfish

into a tank and cubby would be in there swimming with them all mixed up. but he wouldn't do that. cubby would stay by himself. that made me remember my own time as a little boy and how i wanted to engage the other kids and have friends and i didn't know how. i couldn't tell. was cubby wishing he could do it and not know how or did cubby truly not have interest? it was hard to know. i knew it was different and it was like me. >> it's fascinating. cubby, you have to excuse me. would you say you first noticed you were different from other kids? is that a fair way of characterizing it? >> i didn't really learn it from them. i have always known it. that i've always known he's different from all of my friend's fathers. my mother is different from my friends' mothers in a distinct way. i got the impression i'm not quite the same type of animal, you know.

>> i think cubby is fortunate because he thinks he's different. when i was a little boy i felt like i was defective which was a worse way to feel. >> that's interesting. i'm sure a lot of people at home watching the way you characterized that will be interesting for them. >> it's so common that people who are different are misinterpreted. whether it's somebody like cubby with a scientific curiosity twisted into imagined criminality or a young person his age with autistic speech challenges. an officer calls out to him hey there, young man, and he ignores him because he's autistic and they end up in a fight and the autism kid gets arrested, when all he was doing was standing there. he didn't respond, not because he was trying to get something over on the cop but he was autistic and had speech challenges. that's a tragedy when that kind of stuff happens to young people. >> i appreciate you coming on. it's important for people to hear this discussion.

it comes up a lot in our society. maybe more than ever. john and cubby, thanks. good luck with the book. everyone should read the book. >> thanks for having us on. next up, something you're going to want to keep in mind before you go out and drink this st. patrick's day. stay with "sgmd." whoa! nobody insures more bikes than progressive. do you guys ride? well... no. sometimes, yeah. yes. well, if you know anybody else who also rides, send them here -- we got great coverage.

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