stories at 5:00 eastern. former cia operative will join me to break down the very controversial so-called torture report. on the program the richest physician in the world. he is owner of the l.a. lakers and he is now investing nearly a billion dollars of his own money to finding a better way to treat cancer. this flu season could be more severe, more hospitalizations and more deaths because of a mutation that has occurred in the most common strain of the virus. with me is my producer, ben tinker. you have been finding some of the most common questions. >> a lot of people want to know when it is coming. we got a look at this new tool that predicts the flu kind of like meteorologists predict weather. >> they use mathematical models. now they use the model, real-time data, people searching

for flu on google and assimilate the information and you get a sort of heat map. you get an idea of where flu will be particularly bad. hotter spots flu is bad. they can even go deeper than that. if you look at a particular city you can find when the flu is going to be worse. new york city, the prediction is the week of january 10 when flu will be the worst. there is a website. the thing is i guess the value you might keep your kids home from school, cancel play dates, hospitals could have more surge capacity. >> a lot of people ask do i really need to get the flu shot? the people who don't get it swear they never get sick. what do you say? >> did you get the flu shot? >> i did. >> good. everybody in our medical unit has to get the flu shot. i get the flu shot, as well. there is a strain called h 3 n

2. when they make the vaccine they are going to guess which strain will be the most dominant strain that flu season and that is what you vaccinate against. this time the strainmitated a bit. it added a protein here and lost a protein in another place. the flu shot will still offer benefit and to your question it's not too late. you can still get it. as you saw january 10 is the week in new york city where flu will be worst. >> you have a little bit of time. >> i don't know about you but when i was young my mom said don't get too cold you are going to get sick. the cold doesn't make you sick but there are reasons why this time of year is the reason people get the flu. >> i think every mom says that. it is not so much the idea that you are going to go outside and catch a cold or catch the flu, but there are reasons why it is worst. we spend more times indoors so if one person has the flu they

can spread it to many people and it can make it seem like more flu going around. because of the season you get less sun light, less vitamin d, you get changes in your immune function overall. finally, there is correlations with the weather but maybe not in the way you think. colder weather, less humid. viruses can live longer if it is less humid. so the virus just stays around longer. those are three reasons why it is more common. it is amazing nobody knows exactly for sure. >> mom may have been right but not for the reason she said. >> moms were trying to get us to wear a hat and said you will catch the flu. they knew you were not geeg to catch the flu but wanted you to wear your hat. >> and i'm still here. >> hopefully that answered some questions for you. up next, disrupting cancer. this incredible doctor is turning some heads with unconventional ways of treating this deadly disease. purchases. that's a win. but imagine earning it twice.

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cancer has outwitted scientists and doctors for decades. more than 1,500 people die of the disease every day in this country. scientists tell you they have learned more about cancer in the last five years than ever before. no one is more optimistic about what that will mean for patients. he has been called a genius, showman, innovator and a hypester. he is also the richest man in los angeles, a doctor and entrepreneur worth an estimated $11 billion. he was a respected surgeon before making his name in the cancer world by developing a multibillion-dollar drug. he wants to disrupt the conventional way we treat cancer. since he is overflowing with ideas on how to do it. >> that was what i call feed the tumor. >> give him a white board and a few markers and like a mad

scientist he will diagram how he thinks cancer can be beaten. he wants to attack on multiple fronts and is confident there is a pathway to the cure. for 45 minutes he outlined his vision from beginning to end. >> this is a crazy looking board. >> that's what goes in my head. this is like bursting. >> and are we looking inside your head? >> i ink so a little bit. >> how long before we get here? >> i'm incredibly encouraged to say that we are on the path and the technology to actually do of these things is not just hypothetical. >> technology is the main weapon he is deploying against cancer. in october at his company's headquarters in los angeles final tests were being run on high-speed tumor genome sequencing machines that he is convinced will unmask molecular secrets to cancer. >> for the first time with this

technology we can watch it and outsmart it. >> to understand the significance of what he is touting it is important to know what cancer is. >> a cancer is not what people thinks. it is the inability of the cells to die. >> the key is figuring out the glitch that prevents cells from dying a natural death. his hope is to provide patients with the precise genetic mutations that fuel their cancer regardless of where tumors are found in the body. >> mutation that happens in lung cancer can be the same mutation that happens in breast cancer. you need to treat that patient based on mutation and not on the physical anatomical location. >> that is a big idea. the idea that the breast cancer specialists are looking for breast cancer mutations and may be missing the ball. >> absolutely. >> a lung cancer drug could work on breast cancer, for instance,

if the mutation is the same. the concept of doing away with labelling the disease by where it is found is not unique but it is a tectonic shift in the fight against cancer, the notion of classifying a cancer by its mutati mutation. >> imagine reclassifying cancer and having people understand. i am very excited because we are going to create this revolution. >> what is it going to mean? >> it will mean you have a better shot of having a better outcome and having a quality of life and turning it. >> optimistic, realistic, as well? >> i think so. >> he has appointed himself to lead this revolution. cancer genome sequencing is not new. what is different about the project is the scale. he has spent nearly $1 billion of his own money to build a massive infrastructure run by super computers to find every

genetic mutation that could drive cancer cht this is his plan, a patient anywhere in the world has his tumor biopsied. the complete genetic map is created down to the proteins that are produced but only recently took months can be done in a day. ultimately personalized information for each cancer patient would show up in the palm of his hand. >> this is a baby. it will be the world's first browser of the cancer genome. think about that. you will be able to fly through to get to the single letter that ismitated. >> he has teamed with black berry to produce a device that will identify for patients and doctors what they need to make more informed decisions. >> at the end of the day someone has a tumor they can find out the complete analysis of that tumor and what the perfect drug is to treat it? >> correct. >> and that's what's exciting. at the end of the day this is watt we think we can bring to the world now.

>> some in the cancer world fear he is getting ahead of himself skpl and declaring victory. >> show me the money. show me the data. show me that it's true. >> a renowned oncologist and researcher is president in the institute in charlotte, north carolina. >> he says if we can figure out which mutations are driving a cancer we will be better able to find the drugs that can treat that cancer. is that a fair theory? >> i think that is a fair theory. but to say i can throw a tumor into a gismo and that gismo will tell me the answer in a few minutes and everything will flow from that, i don't think we are there now. i don't think we will be there next year. i think there is just too much hard complex science that has to be done before this is state-of-the-art. but it is a very cool idea for the future. >> the vast majority of mutations are actually not a

threat. so to figure out which mutations are dangerous he is going back in time. >> this national treasure. >> in the basement of the john wayne cancer institute in santa monica, california, decades of cancer tissues were stored by scientists in deep freeze vats. now he wants to use technology that didn't exist back then to map the gegnomes of these thousands of tissues in order to look for critical patterns. >> even after a patient died their samples were stored here. they can go back and say they had this mutation and now we can explain that this mutation leads to death and other mutations may not. >> that's exactly right. and ask the question why did this patient live and why did this patient die? why did this work and not work? >> to make any of this work he believes you need to up end the way cancer drugs are developed.

>> i know it sounds -- but you need to produce 20 to 30 drugs a year to get ahead of the game. >> right now it takes a few years to create a single drug. you are talking about 30 drugs in one year. is that really feasible? >> that is where we have a challenge. we need to change the way we actually develop drugs now. >> he is impatient with the pace of drug approvals. in the early '90s he invented a drug that streets pancreatic, lung and breast cancer patients but more than a decade passed before the fda approved it. >> with cancer we don't have that time. if you have pancreatic cancer you have two months. >> he is also frustrated with what he calls the trial and error cycle of cancer care. >> the truth of the matter we treat cancer today we guess. we take what we call average

results, put it on and try another drug. if it doesn't work we stop the drug. >> the 62-year-old native of south africa can afford to be outspoken because of his immense welt. he doesn't need to rely on the government or big pharma for funding. the enlightened age is about to begin. >> what would the average person note about the enlightened age versus dark age? >> treatment doesn't have to be painful. cancer could be a chronic disease and treated towards the cure. >> while the oncology world may cringe when he boasts as he is prone to do, patients see him differently. >> the established community doesn't like false hope, but if you have a terminal disease like i do you want some hope.

>> david roy was diagnosed two years ago with stage four met static pancreatic cancer. he was given four months to live and told to settle his affairs. he recommended a ucla oncologist who devised an unusual therapy. then he had roy's tumor genome sequenced. roy is taking part in a clinical trial involving another front in cancer treatment. >> that is the cancer cell. >> it's called immunotherapy. he is not the only one working on it but he was anxious to show us why oncologists believe it is a promising field. a time lapsed demonstration of how t-cells which our immune systems naturally produce can attack cancer cells. >> this is a cell gobbling up the cancer cell.

this will decrease in cell. here is the t cell gobbling it up. here is the cancer cell. >> that's amazing. >> you are literally watching cancer cells die here. >> correct. >> you find these t cells and able to isolate them is the idea then you know they do the job you can grow them and put them back into the body? >> exactly. >> even though it has been two years since david roy's original diagnosis he is realistic about his chances of survival. he is convinced scientists are on track to dramatically decrease cancer death rates in the not too distant future. >> i'm not sure it will happen fast enough for me, but i have every confidence that my children and grandchildren

>> the cancer cell in the blood we have the path to winning this war. we never had this path before. >> after pulling out the circulating tumor cells scientists can take them back to look for new mutations that made them resistant to the initial treatment and hopefully find a new drug to treat it. it is yet another angle he is taking to disrupt cancer. >> you have genommics. you have circulating tumor cell, death by t-cell. why are you taking all of this on? these are lots of different types of things. >> somebody said you are all over the place. i said you have to be all over the place because i'm trying to fight this war from all over the place. because you can't -- there is one single magic bullet. >> no it is not dr. pat or

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life. goaltending wasn't even a thought when he was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis in 1998. he started taking medication and was feeling so great that being an nhl spectator motivated him to get back on the ice. >> one night it flipped a switch and it just went i want to go do this again. the very next day i take my stuff out of the attic. >> he caught the attention of some coaches who invited him to play and then came an invitation for a training camp in the east coast hockey league. that led to a spot as a backup goalie. in november of 2011 i dressed for my first professional game which was a profound experience. >> he no longer dresses for games but practices with the team when he is needed. he is a liaison to help players half his age appreciate. a perspective he has drawn on in his own experience. >> i never would have believed that i would have an opportunity

like this. >> cnn reporting. >> the human factor is brought to you by cancer treatment centers of america, care that never quits.

dad,thank you mom for said this oftprotecting my future.you. thank you for being my hero and my dad. military families are uniquely thankful for many things, the legacy of usaa auto insurance could be one of them. if you're a current or former military member or their family, get an auto insurance quote and see why 92% of our members plan to stay for life. they risked and persisted, sacrificed and saved. "time" magazine named its 2014 person of the year the ebola fighters, the doctors, nurses,

ambulance drivers. they except the last year fighting to save the lives of family, friends, neighbors and complete strangers. the world health organization tallies more than 6,000 deaths among roughly 18,000 sick. what started off as a single case of ebola last december in guinea has grown into an epidemic of unprecedented proportions. >> i have seen the ebola fighters at work in west africa and here in the united states. as a doc when i take care of patients fundamentally i'm not risking my life to take care of them. it struck me spending time with ebola fighters in order to help somebody else they are literally taking their own lives in their own hands. they put on the garb and walk into the tents and hope and pray that they have done everything right so they don't get infected and don't get sick and possibly die. they are not sure. we have seen this over and over again. when the ebola outbreaks start

it is always the health care worker teams that get sick first. there has been no infrastructure fory of the countries that we have been talking about. on a pragmatic sense unless the health care workers are able to fix the problem there it is not solved elsewhere around the world. that is what they are doing right now. cnn news room continues after a quick break. will that be all, sir?

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reliably fast internet starts at $89.95 a month. comcast business. built for business. hi everyone you are in the cnn news room joining you live from new york. it is 5:00 eastern. i am going to show you live pictures of the senate which just passed a bill to keep this government running at least through wednesday. they are still working on the bigger $1.1 trillion spending bill that would fund the government through next september. first to this story. in several major american cities today thousands of people joining their voices and bodies. large crowds protesting marching through