our students need. captioning funded by cbs and ford >> kroft: steve kroft from "60 minutes." i was wondering if i could talk to congressman andrews. most americans believe it's against the law for congressmen and senators to profit personally from their political office... what about this trip to scotland? i mean, that's what the mafia gets. ...but it's an open secret in washington that that's not the case. >> kroft: congressman. >> yes, sir. >> kroft: steve kroft from "60 minutes". do you mind if i ask you a couple of questions? to some people, it just looks like you are using your campaign fund to enrich your family. >> ward: we usually think of heart disease as a condition that develops late in life. but in africa, hundreds of thousands of children are dying every year of heart failure. these children don't smoke, they don't eat red meat.

their condition is caused most d frequently by strep throat. >> this disease alone kills, in africa, more than 300,000 people every year. >> ward: but what percentage do you save of that? >> oh, very small one. insignificant. because we can do 1,500 operations per year, no more, one hospital for a continent, obviously, is not the solution of the problem. >> gupta: ian roberts has been farming salmon in canada for more than 20 years. he works for marine harvest. they're the biggest salmon farming company in the world, and he took us to see one of their farms in british columbia. we come out here and it is just so beautiful, and the argument is that these farms threaten the pristine nature of this beauty. is that a fair argument? >> no. while there is a local impact and, let's be honest, when you farm anything, whether it's vegetables or animals on land, you have an impact.

>> i'm steve kroft. >> i'm lesley stahl. >> i'm morley safer. >> i'm bob simon. >> i'm scott pelley. those stories tonight on "60 minutes". enjoy yothanks.k! i love being on stage. but when i get time off, i take advantage of it. i have postmenopausal osteoporosis and a high risk for fracture& and i know the best way to enjoy a break& is to help reduce my risk of having one. that's why i take prolia®. it's different. it's two shots a year. prolia is proven to help make bones stronger& and help increase bone density. do not take prolia® if you have low blood calcium, are pregnant, are allergic to it, or take xgeva®. get medical help right away for a serious allergic reaction causing low blood pressure; trouble breathing; throat, fa,e lip, or tongue swelling; or rash, itching or hives

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>> kroft: the midterm congressional elections are still six months away, but the campaign fundraising season, which never really ends, is just reaching its peak. with all the talk about members of congress's irreconcilable political differences, we wanted to see if they shared any common ground. and we found some. for example, there seems to be a permanent majority in congress that's completely satisfied with the current state of campaign

financing and congressional ethics, and members of both parties have institutionalized ways to skirt the rules and maintain the lifestyles that many of them have grown accustomed to. as we learned when we first reported this story last october, most americans believe it's against the law for congressmen and senators to profit personally from their political office, but it's an open secret in washington that that's not the case. as the saying goes, the real scandal in washington isn't what's illegal; it's what's legal. georgia senator saxby chambliss likes golf, so much so that he spent more than $100,000 the past two years entertaining at some of the finest courses in the world. new york congressman gregory meeks prefers football; he spent $35,000 on nfl games. all of this was paid for with political contributions, all in the name of democracy. >> peter schweizer: i think campaign fundraising is increasingly not just about winning elections; it's a

lifestyle subsidy. >> kroft: peter schweizer is an author and fellow at the hoover institution. for the past few years, he and a team of researchers have been investigating the way congressmen and senators have personally benefited from the hundreds of millions of dollars in political contributions that have poured into the system. most people have the impression that campaign funds cannot be used for personal expenses. is that true? >> schweizer: yes. regular campaign funds cannot, that's correct. but there are ways around it. like all things in washington, the devil is in the details, and loopholes are usually put in place for a reason. >> kroft: for example, when congress passed the ethics reform act of 1989, it plainly stated: "a member shall convert no campaign funds to personal use." but soon afterwards, congressional leaders quietly invented something called leadership pacs-- political action committees-- that were not technically campaign funds, and thus exempt from the personal use prohibition.

this is a loophole? >> trevor potter: right. that's correct. >> kroft: trevor potter is a former chairman of the federal election commission. he says it didn't take long for congressmen and senators to figure out the distinct advantages of having a leadership pac, with no restrictions. >> potter: since they weren't around when the ban on personal use was put into place, they're not covered by it. and they can be used for literally anything. >> kroft: over time, the leadership pacs that were created as a way for congressional leaders of both parties to raise money and distribute it to their members have evolved into something different. today, nearly every congressman and senator has a leadership pac, not just the leaders, and they are used to solicit contributions from friends and supporters in order to advance their political agendas, their careers, and in many cases, their lifestyle. it's like a political slush fund. >> potter: that's exactly what it is; it's a political slush fund. over time, we've had them. they've been outlawed. they spring back in new guises, and this is the latest guise.

>> kroft: potter says they are essentially personal political expense accounts, financed largely by lobbyists and special interest groups. leadership pacs are now the second largest political revenue stream for members of congress. >> schweizer: you can use them for babysitting, paying for babysitters. you can use them for paying for car service. you can use them for travel. nobody's really checking to see whether this is personal or legitimate business expense. >> kroft: back in 2006, north carolina senator and presidential candidate john edwards used his leadership pac to pay his mistress, rielle hunter, $114,000 to make a campaign video. and republican congressman ander crenshaw of florida spent $32,000 hosting a tour of california wineries for a group of contributors from the defense industry, which he has some oversight of. >> schweizer: look, they're not having leadership pac meetings at the hampton inn down the road. they're going to the premier golfing and resorts in the united states and in...

sometimes, around the world. and that's ostensibly where they're doing this leadership pac work. >> kroft: for example, democratic congressman robert andrews of new jersey used $16,000 from his leadership pac, the committee to strengthen america, to fly his family to scotland, ostensibly to attend the wedding of a friend that he was thinking about hiring as a political consultant. >> schweizer: why he needed to meet him in edinburgh, scotland, at a four-star resort, i think, is open to question. so they will categorize them as something related to the leadership pac. but in reality, they're for personal use. >> kroft: we wanted to talk to congressman andrews about his leadership pac and the family trip to scotland, but were turned down. we did manage to find him at a hearing, and passed him a note announcing our presence. andrews, it turns out, is under investigation by the house ethics committee for misusing campaign funds to advance the career of his daughter. he agreed to talk to us outside. what about this trip to scotland? >> rob andrews: i follow all the

rules, met the standards, and there is a matter pending before the house ethics committee. under those rules, my obligation's not to talk about the investigation until it's over. >> kroft: we talked to the ethics committee. they said they have no problem with you talking to us about this. >> andrews: well, it's my understanding of the rules are that, when there's a pending matter, i'm supposed to keep it confidential and so are they. so, i'm going to follow those rules. >> kroft: these leadership pacs have been described by a lot of people as sort of political slush funds. do you agree with that? >> andrews: you know, i think we should take a look at having clearer rules at what they can and cannot be spent for. i'd be for that. >> kroft: that's what almost everyone in congress says, but no one really seems to want reform. it should be pointed out that not all congressmen use the their pacs for their personal benefit, but the federal election commission has called the level of abuse "substantial." its former chairman, trevor potter, says the commission has consistently recommended to congress that it outlaw the personal use of leadership pacs. and what's happened to that recommendation?

>> potter: nothing. you know, it enters a black hole. >> kroft: that's because the leadership pacs have become a political annuity for congress that members can cash in when they leave office, or hold onto for the future. >> potter: what you see more often is that members will keep the leadership pac, and they will use it in retirement for everything that is vaguely a political expense. if they become a lobbyist, which about half of members who leave congress do nowadays, that becomes their lobbying slush fund. it just keeps going, at least until death. >> kroft: and even beyond death. >> potter: well, even beyond death, someone else is spending that money. >> kroft: when republican congressman paul gillmor of ohio died suddenly from a heart attack in 2007, his staff decided that no political contribution should go unspent. >> potter: the staff went off to a number of dinners and pizza parties and other events using the leadership pac money. what they said was, "well, it's a grieving process. and also, we need to talk to

each other about getting new jobs, and this is a way to do it." >> kroft: and nobody had any problems with that? >> potter: the problem is, it's not illegal. >> kroft: there are lots of things in washington that would seem to be illegal but really aren't, if you know your way through the loopholes. melanie sloan is the executive director of citizens for responsibility and ethics in washington, a small group that tracks campaign expenditures. as we said earlier it's against the law to use campaign funds for personal use, but sloan says it's perfectly acceptable to use campaign funds to hire your wife, husband, children, grandchildren, and in-laws. >> melanie sloan: while there are anti-nepotism rules that prevent them from hiring their family members on the official staff, they can indeed hire them on the campaign payroll, and do. >> kroft: and they do? >> sloan: and they do. >> kroft: sloan says there are at least 75 members of congress who have hired members of their family to work on their campaign and paid them with political

contributions. until republican congressman ron paul of texas retired in 2012, he seemed to be the leader with six family members on the campaign payroll-- daughter, daughter's mother-in-law, three grandchildren, and a grand child-in-law, paying them a total of $304,000 over the past two election cycles. but paul only ranked third in total pay-outs to family members, behind former republican congressman jerry lewis and democratic congresswoman maxine waters, both of california. for some congressmen and senators, this is sort of a family business. >> sloan: absolutely. it is a family business. they have members of their family on the campaign payroll. and they also will often have members of their family who are lobbyists and lobby on issues in which the member may even be working. >> kroft: we were interested in talking to republican congressman rodney alexander, who had just retired midterm, after winning a campaign with no democratic opposition, a race in which he paid his two daughters

a total of $130,000. congressman? steve kroft from "60 minutes." we just wanted to ask you about both your daughters on the campaign staff? i mean, the figures that we have according to the reports are $73,000 to lisa lowe, and $57,000 to ginger. >> rodney alexander: that's for a two-year... that's for the election cycle. >> kroft: what exactly did they do? can you tell me? >> alexander: do everything that others do for other campaigns. >> kroft: whatever they did, it couldn't have been that stressful. alexander won 78% of the vote against a libertarian candidate who wanted to abolish the irs. i mean, to some people, it just looks like you're using your campaign fund to enrich your family. >> alexander: well, somebody has to do that work, steve. >> kroft: so, you kept it in the family? >> alexander: well, i kept it with somebody that i can trust and if one can't trust their daughter, then who can they trust?

>> schweizer: i think it's the kind of nepotism that, in large parts of american society, we frown about. i mean, in corporate america, a lot of corporations have policies that relate to nepotism and the hiring and firing of individual people. but congress has created this domain that allows them to decide whether something is ethical or whether something is good. and it's another example, unfortunately, where the rules that apply to the rest of us don't really apply to members of congress. >> kroft: in 2011, senator david vitter of louisiana introduced a bill to try and rectify the situation. it would prohibit members from paying relatives with campaign or leadership accounts. >> david vitter: that is a loophole, an area of abuse that we must close. >> kroft: so far, senator vitter has not found a single co- sponsor. and no one is the least bit surprised. >> sloan: everyone in washington knows this goes on. it's well-known, an open secret. the problem is people in ohio and new mexico have no idea what's going on here in washington. >> kroft: sloan says another way

congressmen can personally benefit from the use of political contributions is by making personal loans to their campaign funds, then charging above-market and sometimes exorbitant interest rates. sloan's organization found at least 15 cases, with the worst offender being democratic congresswoman grace neapolitan who charged her campaign 18%. how much money did she loan her campaign? >> sloan: she loaned herself $150,000, and over a 12-year period, took in $228,000 in interest. >> kroft: i think everybody would like that investment. >> sloan: i think so. >> kroft: and that's legal. >> sloan: and that's legal. >> kroft: after weeks of trying to get an interview with congresswoman neapolitan, we finally cornered her outside a meeting of the hispanic caucus. she told us that as a woman and a minority, banks wouldn't lend her money, so she had to withdraw $150,000 from an investment account to lend it to her campaign. you loaned money to your campaign, and then charged the campaign 18% interest?

>> that is correct. to be able to do a lot of the things i had to do were not feasible, unless i did what i had to do. and so at that point, that what was recommended, and that's what i went with. >> kroft: i don't think there's anything wrong with loaning your campaign money. but then collecting 18% interest from your campaign seems a little too much. >> would you go out and get a loan and not get charged interest? >> kroft: it's still 18% and $228,000 in interest. >> you like to favor 18%... >> kroft: i do like to favor. i mean, that's what the mafia gets. >> it isn't like i've really profited. i still live in the same house. i drive a small car. i am not a billionaire, or a millionaire, for that matter. >> kroft: did your campaign contributors know that you were paying back a loan, charging the campaign committee 18%? >> well, you don't go out and publicize that, but they know that i had a campaign debt. >> sloan: when folks are asked for campaign donations and when they make campaign donations, they are doing it because they are in sync with that member of congress's views and they want to see them pushing policies and get reelected.

i don't think they have any idea that some of that money is actually going into the member's personal bank account. >> kroft: there are currently two modest ethics reform bills pending in congress that would change a small part of what we've been talking about-- one sponsored by a senate republican, the other by a house democrat. neither has a prayer of even being debated. >> schweizer: we hear a lot about how there's so much partisan fighting in washington, steve. here's a great example of bipartisanship. both sides like this current system. >> kroft: in february, congressman rob andrews of new jersey resigned in the middle of his two-year term to run the government relations practice of a philadelphia law firm. he said that the ethics probe had nothing to do with his decision to quit congress. he is leaving, he says, because the new job would pay him more money than his congressional salary. after our story aired, there were additional legislative attempts to close the leadership pac loophole. so far, they have received very little support.

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>> kroft: now, cbs news correspondent clarissa ward, on assignment for "60 minutes." >> ward: we usually think of heart disease as a condition that develops late in life. but in africa, hundreds of thousands of children are dying every year of heart failure. their condition is caused most frequently by strep throat. it's called rheumatic heart disease. an estimated 15 million african children have it, and four out of five of them will die before they reach the age of 25. if you've never heard of it before, that's because it's long ago been eradicated here in the west. for most children who have it, the only cure is open heart surgery. there is just one hospital in

all of africa which offers the expensive operation free of charge. it's run by an italian organization called emergency, whose founder and chief surgeon, dr. gino strada, believes that doctors have to fight for every life, regardless of the cost. our journey began in sierra leone, where we met a sweet, healthy looking girl called mariata with a ticking time bomb in her chest. sierra leone is a tiny country on africa's west coast which holds a sad record-- its population has the lowest life expectancy in the world. on average, people here only live to the age of 47. but when esther's 11-year-old daughter mariata first became sick, she couldn't imagine that her condition could be fatal. mariata was having a hard time walking, her breathing was labored. her entire body seemed to be slowly shutting down.

>> esther: i decided to go with her to hospital. >> ward: esther took her to a hospital run by emergency, where cardiologist dr. mimo risika examined mariata and delivered some grave news. >> mimo risika: this mitral valve doesn't close. it's part of the heart. >> ward: dr. risika explained that one of mariata's heart valves was severely damaged, and that the only thing that could save her life was open heart surgery. >> esther: i asked him, "doctor, what is the cause of this problem?" he told me that it is a sore throat that causes this problem to people. >> ward: a sore throat. do you remember having a sore throat? >> esther: yeah. >> ward: yeah? when mariata was just four years old, she had strep throat, an infection caused by the streptococcus bacteria. kids everywhere get it, but because mariata lives here, she wasn't taken to the doctor and wasn't given antibiotics. when repeated infections go

untreated, they can lead to a far more serious condition-- a damaged heart valve, which, in africa, is almost always a death sentence. there is nothing dr. risika can do for her, except send her medical file to emergency's hospital in sudan to see if they will take on her case. it is mariata's only hope. in a refugee camp in sudan, we met the man who runs that hospital. >> gino strada: here, we are really talking about, you know, drying the ocean with a spoon. >> ward: dr. gino strada, emergency's founder, is a heart surgeon. he first arrived here ten years ago to treat the victims of sudan's vicious civil war. what he found was a community ravaged by a disease. emergency started a clinic where staff test for the dangerous streptococcus bacteria and treat it with antibiotics. but preventative medicine wasn't

going to help the children who already had the deadly heart condition. >> strada: here, we are in hell because the... the death toll that these children pay for rheumatic heart disease is just unbearable. >> ward: so he decided to do something radical- to offer cardiac surgery, free of charge, right here in sudan. with some funding from the sudanese government and from emergency's donors in the west, he built the salaam center, a gleaming state-of-the-art hospital... >> strada: you can go down with the flow and close the pump. >> ward: ...where he presides over a surgical team that performs four to six open heart operations a day. >> strada: you know, when emergency decided to build here in sudan a center of cardiac surgery, we were heavily criticized. "oh, this is crazy. this is not what the sudanese people need." and our answer was, why not cardiac surgery? >> ward: well, the argument

would be that you're spending a lot of money saving relatively few lives, where you could be spending that money saving many more lives. >> strada: absolutely. that's true. and that's why there are a lot of agencies who are entirely devoted to focus on communicable diseases and malaria and vaccinations and all this. and this has to be done. but it cannot be the only approach. >> ward: dr. strada's approach is to fight for every life. >> strada: this disease alone kills, in africa, more than 300,000 people every year. >> ward: but what percentage do you save of that? >> strada: oh, very small one. insignificant. because we can do 1,500 operations per year, no more, one hospital for a continent, obviously, is not the solution of the problem. it's just a seed. >> ward: it's a seed that dr. strada wants to spread, which is why he brings in patients from other countries.

dr. risika's mission in sierra leone was to identify the most urgent cases and suggest them as candidates for surgery in sudan. >> risika: okay, so please check it today, okay? >> ward: while we were there, he was called in to see another little girl, sufiatu. >> risika: sufiatu, how are you? >> ward: hers was an urgent case. her body was struggling to fight off a severe infection that had formed around her damaged heart valve. >> risika: let's check the echo, hmm? >> ward: the question was not whether or not to send her to sudan, it was whether she would survive the grueling journey. >> risika: she must be operated as soon as possible. >> ward: most of the kids dr. risika sees here are not as far gone as sufiatu. but without surgery to repair their hearts, none of them have long to live. >> risika: she's ready for surgery. >> ward: and emergency can only afford to save a handful of them.

after two days in the hospital, sufiatu was able to walk on her own, enough for the doctors to declare her fit to travel. she joined mariata and three other very sick children who gathered with their mothers for the trip. together, they set out on the 4,000 mile journey to sudan. none of the kids, or their mothers, had ever traveled so far-- never been on a ferry, never taken a flight, never been to another country. by the last leg of the trip, sufiatu was fading, and by the time they landed, she had to be rushed by ambulance to the salaam center. >> risika: she's very weak. >> ward: she was taken into surgery the very next day. >> risika: metzenbaum... >> ward: dr. strada invited us to watch the operation... >> risika: there's the heart. >> ward: ...and explained what he was doing. so, you're preparing now to stop her heart completely. >> strada: yeah. >> ward: and her body temperature will be taken right down. >> strada: yeah, down to 30

degrees. >> ward: and the only thing keeping her alive will be this machine here. >> strada: exactly. >> ward: dr. strada gently removes the heavily infected valve. can you see already how bad the damage is? >> strada: yes, extremely bad, extremely bad. god knows how they survive in these conditions. >> ward: he carefully positions the artificial valve and then, stitch by stitch, secures it firmly in place. >> strada: okay, flow down. >> okay, flow's down >> ward: the operator of the bypass machine begins restoring the blood flow to the heart. now, the heart is about to start beating for itself again? >> strada: hopefully. >> ward: hopefully. >> strada: okay, stop. >> pump's off. >> strada: cannula is out. >> ward: is that the hardest part over? >> strada: yeah. >> ward: sufiatu will spend the next few days in an intensive care unit. even if the operation is successful, she will rely on emergency for drugs and medical

care for the rest of her life. but that still beats the alternative. without this surgery, how long could she have survived? >> strada: well, from one day to three months. >> ward: but not longer than three months. >> strada: no. >> ward: so how many heart surgeries have you done? >> strada: well, at this center, i think we did slightly over 5,000. >> ward: but you personally in your life? >> strada: oh, i didn't count, but... but i do it every day. >> ward: so, thousands? >> strada: yeah. i'm basically a surgical animal, you know. that's the only thing i can do. ( laughter ) >> ward: he's been doing it for decades. after medical school, he trained at stanford and pittsburgh universities before joining the red cross to become, as he calls it, a war surgeon. but he felt that he could do more. so he started emergency, a small organization devoted to the treatment of victims of war,

that quickly became known for going where other groups don't. emergency has a reputation for pushing the envelope, for pushing right onto the front lines. is that necessary? >> strada: well, it is. because that's where the most wounded are. >> ward: but to get to the frontlines, emergency works closely with some of the world's darkest regimes, including, here in sudan, notorious president omar al bashir, who has been indicted for war crimes. the small organization dr. strada started 20 years ago now runs eight hospitals and 49 clinics in some of the world's most troubled countries and, at 65, dr. strada now lives at the salaam center full time. at 8:00 every morning, he sits down to discuss the day's cases. today, the first patient under his knife will be mariata, the first little girl we met in sierra leone. as dr. strada prepared to

perform the secular magic of open heart surgery, mariata's mother esther led the sierra leone group in prayer, singing to god to steady the surgeon's hand. >> esther: ♪ i heard about you i heard about you... >> ward: look at that. wow. >> ward: the operation was a success. does it feel good to see it start beating again? >> strada: yes, much better than the opposite, believe me. ( laughs ) >> ward: mariata is one of the fortunate few. she won't share the fate of hundreds of thousands of children who die of this disease each year. how do you choose the small handful that get flown over here for this state-of-the-art treatment? >> strada: it's just a matter of coincidences. >> ward: but in a sense, you choose who lives and who doesn't. >> strada: you know, every time you say yes to someone, you are

automatically say no to somebody else. we can perform 1,500 operations per year, so we can distribute 1,500 coins to the winners. >> ward: we went to the ward to see how one of those winners, sufiatu, was doing. pick which ones you want. the pink hearts? you can't go wrong with pink hearts, right? she was making a remarkable recovery. and just a week after they arrived, she, mariata, and all the other kids from sierra leone were back on their feet. they were, quite simply, reborn in the operating room. >> strada: it's a disease where the young, the kids, the teenagers, pay the highest price. we are trying to do the... the small things that we can do, and we know it's a drop in the ocean. ,,,,,,,,

>> pelley: now, cbs news correspondent sanjay gupta, on assignment for "60 minutes." >> gupta: salmon is the most popular fish on american dinner plates, but most of it is no longer fished out of the sea. close to three-quarters of our salmon is farmed, grown in cages suspended in the open ocean in places like south america, europe and canada. it's a multi-billion dollar industry now, but many environmental organizations are concerned these farms could be spreading diseases into the wild. and they've issued a red-label warning for farmed salmon, urging consumers to avoid buying the product because of its potential environmental impact. salmon farmers say the industry has improved over the years, and they're actually helping to save the last remaining wild salmon in the sea.

>> ian roberts: so we're arriving to the farm now. >> gupta: that's it, right? >> roberts: yeah, yeah. >> gupta: ian roberts has been farming salmon in canada for more than 20 years. he works for marine harvest. they're the biggest salmon farming company in the world, and he took us to see one of their farms in british columbia. >> gupta: pretty spectacular. >> roberts: this is the office. >> gupta: this farm is about 150 miles north of vancouver. when you come out here, it is so beautiful. and the argument is that these farms threaten the pristine nature of this beauty. is that a fair argument? >> roberts: no. while there is a local impact, and... and let's be honest, when you farm anything, whether it's vegetables or animals on land, you have an impact. but you're also taking pressure off wild stocks. by raising fish in the ocean, we're actually conserving what we have left in the ocean. >> ward: what's left in the ocean is in trouble. the number of wild salmon in both the atlantic and pacific oceans have been on a steady decline over the past century,

while the demand for salmon just keeps rising. so ian roberts says he sees it as almost his duty to farm fish. >> roberts: we farm everything we eat. all our vegetables are farmed. all our meats are farmed. the ocean is the last place where we hunted and gathered. the problem is there is seven billion of us now on this planet. and the oceans can't give us any more fish. we owe it to our oceans to make sure that we're providing an alternate to just capturing the last wild fish. >> gupta: marine harvest owns about 30 farms just like this one in british columbia. each farm is about the size of a couple football fields, built in calm ocean inlets where farmed salmon can thrive. >> roberts: here, i'll get you just to grab his tail there and see how he kicks. >> gupta: okay. ( laughter ) am i being hazed? is that what that was? >> roberts: that's exactly what it is. that's a nice looking fish. >> gupta: while these fish

appear normal... you're free into the pen. ...the environment they live in is anything but normal. salmon, which are naturally white in color, get their pink color from eating shrimp and other creatures in the wild that have chemicals called carotenoids. so, this is the feed? let's talk a look. these farmed salmon get synthetic versions of the chemical added to their food, which gives them that classic pink color consumers expect. >> roberts: we can adjust the amount of carotenoids in the diet to adjust the color. ( alarm sounds ) that's the oxygen alarm. >> gupta: so does that mean the oxygen has just gone down? >> roberts: too low, yeah. >> gupta: is that a limitation of a farm? because if they were in the wild, they would swim deeper or go to a different place. >> roberts: sure. yeah, you need to manage the environment where your animals live. that's farming. >> gupta: each of these pens holds 60,000 fish, and one of the concerns about these farms is that this tight concentration can lead to otherwise harmless viruses mutating into super-

bugs, and then spreading. one of the things that happens in humans is, if they live in close quarters, what might otherwise be a relatively harmless infection can spread very quickly. is that an issue here? >> roberts: well, we have to be aware of that because it is intensive culture. it is something that we take into consideration. >> gupta: so farmers vaccinate salmon against known viruses, but the vaccines don't always work. every year, there are outbreaks on salmon farms, and some scientists are concerned those diseases could spread to wild salmon. >> alex morton: salmon farming cannot be done in the ocean in net pens without destroying the environment around it. >> gupta: that's a strong statement, but it's one alexandra morton, a prominent environmental activist and scientist, has been trying to prove for the past two decades. the idea of farming is something that most people are familiar with, cows and chickens and things like that. why should salmon farming be different? >> morton: these are not farms,

these are feed lots. they're growing as many animals as possible, as fast as possible, in as small a space as possible. >> gupta: what worries her is what happened five years ago, when salmon farms in chile made news. >> in chile's northern patagonia, the salmon are dying. >> gupta: a highly communicable, and deadly, virus called and deadly, virus called infectious salmon anemia, or i.s.a., broke out on the farms in chile, and wiped out most of the farmed salmon there. >> morton: the story in chile's interesting because the virus, they think, got in there ten years before it actually went viral. and they were kind of fooling around with it-- "maybe it's here, maybe it's not. no, it's not here." and then, wham-mo, the thing just ignited. >> gupta: how bad did it get in chile, and how bad could it get here? >> morton: they could not believe how many fish it killed. it caused $2 billion of damage. but they don't have wild salmon. nobody knows what's going to happen here. this salmon farming experiment,

this is the only place it's going on amongst abundant wild salmon. here, we are risking everything on this coast. >> gupta: so morton tests wild salmon in british columbia for the virus, i.s.a., the one that caused so much trouble in chile. what are you looking for right now? >> morton: right now, i'm looking for a freshly dead fish. >> gupta: she combs the riverbanks for wild salmon that are dying during the natural spawning cycle. she's looking for evidence of viruses she believes are being passed from farmed salmon to the wild fish. >> morton: you open up a fish and it's like a book. >> gupta: this... i mean, you're doing an autopsy? >> morton: i am doing an autopsy, yes. >> george: she sends off tissue samples to labs around the world, including the one that diagnosed the problem in chile. >> morton: and let's see what the liver looks like. >> gupta: so far, her tests have shown genetic markers for the i.s.a. virus-- indication, she says, that the virus is already present in these waters. >> gupta: there are salmon farmers who will say, "look, these viruses don't cause a

problem. there's a difference between the presence of a virus and infection, and a fish actually getting sick. and it's important to distinguish these things" >> morton: yes. they have no idea. there's nobody actually looking at the wild fish carefully. so that remains an open question. >> gupta: so we don't know for sure that they're causing a problem. but we don't know that they're not. >> morton: that's right. so we're gambling. >> gupta: one of the things you hear is that these fish could have an impact on the wild fish that swim through this area. why not just put these farms somewhere where they're not in that kind of proximity. >> roberts: we have relocated farms over the past, identifying that they're not in the best areas, perhaps, and they're in-- they're in sensitive habitat. but i don't believe that aquaculture in british columbia is having an effect on the wild fish. if it was, i wouldn't be a part of the business. >> gupta: farmers and environmentalists have their differences, but ian roberts acknowledges alexandra morton's

role in raising legitimate concerns about the effect on the ecosystem in the early days of salmon farming. wow, look at... that's so beautiful. while dolphins and other sea mammals may be a stunning part of this landscape... we are literally surrounded by dolphins now. ...they can be a nuisance to salmon farms, stealing fish and damaging nets. so, morton says, the farms used to blast loud sounds underwater to scare the mammals away. >> morton: humpback whale. >> gupta: just like that! but those devices could hurt the animals, and they disrupted migratory patterns of some whales. >> morton: there she goes. >> gupta: there's the tail. >> gupta: in response to pressure from morton and other environmentalists, the farms stopped using the underwater noise devices and instead built better fences around the farms. >> roberts: seals and sea lions have been a problem in the past. but the technology we use today, and the thickness of the nets

and the way we anchor the nets really keeps them away from the farm. this farm hasn't had any issues. >> gupta: i'm curious-- you've got 600,000 fish. what does it look like below here? >> roberts: it looks like a muddy bottom, but it's got nutrients on top, which is the fish waste. >> gupta: i've heard the term "dead zone." it's called the... that doesn't sound good when you hear "dead zone" underneath these farms. is that a fair assessment? >> roberts: no. no, not at all. but there is an impact to the bottom of the ocean but that's only temporary. >> gupta: farms are sometimes left fallow between harvests, because studies show the impact to the bottom of the ocean can be significant with trace metals and organic waste polluting the ocean floor. morton says it can take years for the ocean bottom to recover, and she took us outside a fallowed farm to show us what it looks like below. she dropped a special underwater camera 300 feet down. so, what do we have? >> morton: you see the brown waste of the farm. >> gupta: so, that mushy, spongy stuff, is that just a accumulation or layer of waste?

>> morton: that is farmed salmon poop. >> gupta: there are 125 salmon farms along the coastline of british columbia, and the canadian government plans to allow more. but just up the coast, in alaska, salmon farms simply don't exist. >> george eliason: there's no room for farmed salmon in alaska. >> gupta: george eliason is a third generation fisherman in alaska, which has the largest wild salmon fishery in the world. 25 years ago, alaska banned salmon farming, out of concern that the farming industry could harm the lucrative fishing trade. eliason's father was the state senator who drafted the legislation to outlaw salmon farming. what was the concern back then? >> eliason: disease. pollution. >> gupta: the concerns that your father had about what it might do to the wild salmon population, was he right? >> eliason: he was right. we've got a great fishery up there now. why take the chance? why even try it? >> gupta: instead of farming fish, the alaskan government set up hatcheries where young salmon are grown and then released-- not into cages, but into the

wild to boost the population of wild salmon in the ocean. >> eliason: we call it ocean ranching. >> gupta: should they still be called wild salmon, or has that become a misnomer at this point? >> eliason: they're wild. they're wild. >> gupta: ocean ranching, combined with careful regulations, has created a thriving wild salmon population in alaska, a stark contrast to the situation in western canada. in 2009, when sockeye salmon numbers on a major river in british columbia hit a historic low, the canadian government launched an ambitious two-year- long commission to finally explore the causes of the decline. brian wallace, senior counsel to the commission, says they examined more than a half- million documents, including alexandra morton's research. she makes a claim that i.s.a. virus has been found in the waters and the fish of british columbia. is that true? >> brian wallace: i don't know whether that's true or not. >> gupta: how can we not know if that's true? i mean, we're not... we're not talking about opinion or

conjecture; we're talking about science here. >> wallace: we don't have the answer. >> gupta: you looked at 600,000 documents, and you spent $26 million. we should have some sort of answer here, shouldn't we? >> wallace: this is a very complex subject. somebody said, you know, "this isn't rocket scien... science, it's much more complicated than that." >> gupta: so we don't know that the virus is not here, and we don't know if it is here? >> wallace: i think that's correct. >> gupta: the commission determined that climate change and other environmental factors were likely causes of the decline in wild salmon in western canada, but said disease transmission from farms could be a factor as well. so the commission recommended a moratorium on any new farms built along the most sensitive sockeye salmon migration routes, and it gave farmers eight years to prove there was no significant risk of passing viruses to wild fish. it sounds like, until the virus actually gets out of these farms and into the wild population-- that's going to establish the risk.

>> wallace: that's one way to establish it. >> gupta: that sounds like it'd be too late. >> wallace: i hope not. >> sanjay gupta has salmon on the menu at 60minutesovertime.com, sponsored the menu at 60minutesovertime.com, sponsored by pfizer. but if you have arthritis, this can be difficult. prescription celebrex can help relieve arthritis pain, and improve daily physical function so moving is easier. because just one 200mg celebrex a day can provide 24 hour relief for many with arthritis pain. and it's not a narcotic. you and your doctor should balance the benefits with the risks. all prescription nsaids, like celebrex, ibuprofen, naproxen and meloxicam have the same cardiovascular warning. they all may increase the chance

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phil: previously on "amazing race: all-stars" -- five teams raced to seville, spain. the accidental alliance set a u-turn plan in motion. >> yes! >> the brenchels will get u-turned. phil: and rachel prepared for the inevitable. >> it's almost guaranteed we'll get u-turned. phil: the afghanimals faced some angry bulls. ey changed up the u-turn plan. >> the strongest team in this race is still the cowboys. it only makes sense to u-turn them. phil: at the road block, connor had a close shave. >> very good --