captioning funded by cbs and ford. we go further, so you can. >> tonight, on this special edition of "60 minutes presents," new frontiers in medicine. >> i'm excited. >> we have been following a cutting edge clinical trial at the national institutes of health using gene therapy on a brutally painful disease, sickle-cell anemia. you'll hear the surprising results that one day may lead to cures for thousands of other diseases. >> to see that emerging not just as hoped-for advances, but real data showing cures for people... >> you is just used the "curing" word. ( laughs ) you're willing to say that? >> this looks like a cure. ( ticking ) >> i start seeing the colors and the geometric designs and then, boom.

visions began. >> visions brought about by the powerful psychedelic drug psilocybin. administered by scientists, aimed at helping people suffering from depression, anxiety, and addiction. do you ever have a day where you wake up and you're like, "man, i wish i could have a vodka right now?" or a beer? >> not at all. which is the craziest thing, because that was my favorite thing to do. >> the image on the left shows connections within the brain before psilocybin. on the right, after. ( ticking ) >> student debt is a crisis. americans owe $1.5 trillion. the burden for medical students is especially heavy. but now, one of the country's top schools has come up with a radical solution. >> the n.y.u. school of medicine is now a tuition-free medical school-- ( cheers and applause ) >> oh, my god! >> saving these students more

than $200,000 each, with the hope that: >> one day, if you're dealing with a patient who can't afford to have something done, you might say, "it's on me." ( ticking ) this holiday season

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♪ ♪ >> lapook: good evening. i'm dr. jon lapook. welcome to "60 minutes presents." tonight, on the threshold of a new year, we look ahead to new frontiers in medicine. we explore why some scientists are taking a fresh look at psychedelic drugs, and examine

how one university is rethinking the costs of medical school, but we begin with what appears to be a breakthrough in gene therapy. nearly 20 years ago, scientists stunned the world when they announced they had decoded the genes that make up a human being. as we first reported last march, they hoped to use that genetic blueprint to advance something called gene therapy, which locates and fixes the genes responsible for different diseases. a clinical trial at the national institutes of health is now doing exactly that, in an attempt to cure sickle cell anemia-- a devastating genetic disease that kills hundreds of thousands of people around the world every year. we spent more than a year following the scientists, and patients, who are ushering in a genetic revolution. >> jennelle stephenson: i'm excited. >> ray stephenson: today is the big day. >> lapook: it's the day after christmas, 2017, and 27-year-old jennelle stephenson has come

with her father and brother from florida to the national institutes of health, just outside washington, d.c. >> jennelle stephenson: good morning. >> dr. john tisdale: good morning. >> lapook: she's one of a small group of patients to receive an infusion containing altered d.n.a. >> nurse: this is what they look like. >> jennelle stephenson: merry christmas to me. >> brother: best christmas present ever. >> jennelle stephenson: yay. >> lapook: the clear liquid in the bag contains jennelle's stem cells, that have been genetically modified. >> dr. tisdale: there are about 500 million in there. >> jennelle stephenson: oh, my goodness. >> lapook: the hope is the new d.n.a. in the cells will cure jennelle of sickle cell anemia-- a brutal disease that causes debilitating pain. at its worst, on a scale of zero to ten, how bad was your pain? >> jennelle stephenson: we can go beyond a ten. it's terrible, it's horrible. >> lapook: pain where? >> jennelle stephenson: everywhere. my back, my shoulders, elbows, arms, legs, even my cheekbones, just pain.

>> lapook: can you actually describe it? >> jennelle stephenson: it's a very sharp, like, stabbing, almost feels like bone-crushing pain. feels like someone's kind of constricting your bones, and then releasing, constantly. >> lapook: pain from sickle cell can occur anywhere blood circulates. that's because red blood cells, normally donut-shaped, bend into an inflexible sickle shape, causing them to pile up inside blood vessels. the resulting traffic jam prevents the normal delivery of oxygen throughout the body, leading to problems that include bone deterioration, strokes and organ failure. the gene that causes sickle cell anemia evolved in places like sub-saharan africa, because it protects people from malaria. there, millions have the disease, and it's estimated more than 50% of babies born with it die before the age of five. >> dr. glassberg: right on the bone there? >> lapook: in the united states, it affects 100,000 people-- mostly african americans.

for jennelle, having the disease as a child often meant spending christmas in the hospital. as an adult, she struggled through pain to complete college, but keeping a job was tough because something as simple as walking up stairs could trigger "a pain crisis." do you have friends who've died from sickle cell? >> jennelle stephenson: i do. yes, younger than me. >> lapook: and you've known this your whole life, growing up? >> jennelle stephenson: right. >> lapook: that you could potentially die early? >> jennelle stephenson: right. yes. >> lapook: did you think you would die early? >> jennelle stephenson: i did, actually. when i hit about 22, i was like, "you know, i'm-- for a sickle celler, i'm kind of middle-aged right now." >> lapook: what are some of the things that you've always wanted to do that you couldn't do? >> jennelle stephenson: honestly, everybody laughs at me for this-- i just want to run, to be honest. >> lapook: things that most people would take for granted. >> jennelle stephenson: just basic things. >> lapook: one of the most cruel parts of the disease, jennelle and other patients have told us, is being accused of faking pain to get narcotics, being labeled

a "drug-seeker." during one trip to the emergency department, when she fell to the floor in pain, a doctor refused to help her. >> jennelle stephenson: and i'm looking up at her, and i'm in tears, and, i'm like, "i'm doing the best that i can." >> lapook: and you've got to be thinking... >> jennelle stephenson: i just, sometimes i don't understand, i don't get it. like-- sorry. i'm in so much pain, and you think i just want some morphine. and it just makes me sad that some people in the medical community just don't get it. >> dr. francis collins: so this would be my lab. >> lapook: dr. francis collins is director of the national institutes of health, the largest biomedical research agency in the world. he oversees a nearly $40 billion budget that funds more than 400,000 researchers world-wide. >> clinton: dr. collins, please come up to the lectern. ( applause )

>> lapook: dr. collins was head of the human genome project at the n.i.h. in 2000 when he made a landmark announcement: after a decade of work, scientists had finally decoded the genes that make up a human being. >> dr. collins: today, we celebrate the revelation of the first draft of the human book of life. >> lapook: when did it all start for you? >> dr. collins: i got excited about genetics as a first-year medical student. a pediatric geneticist came to teach us about how genetics was relevant to medicine. and he brought patients to class, and one of the first patients he brought was a young man with sickle cell disease who talked about the experience of sickle cell crises and how incredibly painful those are. and yet, it was all because of one single letter in the d.n.a. that is misplaced, a "t" that should have been an "a." and that was profound. you could have all of that happen because of one letter that was misspelled. >> lapook: the double helix of

d.n.a. is made up of billions of pieces of genetic information. what dr. collins is saying is... out of all that, it's just one error in the d.n.a. code-- a "t" that should have been an "a"-- that causes sickle cell anemia. fix that error, and you cure the disease. but figuring out how to do that would take more than 20 years of research... ♪ do you remember when we used to sing ♪ >> lapook: ...and a little serendipity. ♪ ♪ dr. collins was playing in the n.i.h. rock band in 2016 when his bass player-- hematologist dr. john tisdale-- started riffing on an idea. >> dr. tisdale: we'd finished setting up and went for a pizza, before-- >> dr. collins: i remember that. >> dr. tisdale: --before the gig. and at this point, i pitched to francis that it was really time that we do something definitive for sickle cell disease. >> lapook: in the laboratory, dr. tisdale and his collaborators created a gene with the correct spelling. then, to get that gene into the

patient, they used something with a frightening reputation: h.i.v., the virus that causes aids. it turns out, h.i.v. is especially good at transferring d.n.a. into cells. >> dr. tisdale: so this shows the process. >> lapook: here's how it works. the corrected gene, seen here in yellow, is inserted into the h.i.v. virus. then, bone marrow stem cells are taken from of a patient with sickle cell anemia. in the laboratory, those cells are combined with the virus carrying that new d.n.a. >> dr. tisdale: this virus will then find its way to one of those cells and drop off a copy or two of the correctly-spelled gene. and then, these cells will go back to the patient. >> lapook: if the process works, the stem cells with the correct d.n.a. will start producing healthy red blood cells. i can hear people, our viewers out there, thinking, "wait a second, how do you know you're not going to get aids from the h.i.v. virus?" >> dr. tisdale: the short answer is, we cut out the bits that

cause infection in h.i.v. and we really replace that with the gene that's misspelled in sickle cell disease, so that it transfers that instead of the infectious part. >> lapook: the stakes here are enormous. >> dr. collins: yes. >> lapook: there's really very little safety net here, right? >> dr. collins: make no mistake, we're talking about very cutting-edge research, where the certainty about all the outcomes is not entirely there. we can look back at the history of gene therapy and see there have been some tragedies. >> lapook: deaths? >> dr. collins: yes. >> lapook: in 1999, 18-year-old jesse gelsinger received altered d.n.a. to treat a different genetic disease. he died four days later from a massive immune response. and in another trial, two children developed cancer. jennelle stephenson understands this is a trial, with huge risks, and no guarantees. >> jennelle stephenson: this is it. >> lapook: when she arrived at the n.i.h. clinical center in december 2017, jennelle asked

her brother, ray, for some help. >> jennelle stephenson: there goes ray, cutting my hair. oh, snip. >> lapook: she decided to cut off all her hair, rather than watch it fall out from the massive dose of chemotherapy needed to suppress her immune system so her body wouldn't reject the altered stem cells. >> jennelle stephenson: i don't know how to feel right now. i'm a little emotional. but... i'm okay, it will grow back. >> lapook: a few days after the chemotherapy, jennelle received the infusion of genetically modified cells. >> dr. tisdale: is it going good now? >> nurse: yes. >> jennelle stephenson: it's just a waiting game. >> lapook: but the wait was a painful one. not only for jennelle, but also for her father, ray... >> ray stephenson: let me fix this heating pad a little bit. >> lapook: ...who did what little he could as the effects of the chemotherapy kicked in, stripping jennelle's throat and

stomach of their protective layers. >> jennelle stephenson: oh, that hurts. >> lapook: she was unable to speak for a week, and lost 15 pounds. and, because having a severely weakened immune system means even a mild cold can turn deadly, jennelle had to stay in the hospital for nearly a month. after moving back to florida, she returned to the n.i.h. for periodic check-ups. >> dr. tisdale: these are her red blood cells. >> lapook: it didn't take long for dr. tisdale to notice something was happening... this is jennelle before any treatment? >> dr. tisdale: right. all across her blood you can see these really abnormal shapes. this one in particular is shaped like a sickle. >> lapook: nine months later, this is what dr. tisdale saw: not a sickle cell in sight. was there ever a moment where you saw one of these normal- looking smears and thought, "is this the right patient?" >> dr. tisdale: oh, absolutely. when you're a scientist, you're skeptical all the time. so, first thing you do is look and make sure it's that patient,

go grab another one, make sure it's the same. and we've done all that. and, indeed, her blood looks normal. >> teacher: move. switch your arms and move. >> lapook: remember, jennelle used to struggle just to walk up a flight of stairs... >> teacher: and you fall. >> lapook: ...and a fall like this would have landed her in the hospital. >> teacher: boom. yeah. good job, you did it. bam. >> lapook: jennelle. you look amazing. >> jennelle stephenson: thank you! >> lapook: i have to say, i was a little nervous when you were thrown and you went down on the mat. >> jennelle stephenson: it was nothing. it was nothing. my body just felt strong. >> lapook: tell me about the adjustment that you need to make, to go from the old you to the new you. >> jennelle stephenson: my body, it almost felt like it was, like, itching to do more. and i was like, "all right, well, let's go swimming today." "let's go to the gym today." i'm like, all right, my body loves this. i kind of like it because my, i guess, all my endorphins started pumping. >> lapook: the endorphin high, something you had never experienced. >> jennelle stephenson: never experienced before. yep. >> lapook: what was going through your head as you were

watching jennelle being thrown down to the mat? >> ray stephenson: i was just saying, "thank you, lord. thank you for medical science. and thank you for giving her a new life." >> jennelle stephenson: new life, indeed. >> lynndrick holmes: i've never lived before. >> lapook: 16 other adults with sickle cell anemia have undergone the same gene therapy as jennelle. so far, all are responding well. dr. francis collins says it will take years to improve the treatment to make it more widely available. >> dr. collins: here's another dream. there are 7,000 genetic diseases for which we know the precise d.n.a. misspelling. couldn't this same strategy, this same set of principles work for lots of those, maybe someday all of them? >> lapook: you've been working on this for decades. you're at a moment which is significant. >> dr. collins: to lead the human genome project and to put that foundation in place. and now, to see that emerging

not just as hoped-for advances, but real data showing cures for people... >> lapook: you just used the "curing" word. ( laughs ) you're willing to say that? >> dr. collins: i believe that this looks like a cure. i've got to be careful. but from every angle that i know how to size this up, this looks like a cure. ( ticking ) >> to learn more about the n.i.h. trial that may have cured janelle, and dr. jon lapook's thoughts on genetic therapy, go to 60minutesovertime.com. i love the new myww program,

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1960s-- hippies tripping out on l.s.d. or magic mushrooms. but, as anderson cooper reported earlier this year, these powerful, mind-altering substances are now being studied seriously by scientists inside some of the country's foremost medical research centers. they're being used to treat depression, anxiety and addiction. the early results are impressive, as are the experiences of the studies' volunteers, who go on a six- hour, sometimes terrifying, but often life-changing psychedelic journey deep into their own minds. >> carine mclaughlin: people ask me, "do you want to do it again?" i say, "hell, no, i don't want to go do that again." >> cooper: it was really that bad? >> mclaughlin: oh, it was awful. the entire time, other than the very end and the very beginning, i was crying. >> cooper: carine mclaughlin is talking about the hallucinogenic experience she had here at johns hopkins university, after being given a large dose of

psilocybin, the psychedelic agent in magic mushrooms, as part of an ongoing clinical trial. >> roland griffiths: we tell people that their experiences may vary, from very positive, to transcendent and lovely, to literally hell realm experiences. >> cooper: hell realm? >> griffiths: as frightening an experience as you have ever had in your life. >> cooper: that's scientist roland griffiths. for nearly two decades now, he and his colleague matthew johnson have been giving what they call "heroic doses" of psilocybin to more than 350 volunteers, many struggling with addiction, depression and anxiety. can you tell who is going to have a bad experience, who's going to have a transcendent experience? >> griffiths: our ability to predict that is almost none at all. >> cooper: really? >> matthew johnson: about a third will, at our-- at a high dose, say that they have something like that, what folks would call a bad trip. but most of those folks will actually say that that was key to the experience.

>> cooper: carine mclaughlin was a smoker for 46 years, and said she tried everything to quit before being given psilocybin at johns hopkins last year. psilocybin itself is non- addictive. do you remember what, like, specifically what you were seeing, or? >> mclaughlin: yes. the ceiling of this room were clouds, like, heavy rain clouds, and gradually they were lowering. and i thought i was going to suffocate from the clouds. >> cooper: that was more than a year ago. she says she hasn't smoked since. the study she took part in is still ongoing, but in an earlier, small study of just 15 long-term smokers, 80% had quit six months after taking psilocybin. that's double the rate of any over-the-counter smoking cessation product. >> griffiths: they come to a profound shift of world view. and essentially, a shift in sense of self that i think-- >> cooper: they-- they see their life in a different way? >> griffiths: their world view changes and-- and they are less

identified with that self- narrative. people might use the term "ego." and that creates this sense of freedom. >> cooper: and not just with smokers. >> jon kostakopoulos: beer usually, cocktails, usually, vodka sodas, tequila sodas, scotch and sodas. >> cooper: jon kostakopoulos was drinking a staggering 20 cocktails a night, and had been warned he was slowly killing himself, when he decided to enroll in another psilocybin trial at new york university. during one psilocybin session, he was flooded with powerful feelings and images from his past. >> kostakopoulos: stuff would come up that i haven't thought of since they happened. >> cooper: so, old memories that you hadn't even remembered came back to you? >> kostakopoulos: i felt, you know, a lot of shame and embarrassment throughout one of the sessions, about my drinking, and how bad i felt for my parents to put up with all this. >> cooper: he took psilocybin in 2016. he says he hasn't had a drink since.

do you ever have a day where you wake up and you're like, man, i wish i could have a vodka right now, or beer? >> kostakopoulos: never. >> cooper: not at all? >> kostakopoulos: not at all, which is the craziest thing, because that was my favorite thing to do. >> i want you to lie back, put the eyeshade on, and the headphones, and let the music carry you now. >> cooper: using psychedelic drugs in therapy is not new. there were hundreds of scientific studies done on a similar compound, l.s.d., in the 1950s and '60s. it was tested on more than 40,000 people, some in controlled therapeutic settings like this one. but there were also abuses. the u.s. military and c.i.a. experimented with l.s.d., sometimes without patients knowledge. ♪ ♪ fear over rampant drug use and the spread of the counter culture movement, not to mention harvard professor timothy leary urging people to "turn on, tune in and drop out," led to a clamp-down. >> president nixon: this nation

faces a major crisis in terms of the increasing use of drugs, particularly among our young people. >> cooper: in 1970, president richard nixon signed the controlled substances act, and nearly all scientific research in the u.s. into the effects of psychedelics on people stopped. it wasn't until 2000 that scientist roland griffiths won f.d.a. approval to study psilocybin. >> griffiths: this whole area of research has been in the deep freeze for 25 or 30 years. and so as a scientist, sometimes i feel like rip van winkle. >> cooper: and once you saw the results? >> griffiths: yeah. the red light started flashing. this is extraordinarily interesting. it's unprecedented, and the capacity of the human organism to change. it just-- was astounding. >> cooper: it sounds like you are endorsing this for everybody. >> griffiths: yeah, let's be really clear on that. we are very aware of the risks, and would not recommend that people simply go out and do

this. >> cooper: griffiths and johnson screen out people with psychotic disorders, or with close relatives who have had schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. study volunteers at johns hopkins are given weeks of intensive counseling before and after the six-hour psilocybin experience. the psilocybin is given in a carefully controlled setting, one to three times. to date, they say there's not been a single serious adverse outcome. >> mary cosimano: so, i'm going to tuck you in. >> cooper: we were told we couldn't record anyone participating in the study while they were on psilocybin, because it might impact their experience, but we were shown how it begins, without the psilocybin. >> cosimano: questions? >> cooper: nope. you lay on a couch, with a blind fold to shut out distractions. >> cosimano: put the headphones on. >> cooper: and headphones playing a mix of choral and classical music. a psychedelic soundtrack with a trained guide, mary cosimano, watching over you. >> cosimano: okay, so, give me your hand.

so, i'm going to take your hand. >> cooper: everything is done the same way it was for the l.s.d. experiments scientists conducted in the 1950s and '60s. some of the most dramatic results have been with terminal cancer patients struggling with anxiety and paralyzing depression. >> kerry pappas: i start seeing the colors and the geometric designs, and it's like, "oh, this is so cool," and "how lovely," and, and then, boom. visions began. >> cooper: kerry pappas was diagnosed with stage iii lung cancer in 2013. during her psilocybin session, she found herself trapped in a nightmare her mind created. >> pappas: an ancient... prehistoric... barren land. and there's these men with pickaxes, just slamming on the rocks. so-- >> cooper: and this felt absolutely real to you? >> pappas: absolutely real. i was being shown the truth of

reality. "life is meaningless. we have no purpose." and then i look, and i'm still, like, a witness... a beautiful, shimmering... bright jewel. and then it was sound, and it was booming, booming, booming. "right here, right now." >> cooper: that was being said? >> pappas: yes. "you are alive. right here, right now, because that's all you have." and that is my mantra, to this day. >> michael pollan: it seemed so implausible to me that a single experience caused by a molecule, right, ingested in your body, could transform your outlook on something as profound as death. that's-- that's kind of amazing. >> cooper: author michael pollan wrote about the psilocybin studies in a best-selling book, called "how to change your mind." as part of his research, he tried psilocybin himself with

the help of an underground guide. the kind of things that cancer patients were saying, like "i touched the face of god." you were skeptical about when you hear phrases like that? >> pollan: yeah. or, "love is the most important thing in the universe." when someone tells me that, i'm just like, "yeah, okay." >> cooper: so you don't go for some of the phrases that are used? >> pollan: no. it gives me the willies, as a writer. and i really struggled with that, because during one of my experiences, i came to the earth-shattering conclusion that love is the most important thing in the universe. but it's-- that's hallmark card stuff, right? and, so-- >> cooper: and yet, while you were on it, and afterward-- >> pollan: it was profoundly true. and it is profoundly true. guess what? >> cooper: there's a reason it's on a hallmark card. >> pollan: there is a reason. and one of the things psychedelics do is, they peel away all those essentially protective levels of irony and, and cynicism that we, that we acquire as we get older, and you're back to those kind of "oh, my god. i forgot all about love." ( laughs ) >> cooper: pollan said he also experienced what the researchers describe as ego loss, or

identity loss, the quieting of the constant voice we all have in our heads. >> pollan: i did have this experience of seeing my ego burst into a little cloud of post-it notes. i know it sounds crazy. >> cooper: and what are you are without an ego? >> pollan: you're-- ( laughs ) you had to be there. >> cooper: researchers believe that sensation of identity loss occurs because psilocybin quiets these two areas of the brain that normally communicate with each other. they're part of a region called the default mode network, and it's especially active when we're thinking about ourselves and our lives. >> pollan: and it's where you connect what happens in your life to the story of who you are. >> cooper: we all develop a story over time about what our past was like and who we are. >> pollan: right. yeah, what kind of person we are. how we react. and the fact is that interesting things happen when the self goes quiet in the brain, including this rewiring that happens. >> cooper: to see that rewiring,

johns hopkins scientist matthew johnson showed us this representational chart of brain activity. the circle on the left shows normal communication between parts of the brain. on the right, what happens on psilocybin. there's an explosion of connections, or crosstalk, between areas of the brain that don't normally communicate. the difference is just startling. >> johnson: right. >> cooper: is that why people are having experiences of seeing, you know, repressed memories, or past memories, or people who have died, or? >> johnson: that's what we think. and even the perceptual effect, sometimes the synesthesia, like, the-- the seeing sound. >> cooper: people see sound? >> johnson: yeah, sometimes. >> cooper: i don't even know what that means. >> johnson: right, yeah. ( laughs ) it's-- it's-- >> pollan: maybe the ego is one character among many in your mind. and you don't necessarily have to listen to that voice that's chattering at you and criticizing you and telling you what to do. and that's very freeing. >> cooper: it was certainly freeing for kerry pappas. though her cancer has now spread

to her brain, her crippling anxiety about death is gone. >> pappas: yeah, it's amazing. i mean, i feel like death doesn't frighten me. living doesn't frighten me. i don't frighten me. this frightens me, but... >> cooper: this interview frightens you, but death doesn't? >> pappas: no! >> cooper: it turns out most of the 51 cancer patients in the johns hopkins study experienced "significant decreases in depressed mood and anxiety" after trying psilocybin. two-thirds of them rated their psilocybin sessions as among the most meaningful experiences of their lives. for some, it was on par with the birth of their children. >> pappas: to this day, it evolves in me. >> cooper: it's still alive in you. >> pappas: it's still absolutely alive in me. >> cooper: does it make you happier? >> pappas: yeah. and i don't necessarily use the word "happy." comfortable. like, comfortable. i mean, i've suffered from

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( ticking ) >> lapook: going to medical school today takes more than ambition, good grades in biology in college, and an appetite for hard work. it takes a willingness to incur a crushing amount of debt. student debt in general is in crisis in this country. all told, borrowers owe $1.5 trillion-- more than people owe in credit card debt! people have borrowed money to attend medical school for

decades, but the scale of the debt has skyrocketed in recent years. the average medical student now graduates with a debt burden as big as a home mortgage. as lesley stahl first reported in april, one of america's top medical schools, n.y.u. in new york, has come up with a radical solution. >> announcer: joseph babinski. >> stahl: it's a tradition on the very first day of medical school. the so-called white coat ceremony-- a rite of passage for 24-year-old joe babinski and his 100 classmates at new york university. >> joe babinski: it's kind of this transition point, where you go from being a potential student, to a member of the medical community, even if you're at the bottom rung of the ladder still. >> stahl: yeah. >> babinski: and it's-- it's a pretty significant experience. it marks the beginning of your journey, so to say. >> stahl: as he began that journey, joe was expecting to take on a great burden. how much debt did you expect

you'd be taking on? >> babinski: i anticipated taking on about $200,000. >> stahl: i can't imagine starting life with that on your shoulders. but a lot of medical students, a lot of young doctors have that. most? >> babinski: i would say most. >> ezekiel emanuel: graduating medical school, 85%, 86% of students have debt. >> stahl: dr. ezekiel emanuel is chair of medical ethics and health policy at the university of pennsylvania. he says the prospect of so much debt prevents many people who could be great doctors from even applying to medical school. >> emanuel: most of us think that it really deters people from middle class and lower income families. they look at $200,000, it seems like a huge mountain to climb. and it gets scary. >> stahl: and it compounds, because you're not paying it off. >> emanuel: correct. and-- >> stahl: so the interest grows. it gets worse. and that's a burden. i would think it-- it-- diverts attention from medical school as

well, if you actually-- >> emanuel: i think people are stressed by it. >> stahl: as a third-year n.y.u. med student, elaine deleon felt that stress from day one. could your family afford medical school? >> elaine deleon: definitely not. ( laughs ) definitely not. >> deleon: we are looking for pericholecystic fluid. >> stahl: her family is originally from the dominican republic. her dad is a retired chef. her mother died years ago. she agonized over her dream of being a doctor because of the cost. how much did you have to borrow for your first year? >> deleon: i borrowed $76,000, and if i were to pay that off in-- on a ten-year plan, it would be $100,000 by the time i paid it off. >> stahl: wow. and that's just your first year. >> deleon: that's just my first year. >> stahl: it's unfathomable. >> deleon: yeah. but i think that ultimately, like, a life of serving is more important to me. and that's really-- what-- what, like, cinched it. that i-- i needed to pursue

this, despite the debt that i would be accruing. >> stahl: elaine's ambition is to be a primary-care doctor treating poor people, but she says that the debt burden forced her to consider a different choice. >> deleon: of course you hear the, like, s-- prime specialties, where you get paid the most. so you hear dermatology, you hear surgery, you hear all of these things. and so it's easy, when you're coming in, to be, like, "well, i paid a lot of money to be here, like, i should really get my money's worth and try to pursue these more lucrative specialties." >> stahl: even if you're not interested. >> deleon: exactly. or at least consider them. >> stahl: dr. rafael rivera is dean of admissions at n.y.u. medical school. what are the better-paying specialties? >> rafael rivera: generally speaking, some of the surgical specialties tend to pay well. neurosurgery. you know, orthopedics pays well. the fields that tend to pay a little less are fields like pediatrics, and general internal medicine, family medicine. and-- >> stahl: and those are the doctors we have lacking. we don't have enough of those

doctors. >> rivera: by 2030, we'll have a shortage of up to 49,000 primary care docs. >> stahl: that huge shortage, that distortion of the medical profession, is directly linked to the mountains of debt. and on the day of that white coat ceremony last august, n.y.u. decided to do something about it. something dramatic. after all the first-year students had filed back to their seats, ken langone, chairman of the board of trustees, and his wife elaine, let everyone in on a secret. >> ken langone: as of this very moment, the n.y.u. school of medicine is now a tuition-free medical school. ( cheers and applause ) >> stahl: joe babinski was sitting in the front row, without a clue that was coming. >> babinski: and they announce that they are supplying full tuition scholarships for every student. >> stahl: did you think you heard them right? >> babinski: i took a picture of the slide on my phone, because i

didn't want them to remove it and take it away. ( laughs ) so i was like, "i'm-- i'm documenting that this is happening." ( laughter ) >> stahl: but did you get it right away? we were there, and there was a sense of, "did i hear that right?" ( laughs ) >> babinski: i-- i still don't think i get it. >> stahl: sitting a few rows away, joe's parents, a municipal employee and a retired cop, had a similar, "did he just say what i think he said?" reaction. >> dad: oh, my god! >> stahl: this was the real-time reaction of another father. >> dad: oh, my god, oh! >> rivera: at first, i see students looking around at each other. >> stahl: "did i hear what he said?" >> rivera: yeah. there were-- there were gasps, there was some quiet, there was some screaming. and then, all of a sudden, the chants started getting louder and louder. and before you knew it, the-- the audience had erupted into cheers of joy. ( cheering ) >> stahl: n.y.u.'s free tuition applies not just to first-year med students, but to every current student, in every class.

they do still have to pay their own room and board, but for these students, it's a gift worth more than $200,000 each. >> langone: and these kids went nuts. one father yells out, "i told you you picked the right place!" ( laughter ) >> stahl: ken langone made his fortune as a co-founder of home depot. he and elaine donated $100 million toward the free tuition initiative, and he helped raise the additional $350 million needed to make it a reality. >> langone: well, that's my job here. >> stahl: to go out and ask other people for money? >> langone: oh, i go out, and i look at somebody nice like you, and i grab you by your ankles, and i shake you. >> stahl: the money comes out! ( laughs ) >> langone: and, when you promise me there's no more nickels, i turn you right side up. but seriously? i have two jobs here. i'm a cheerleader, and i'm a fundraiser. >> stahl: tell us how this came about. >> langone: bob grossman, when he became dean, i sat him down. i said, "all right, boss, what are we going to do?" and he said to me, "one of the things i would love to have

happen is for, one day, for us to be tuition-free." >> stahl: he said that right in the beginning? >> langone: 11 years ago. >> stahl: when he first came? okay. >> langone: 11 years ago. i said, "you know what, bob? let's do it." >> professor: and here's the way it works. >> stahl: it took more than a decade, but n.y.u. now has the endowment to offer free tuition to every med student, in perpetuity. >> langone: when we announced it, a mother, a pediatrician, came up to me, 30 years out of medical school, and she told me she was still paying off her medical school debt. and she said, "this morning, when i woke up and i knew i was coming here," she said, "i was convinced i would be in debt when i died, to help my son become a doctor." these are great people. so, we just say, "you know what? let's do what we can to help make it easier for them." >> stahl: do you think this is going to make you a better doctor? >> babinski: i think without a doubt it'll make me a better doctor. >> stahl: really? how does it affect that? >> babinski: for one, i won't be working while i'm in school. i can focus on learning the medicine and being good at it. >> stahl: and that pressure isn't on your shoulders.

>> babinski: there's none. >> langone: i think about the mindset of a kid saying, "somebody did something for me. now, i've got to do something for somebody." okay? think of that. >> stahl: yeah. >> langone: that's a big thing. >> babinski: it is a lot. >> stahl: n.y.u.'s no-tuition model replaces what had been a patchwork system of scholarships and financial aid. now, every med student is on full scholarship, with absolutely no strings attached. this model says anybody who comes to n.y.u. medical school will come tuition free, as opposed to just the kids who need the money. >> emanuel: right. i like the-- a model which i call-- forgivable loans. that you basically say to every student, "we're loaning you all of medical school. and if you go into primary care or one of these other specialties that needs doctors, or you go practice in a rural community, like in south dakota, or you go into an inner-city community that's under-served, we're going to forgive your loan.

on the other hand, you decide you want to go into one of those lucrative specialties, ophthalmology, or dermatology, or orthopedics, you're going to have to pay it back with interest." and i think that's a more effective way of getting the goals society wants, than giving everyone tuition-free. >> stahl: whatever the model, changing the "face" of the medical profession is a huge challenge. consider this: there are no more african american men in medical school today than there were 40 years ago. 40 years! right now, more than half of all medical students come from the richest 20% of american families; only about 5% from the poorest 20%. this means that wealthy areas have lots of doctors, and lower income areas don't. i know of so many communities in poor areas, that don't have a doctor at all.

is there anything in this program that encourages people to go out there? >> rivera: if you are from a rural background, you do tend to go back to practice in a rural setting more often than people who are not from a rural background. if you are from an under- represented minority group, similarly, you also tend to go back to inner city under-served areas. >> stahl: since the announcement, applications to n.y.u. have boomed, especially from minorities. >> deleon: i think just the idea that a lot of people who come from backgrounds like mine, low income, without parents who are able to afford medical school, i think that it's a huge draw. and i think that it's a needed draw for the patient population that's served by n.y.u. students. i think that there's a lot of folks at bellevue, where i work-- this is just anecdotal, but i would say at least 60% of the patients are latinos, and this is an excellent way to draw the right people to the right institution. >> stahl: how's your spanish? >> deleon: very good. ( laughs ) >> stahl: excellent? >> deleon: excellent. >> stahl: so they can-- you can

really communicate with them. >> deleon: yeah. ( speaking spanish ) >> stahl: elaine deleon was in the final year of an accelerated three-year med school program, one year less than the norm. but when we saw her on the day of the announcement... >> deleon: you're not going to believe the news that just came out. >> stahl: ...calling her dad to give him the news? you wouldn't know she was saving just one year of tuition. >> deleon: already, i felt like one of the luckiest medical students in the country because i am in the three-year program. i'm already decided on primary care, i'm already going into this residency program here. and then all of a sudden it's, like, "oh, and by the way, like, your last year is free." and it's like, it was just this incredible feeling of freedom. >> stahl: so do you think all the other medical schools are going to at least try one model or another of free tuition? >> emanuel: absolutely. >> stahl: they all will? >> emanuel: and-- and i-- i mean, i think almost all of the medical schools had been driving

to that before n.y.u. made its announcement. and i think they will redouble their efforts. this has been a issue that most deans of medical schools are passionate about. >> stahl: they'd better be, because otherwise, those deans at harvard and hopkins and stanford are likely to see the very best medical students attending n.y.u.-- for free. >> langone: you have a right to push and say, "why didn't you make kids who could afford to pay, pay?" because we really wanted to be blind, in terms of the kids coming here. and we want them to know that they owe us nothing. that, one day, if you're dealing with a patient who can't afford to have something done, you might say, "it's on me." pass it on. ( ticking )

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