him for many months as they said and he ended up entering himself into an innovative program at walter reid with the ended up using acupuncture, meditation, using other techniques to wean him off the drugs he was on and through this program he was able to walk out at walter reid on his own two feet. so i really commend the military for two things. for one, allowing us to tell the story, both the good and the bad, but for recognizing this problem, by recognizing that there is this problem of overmedication and they are looking outside the box ideas on how to fix it. that's the whole thesis of the film, divided for a "escape fire" is the status quo is not working i would need to look outside the box ideas. reiko explained because we haven't seen it, what is escape fire? >> guest: short version or one version? >> guest: c-span: soupy blood and idea -- so people have an idea. >> guest: basically would have been with the force fire fighters were dropped dead to fight this fire. the latest and greatest technology filled this hubris. they called it a 10:00 fire. suddenly they found the wind shifte

. >> reporter: for four years he suffered through the excruciating pain of therapy at walter reid hospital. >> anything that touches them or pushes on them hurts real bad. >> reporter: driven he mastered his artificial limbs, all four of them. that would never be good enough. >> i hated not having arms. i was all right with not having legs. not having arms takes so much away from you. >> reporter: last december a team of doctors at johns hopkins connected miles of nerves and tendons to transplant two arms. they also transplanted the bone marrow to reduce the threat of rejection. his progress is nothing short of miraculous. the first time he moved his arms was a bit of a shock. >> one of my friends was just like freaking out. he's like, did you do that on purpose? >> reporter: now scratching his nose is second nature. his goal is to some day compete again in sports and drive his car. >> he's stubborn in a good way. >> reporter: he makes it clear nothing is going to stop him and so far nothing has. >> life always gets better. you're still alive. >> doctors say it could be another three years

now, doctors at walter reid are trying a new system that shows promise. >> it was life changing for mei can help just one person avoid the battles that i went through to get the right medication, it's worth it. >> brian harvey is a civilian who spent seven desperate years trying to cure something that doctors diagnosed as bipolar disorder. >> i tried changing trying to find something to work. >> this is the system that brian found, the one that saved his marriage, maybe his life. >> let's see how this brain scan process work, try to clear up some of the mysteries. >> known as central nervous system response, it is simply a cap with electrodes worn during a session. the brain wave pattern is compared to see which drugs would likely be most beneficial. dr. william richardson, an army veteran and new jersey psychiatrist says the technology all but eliminates the trialand error drug testing he had to employ. >> all the soldiers that have psychiatric illness. i mean, we can run this test on them and really be able to come up with 80% accuracy rate on the medications likely to work. >> sport

these are losses and then very much reminded of a man in speaking to now has an outpatient at the walter reid bethesda naval hospital here to years. and his parents who i spoke to us well said, dan had a beautiful body. you know, he's lost mobility. he's revalidating with remarkable prostatic, bionic leg and with a hard-driving alpha male kind of ability that many military men and women have it's amazing. so i get a nervous and variation. this is not an essay on warmongering. it's not an essay on the warrior codes or glorifying. it's the truth. it's trying to be honest. they're not conscription professional army men and women, sailors, marines, air force men and women that we often don't know because less than a percent of our population serves and yet they're so remarkable. >> host: professor sherman, by the talking to you? >> guest: when i went to the naval academy, i have some learned more than i thought because it's a culture had been kept to a friend and my dad kept me out of it because he didn't talk about war and a nice family, especially became home for more than wanted to begin again

he travels to walter reid getting to know them.nd then he comes back here to the white house and he gets it done. and that's the kind of focus but also the kind of heart that i want in this white house. now, don't get me wrong. denis can be tough. it comes from being one of 11 children. you have got to be tough. two of his sisters are here today by the way, mary and anna. i know -- they are just beaming. they could not be more proud of their brother. maybe it comes from his college football days as defensive back. i always tease denis he made up for modest talents with extraordinary dedication and a high threshold for pain. this does remind me of perhaps the one topic on which denis and i will never agree and that is vikings versus bears. there's another reason we all love denis so much and that's his decency and respect for those around him. ask any of the staff who are here today and they'll tell you that despite the unbelievable pressures of service at this level, denis is the first to think about a colleague or write a handwrit

my wife and i spent all last night at walter reid meeting with the only good news is the number of amputees on the floor now is down, spending the whole night with these kids who are double amputees, some triple amputees. but there's another category of people. we don't other number, but we notice significant which are not brain injury, the invisible disease, the invisible room with posttraumatic stress. there's a lot of veterans coming home, suicide rate is astounding . there's not sufficient mental health capacity in the system memory doing everything to hire 78,000 votes in pa and the like, but the plaintiffs didn't have to to deal with this answer the question we asked was how to do that and that's going to take more time, but we think how to begin this process. the next question we asked was how do we prevent the vein of the existence of seven of the biggest cities in america and a lot of other people starts with the obvious proposition , creating a federal drug -- excuse me, a federal trafficking statute for guns. we have one for drugs, but there is no governance tests. as you point o

but as far as, you know, working with walter -- and he's the one that got me involved in all of this stuff, and john reid later on -- were both, i think, senate senate -- significant world financial leaders. as far as having talked with a lot of people, i think meeting mandela, having dealt with a number of cases, spent an hour in 1980 with fidel castro, he wanted my advice on how to restructure the cuban debt, and he said i can speak to you about that because we nationalized you in cuba, one of the first times we nationalized foreign banks, and then you offset on our reserves. so, you know, we're kind of even here. and this was in nicaragua with orr ortega who was running the sandinista government who's now back again putting this together. certainly fascinating there. i mean, i could run through so many people. i had to, one of the sessions with mandela i was asked to tell mr. mugabe who was then president of zimbabwe and is still president of zimbabwe that he'd used all his time up. and he wasn't very happy with that. and because of that, i was able to do that, our secretary of commerce, ron brown, as