06/29/04

LC040629

Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times --

The battle over cheaper drugs from Canada. Will California clear the way to import drugs from the north?

Dario Frommer>> I think it's better for us to say these are reputable mail order pharmaceutical companies rather than letting people play Russian Roulette out there and just wherever they happen to come in contact to buy drugs.

Ken Ross>> Who would certify? To what extent are they certified? And then would there be a police force to go slap their hands if there was an infraction?

Val>> And then, in the land of high-speed pursuits, some Los Angeles cops still ride horses. We'll see how LAPD's mounted police get their man.

It's all coming up on tonight's Life and Times.

Life and Times is made possible through the generous support of the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of medicine, health, science and education.

Val>> Looking for some bargains north of the border. That's the whole idea behind a new plan to buy prescription medications in bulk from Canada. Many of the drugs are made by United States companies, but Canadians pay much less than we do. That's why some California lawmakers are trying to create a new system that would pass those savings along to some of our state's neediest residents. Toni Guinyard takes us to a place where people know something about the high cost of prescription medicine and they can't wait for someone to give them a break.

>> "Okay, next number. Here we go. G-53, G-53."

Toni Guinyard>> The Leisure Vale Retirement Community in Glendale is home to 140 residents and 139 take prescription drugs.

Polita Barnes>> I have one resident who told me that she had to stop two of her medications because she simply couldn't afford it anymore. You know, that's very worrisome that someone would have to stop a medication because they can't afford it. You hate to think that would happen in our country.

John Earl>> I pay for my own because I don't have any health insurance.

Toni Guinyard>> This community provides us a glimpse of the challenges of aging and grappling with the high costs of healthcare while living on a fixed income. When it comes to buying drugs prescribed by their doctors, some of these residents are faced with making a huge decision. Pay rent, pay for the prescriptions or cut corners and their pills to make ends meet.

Pat Phillips>> I split them. I never not took one, but if I was supposed to take two a day and I could split them, I would split them so it was one a day.

Elaine Plavchak>> I spend about a thousand dollars a month on medication and I've just in the last two months used up my life savings. I have no more money for medication, so I have discontinued six medications recently.

Toni Guinyard>> But your doctor wants you to take these medications.

Elaine Plavchak>> I know, but I have no money. I don't know what to do.

Toni Guinyard>> Her situation may seem extreme, but Mrs. Plavchak is not unlike a growing number of seniors who simply can't afford to pay for all the drugs they're prescribed.

>> "This is Mrs. Plavchak's medication, all of these. This is her morning and her evening and her bedtime medications."

Elaine Plavchak>> I've spent all my money now, so now all I can do is stop taking them.

Dario Frommer>> I think it's a crime that we spend so much in this country developing these drugs and yet many of us can't even afford them when we're sick. There is something very wrong with that system.

Toni Guinyard>> State Assemblyman Dario Frommer is proposing legislation that would provide California residents information on where to purchase prescription drugs from Canadian internet and mail order pharmacies.

Dario Frommer>> I think it's a good interim solution for us because the drugs there are forty-five to seventy-five percent less. What we're calling for is a website where the State Board of Pharmacy would certify Canadian pharmacies. You can go on the website, find out which ones are certified, meaning they're reliable and they're going to give you a drug that's a good quality. You can go do the research for yourself and buy, but then you know who's reputable.

Toni Guinyard>> It's an idea that appeals to some Leisure Vale residents.

Larry Gelman>> I think dealing with Canada online would be a great thing if it would make our medications cheaper.

Toni Guinyard>> Gelman is charged a monthly $882 co-payment for his medication, an amount he can't afford. He's been hospitalized four times in three months. He took the medication given to him while in the hospital and was able to save his own prescriptions.

Larry Gelman>> I don't want to have to almost die in order to save my meds so I can still have meds for myself. If not for being in the hospital all these times, I wouldn't have any meds left, so it's a blessing in disguise.

Toni Guinyard>> Gelman supports Assemblyman Frommer's legislation, but it's a proposal that will place him and other consumers in legal limbo. It's against the law for anyone other than drug companies to import drugs from outside the United States. However, the Food and Drug Administration has employed a personal use policy for years, allowing consumers to bring a ninety-day supply of prescription drugs into the country.

Dario Frommer>> There is some cover for people, but I don't want to give anyone the illusion that the federal government says this is okay. The FDA's position, and you can talk to them, is that it's not.

Toni Guinyard>> Assemblyman Frommer makes it clear his proposal places the risk on the individual.

Dario Frommer>> Because the FDA has rules against importation from other countries, individuals may be running afoul of federal law, but that is the responsibility that they must take.

Ken Ross>> People in the border towns along the Canadian border and the people along the Texas and Mexico and California borders have all had the ability to go across the border and buy a lot of drugs at a better price. That was small. Now it's big time. It's graduated into mainstream America. Everybody knows about it. I'd really like to see something like Mr. Frommer wants, but I don't see this being workable with the safety constraints. We need safety.

Toni Guinyard>> The proposal to go north across the border in search of cheaper prescription drugs has left pharmacist Ken Ross with a list of unanswered questions. His primary concern is shared by the FDA: safety.

Ken Ross>> Who would certify? To what extent are they certified? And then would there be a police force to go slap their hands if there was an infraction? The Food and Drug Administration has been years developing the protocols they have. For an agency in California to do something like that, it's really hard to envision, really hard.

Dario Frommer>> I think it's better for us to say these are reputable mail order pharmaceutical companies rather than letting people play Russian Roulette out there and just whoever they happen to come in contact they buy drugs and they don't know whether that entity is reputable or not.

Ken Ross>> We import the product from America to Canada at a price preferable that they can sell it back to us. If it were as simple as that, it would be wonderful.

Toni Guinyard>> But Ross says it's not that simple. While some drugs being sold in Canada are imported from the United States, then re-imported and sold back to U.S. residents, other drugs for sale are manufactured in other countries.

Ken Ross>> There's even been mention that the Canadians won't have enough, but they can buy these same drugs from I wouldn't say which countries, but some who don't have the good safeguards like the FDA, who don't even raise patents from the other countries in the world, who just make a drug and ship it to Canada. We don't have any safeguard against that.

Toni Guinyard>> Despite his reservations, Ross believes Assemblyman Frommer is on the right track trying to cut the cost patients are forced to pay. According to Ross, the average retail price of a prescription back in 1966 was $4 to $6. It is now $70 to $75. Members of the California Pharmacist Association admit the price is high, but they question whether the Assemblyman's proposal is the best solution.

Ken Ross>> We would like to see the FDA do something like this. Certify what drugs and what suppliers outside the country anywhere in the world can ship drugs into this country.

Dario Frommer>> Of course, it would be a problem anywhere, but we're minimizing that risk dramatically by certifying pharmacies that they meet our standards which are pretty tight.

Toni Guinyard>> State-run programs like the prison system also stand to gain from the legislation. It calls for directing the state to buy drugs in bulk quantities from Canada.

Dario Frommer>> We spend five billion dollars in total on prescription drugs every year.

>> "All right, pay day, pay day."

Toni Guinyard>> For now, consumers must simply watch and wait as lawmakers on the local, state and federal levels address how best to handle the re-importation prescription drug debate.

Ken Ross>> Well, the best thing about this proposal is that it will start a lot of talk and maybe some good ideas will come forward. I don't have one.

Val>> As Toni mentioned, the FDA maintains that drugs from Canada aren't necessarily safe and right now it's a federal crime for a Canadian pharmacist to write a prescription for an American customer. The future of any California plan centers on finding a workable solution to the safety concerns.

Kcet.org is the place to look for the very latest on Life and Times. You'll find previews of upcoming stories, transcripts and audio of past episodes and links to some of our most interesting features. Just go to kcet.org and click on "Life and Times".

Val>> Los Angeles is known as the land of high-speed pursuits, but a few local police officers still ride horses. In fact, LAPD's Mounted Unit is celebrating its fifteenth anniversary. Philip Bruce stopped by the stables at Griffith Park and talked to the man in charge.

Philip Bruce>> Lieutenant, in a city like Los Angeles, the last thing most of us think about is having cops on horses riding around. What do you guys do?

Lieutenant John Incontro>> Well, we do a variety of things. We provide a very good service to the communities. Our primary job is crime suppression details in different division throughout the city.

Philip Bruce>> Now what does that mean?

Lieutenant John Incontro>> What it is is patrol of high-crime areas and violent crime areas based upon the Comstat information that we receive from the areas and Metropolitan Division develops on its own. We'll be deployed on horseback to work on crime problems within those areas.

Philip Bruce>> Even if you get a problem downtown, for example, if you have a crowd out of control or a riot or something, can you see yourself involved in that?

Lieutenant John Incontro>> Sure. That's one of our other primary duties, crime suppression and crowd control and crowd management. We were used during the Democratic Convention, we've been used during a lot of different demonstrations and large crowd events. The impact of an officer on a horse, as you were saying, most people are not used to seeing a horse. There's the intimidation factor and we're less likely to have to use force, less likely to use any kind of less-lethal munitions when we're facing most crowds. Sometimes we do, unfortunately, but --

Philip Bruce>> -- bean bags or rubber bullets, you don't have to use those probably?

Lieutenant John Incontro>> Not as often as we would need to if we didn't have the horses.

Philip Bruce>> So show me what -- you say Buck is not your everyday police horse?

Lieutenant John Incontro>> No, not at all. He's one of our newer ones. He's part quarter horse and draft horse. He's a real friendly guy. In fact, he shows just how friendly he is by licking your hand.

Philip Bruce>> Very doglike, huh?

Lieutenant John Incontro>> Very doglike indeed. We don't have to worry about him biting anybody. He's a real friendly horse.

Philip Bruce>> Now what stage of training is he in?

Lieutenant John Incontro>> He is still in his orientation stage where we're getting him used to our way of doing things. We're a little different in the way we handle horses. We're getting him used to traffic, getting him used to crowds and he'll be assigned to one of our more skilled riders fairly soon.

Philip Bruce>> But the fact that he's a big baby doesn't mean he can't be a good police horse.

Lieutenant John Incontro>> Absolutely not. He's pretty fearless. He's a good horse. We really look for these horses here. We will walk up on someone committing a crime, they'll stop because they hear a strange noise, the clip-clop of the horse's hooves. They'll stop, turn around and look, see the horse and stop. Rarely does anyone try and run away. Rarely do we ever have to use any force. We're able to make an arrest without any problems.

The other thing that happens is that it's almost like with firemen riding fire engines. They see us and they want to pet the horse and say hello to the officers. It works real well. We do a lot of details during the summer at Venice Beach, so we see the gamut of the community there at Venice Beach and we may encounter some hardcore tattooed gang members that normally people would be a little hesitant to be around. But they see us, they have their children, hey, can my child pet your horse? You know, how are you doing, officer? So it's a real nice difference.

Philip Bruce>> So do you guys feel like cowboys?

Lieutenant John Incontro>> Well, one of the things I like to say is that, when we're growing up, whether you're a little boy or little girl, sometimes you say I want to be a cowboy or I want to be a sheriff, I want to be a policeman. Well, all of us here have been able to live out that fantasy that we're now policemen cowboys.

Philip Bruce>> But you're pretty picky about who gets in here, aren't you?

Lieutenant John Incontro>> Absolutely. We need to have officers who are good police officers first. Anyone who comes into our platoon has to meet the requirements of Metropolitan Division. We're looking for the top five to ten percent of the officers on the department to get into Metropolitan Division. There is a stringent background interview and a physical fitness test to get into the division. Once they've proven themselves within the division, and that takes about a year, then they have the option of coming to my platoon, to SWAT, or to our canine search team platoons. So we're getting the best type of person that we could possibly have in our department.

Philip Bruce>> Now you get the sense that all of you folks must be expert horsemen from the word go. Is that necessarily the case?

Lieutenant John Incontro>> No, not at all. In fact, as I told you earlier, when I was a child, this used to be a rental stable and I went here and rode a horse and got thrown. I maybe rode a horse four or five times as most of my officers. Very few have any riding experience. We require officers to go through a five-week school and they have to complete the school and there is about a two and a half hour test, a practical exam, at the end of the five-week school to see if you can be successful and ride a horse and be safe out in the street. That five-week school runs the gamut from equine physiology, equine psychology, horsemanship skills, a whole variety.

Philip Bruce>> Any high-speed chases to your credit?

Lieutenant John Incontro>> Unfortunately, not to mine, but there's been a couple here where we've had a horse pursuit or two (laughter).

Philip Bruce>> And that works?

Lieutenant John Incontro>> Absolutely.

Philip Bruce>> It's not just show biz. That really works.

Lieutenant John Incontro>> No, we're not going to run a horse because it's not safe, but we can go to a little trot. No matter how strong, how fast -- we could have Carl Lewis out here. He's eventually going to get tired, but my horse will not get tired.

Philip Bruce>> And when you ride through Griffith Park, you say a lot of people will be surprised and they'll say what to you?

Lieutenant John Incontro>> A lot of times we go down to Macarthur Park and work. There's a drug problem and some other problems, but they'll all of a sudden yell out, "Caballeros are here. Caballeros are coming!" You'll see the dope dealers kind of move out of the park and away from us, but we're still able to catch them and put them in jail.

Philip Bruce>> Well, Lieutenant, we wish you well. It's been a lot of fun and we hope to see more of you and your fellow officers here at the Mounted Unit of LAPD.

Lieutenant John Incontro>> Thank you very much. Nice to see you.

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Val>> Lynne Cox is more at home in the Pacific Ocean than she is on land. She's a world-class swimmer. At age fourteen, she swam between here and Catalina Island. She went on to break three records and, when she's not breaking records, she's swimming in waters that have never been crossed before. She writes about it in her new book, "Swimming to Antarctica", where she dives into thirty-two degree water without a wetsuit. Lynne Cox, thank you so much for meeting us on your home turf, although turf is not really your turf. Your turf is the ocean. We're in kind of a special place for you, right?

Lynne Cox>> Right. This is the place where it all began. I did my first three-mile rough water swim off the coast of Seal Beach and did really well. I won my age group and I got third overall and I suddenly found that this is the place I want to be.

Val>> How old were you then?

Lynne Cox>> I was fourteen years old.

Val>> Fourteen years old, you were doing a three-mile rough water swim?

Lynne Cox>> Right.

Val>> And ever since then, it's been, what, the next big one is Catalina?

Lynne Cox>> I heard about a group of kids here in Seal Beach who were planning to swim to Catalina. There is a twelve year old boy and three fourteen year old girls. So I started training off the shore here. We work out between four and six hours a day between here and the jetties, back and forth. It's a mile when you go from the pier here to the jetty and back, so we would do these pace mile swims or we would do swims from Huntington Beach to here, which would be like a ten-mile swim.

Val>> A ten-mile swim. And you've just been setting records all your career. What was the first big record you set?

Lynne Cox>> I swam the English Channel at age fifteen and broke the men's and women's world record.

Val>> Say that slower. Swam the English Channel --

Lynne Cox>> -- I swam the English Channel at age fifteen and broke the men's and women's world record.

Val>> Men's and women's, and what was your time?

Lynne Cox>> Nine hours, fifty-seven minutes. And my time was broken that same year, so I went back and broke the men's record again the next year.

Val>> You know, I always wondered what people think of when they're swimming because this goes on and on and on. I mean, hours and hours and hours in the ocean. How do you keep yourself literally from going crazy?

Lynne Cox>> Well, actually, you have boats that are guiding you and you have officials onboard the boats to make sure that you're doing the full swim under your own power. You're just wearing a bathing suit, cap and goggles, nothing more.

Val>> Because you don't wear a wetsuit?

Lynne Cox>> No, you don't wear a wetsuit because that's cheating. That's not making it under your own power. You swim under the English Channel swimming rules, so that means that if you stop to feed or anything like that -- they toss food to you. So if you drink warm apple juice which I do, they'll toss me the bottle of apple juice and I'll drink that on my back.

Val>> How do you eat while you're swimming?

Lynne Cox>> Tread water, lie on my back, and eat cookies or whatever and then get going again.

Val>> That's incredible. And has any swim ever taken you into a night or is it all during the day?

Lynne Cox>> Oh, actually, the first Catalina swim that I did was at night. It started at midnight from the isthmus and swam across because the wind is calming down at that time and it's a lot calmer. Then when I did my first English Channel swim, it was also at night. So actually you spend a lot of time going through blackness and then you sort of see the sunrise and you watch the colors change and it's a beautiful moment. It's also a moment when you are pretty cold from swimming so long that you sort of try to swim along the upper inches of the water to sort of get the sun on your back and spreading across.

Val>> Now have you ever been in a situation where you had to be rescued, bailed out, by your crew because something happened? You got sick or too cold or you had to stop a swim?

Lynne Cox>> I was in the Nile River in Egypt and I was sick before I even started the swim. I swam fifteen miles of a twenty-mile race and nearly passed out in the water, so I had to be pulled out on that. But it was really good now looking back on it because it made me realize that, when you're sick, you can't do these swims. There are limits to what your body can do and, if things are not going right, it's better to stop and come back. You have that option because, if you don't, you might not have that option.

Val>> And you can't be foolish. You have to even know your limits, which are --

Lynne Cox>> -- you have to know your limits all the time and you have to be aware of what you're doing all the time. You're thinking about, you know, your pace, your speed, but you're also watching your fingers to make sure that you're not cooling down. If your fingers are starting to separate, that means your brain is cooling down.

Val>> Really?

Lynne Cox>> Yeah. If your shoulders are turning blue, it means that you're pooling blood there and you're cooling down. There are all sorts of signs of hypothermia that you're really aware of, but you're also out there enjoying it. You know, you're watching the birds fly overhead, watching the boats go by. It's fun.

Val>> Now you've recently written a book about swimming to Antarctica, but you've also swum the Straits of Magellan which is one of the most treacherous and I think you even had some close encounter with a shark at some point? You've had some close calls.

Lynne Cox>> Well, yeah, but again, you know, you prepare for what could go wrong. I was swimming around the Cape of Good Hope and there was a twelve-foot Bronze Whaler who came up out of the kelp for me.

Val>> That's a shark?

Lynne Cox>> It's a shark. It's a Mako family shark. It's a very aggressive shark and it migrates down from the north of Africa and comes down to south Africa during the summertime. So this shark was about ten feet from me and the diver that was in the water watching for sharks had to shoot it in the dorsal fin and the shark just turned and nothing happened and it swam off. So it was not good, but it was good that the diver was there and was alert. The diver said that he thought the shark would be okay and I swam very quickly to shore and finished the swim, so I was able to be the first person to get around the Cape of Good Hope.

Val>> Again, what do you think of when you're in the middle of a long, long swim? Is there always something occupying you or is there ever a moment when you can just kind of, I don't know, not think of anything or go into a different kind of mental frame of mind?

Lynne Cox>> Yes. Your mind changes like it does all day long for you or in the night. You sometimes focus really on what you're doing and very aware. At other times, you're sort of in a pace and you're just letting your mind wander. Actually, I do a lot of my writing while I'm swimming because I can just focus in on what I'm doing. There are no distractions and it's a total time to think about what I'm doing, where I'm going, what's new, what project I'm working on. It's a think tank.

Val>> So you can literally like outline a book or a chapter in your mind while you're swimming?

Lynne Cox>> Actually, I can, and I was also at times trying to figure out how do I describe jumping into the water off Antarctica when the water is thirty-two degrees, and what's that sensation, and how do you describe sensations you've never had before and how do you put those into words?

Val>> What was it like?

Lynne Cox>> It was extremely cold (laughter). It was a blast of cold just wrapping around me and then this instant of not being able to breath because the water is sort of so tight around your chest. Then I was hyperventilating. I was trying to get my breathing back to normal and it wasn't happening because the water was so cold. My body was just shooting adrenalin through it and I was moving very, very fast. My arms were going like at ninety strokes a minute, just trying to get warm and trying to keep going.

Val>> And did you eventually get warm and get out of that?

Lynne Cox>> Well, actually, I never got warm on that swim, but inside, my body temperature stayed pretty warm. At the end of the swim, my temperature had dropped from -- initially it was 102.2 when I started swimming, and I think that was just the psychological preparation for it. My body knew what to do. Then it dropped to 95.5 at the end of the swim and then, an hour later, it was back up to normal.

You know, I actually did a test swim before the real swim just to see how far I could go because that initial jump into the water can be deadly. I mean, it can make you go into cardiac arrest. I had done some very cold swims. I had done the Bering Strait which dropped to thirty-eight at the end, but there's still six degrees difference and that's a huge difference.

Val>> You say they've done research on your body?

Lynne Cox>> They've done research on me at the University of London and at UC Santa Barbara and the University of Washington to try to figure out what's going on physiologically and how I've been able to acclimate. When you think of penguins only being able to sustain that kind of water temperature, you think of only marine mammals, and here a human being was able to do that.

It sort of makes you think, well, you know, we are capable of doing so many different things and where are the limits? Are we limited by other people limiting us, or their own fears? What I'm trying to say is, you know, you can do what you want to do if you work hard enough to do it, prepare well enough and have a crew around you that really can support you and you believe in them and they believe in you. It makes a huge difference.

Val>> Well, Lynne Cox, thank you so much. And thank you for writing about your experiences in your book so all of us can dip into a little bit of cold water ourselves.

Lynne Cox>> I can't wait for you to read it.

Val>> I'll look forward to it.

Lynne Cox>> Thank you very much.

Val>> And if you're wondering why Lynne Cox has never been to the Olympics, it's because even the long distance Olympic swimming events aren't long enough for Lynne Cox. And that's our program. I'm Val Zavala. For everyone at Life and Times, thanks for watching.

Life and Times was made possible through the generous support of the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of medicine, health, science and education.

Val>> Next time on Life and Times, Southern Californians born in Iraq talk about life after the war.

>> I don't think the Iraqi people will tolerate any more importing of regimes. I mean, that's not going to happen. We're going to hold the Bush administration accountable for their promises. They said we're going to provide freedom and democracy and a new system. A new system is going to have to adopt democracy.

Val>> That's next time on Life and Times.