Participate in a twomonth program at edgewood artillery military base. This is Edgewood Arsenal the armys chemical commodities center. Reporter this was the cold war and the United States wanted defenses against a possible soviet chemical attack. Psychochemical attack may come in the form of an explosion. An invisible vapor. A cloud of smoke. We do not know reporter the u. S. Was also developing psychochemical weapons of its own. Heres a group of normal soldiers responding correctly to a series of routine drill commands. After receiving a small dose of lsd, theyre confused and undisciplined. Reporter for 20 years about 7,000 military volunteers took part in testing of some 250 chemical and biological agents. One test i woke up and demonstrated parkinsons symptoms. I couldnt walk. My body shook violently and pain throughout my body. And just a lot of numbness. Reporter ten years ago he was diagnosed with parkinsons disease. The symptoms that that i felt then are just exactly whats come back to me in the last ten years. Reporter so josephs and other edgewood vets are suing the department of defense and the department of Veterans Affairs in response to a cnn report on edgewood in 2012 dod said the department of defense has made it a priority to identify all Service Members exposed to chemical and biological substances and the vas contacted and offered free medical evaluations to thousands of veterans. But today josephs finds himself facing another struggle. His parkinsons forced him to retire early, and in 2010 he filed a medical claim with the va. I have a hard time really dressing myself and traveling. And i have attacks daily of tremors and sometimes breathing difficulty and eating. Reporter 13 months later he was awarded a 40 disability rating. Thats 602 a month not even enough to pay for his medications, so he appealed. Asking for more. But this february after three years of waiting and unanswered letters, tim got unwelcome news from the va office in pittsburgh. I should call back in about four years. That by that time id be much closer to my file being looked at. And i was speechless. Reporter thats right. Tim says it would be 2018 before the va could make a decision on his case. I was surprised. But several lawyers we spoke with who handle disability claims say they arent. Many veterans, 275,000 as of this week, are waiting an average of four to five years for an answer on an appealed disability claim. Vas treatment of these veterans is absolutely unacceptable. And here he is joining me now tim josephs with me in washington. Tim, just listening to your story and hearing in the piece that the va told uyou, sorry, well make a decision in four years. Tell me about a phone call you just recently got. I just got a call this morning that my benefits have been increased 50 from 40 to 80 disability rating. And id sure like to thank everyone here at cnn for their work. Without your help and intervention, id still be in line with 100,000 other vets sort of lost. Its incredible. I mean, hats off to sanjay and his entire medical team for maybe playing a role, but were so happy for you that youre finally going to get some help. I understand, tim, youre supposed to have brain surgery, deep brain stimulation to treat your parkinsons. Youve been waiting a while for that. Do we have a date yet . Well, i was scheduled for midjuly. And its sort of on hold now. Several new drugs have come out to treat. So, the doctors want to research that venue first. As theres some risk involved with the with the brain stimulation surgery. So, theyll try the newer drugs first. And then ultimately ill most likely have that at some date in the future. Well, whether its the drugs or that, that surgery, we wish you absolutely the best, tim joseph jose josephs, and were thrilled you got the phone call that seemed to turn things around. Thank you for sharing your story with us. My sincere thanks to cnn. I really appreciate it. You got it. And now millions of veterans rely on va hospitals and in many ways the care is excellent. But its a tough time. Not just delays on these disability claims but cnns drew griffin broke the story that made so many vets who have been waiting for months and months, even for years, for treatment. And some patients died as a result. Whistleblowers accuse some va stras of falsifying records and covering it up, but thanks to that reporting here at cnn the head of the va had to answer some pretty tough questions on thursday on capitol hill. Is in your judgment based on what you know, are people, quoteunquote, cooking the books . Is that, in fact, a problem within the Health Care System . Im not aware, and other than a number of isolated cases where there is evidence of that. But the fact that there is evidence in a couple of cases behooves us to go and take a thorough look. And i can promise you cnn will stay on top of this story. In other news a disease called middle east respiratory syndrome, has put a lot of people on edge, it kills about a third of known patients. Nearly all of them were infected in saudi arabia. But some have flown to the United States. The cdc and local Health Officials are tracking down hundreds of people who were on those multiple airplanes with these individuals, and senior medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen has a look behind the scenes. Reporter were here at the cdcs Emergency Operations center. Its the nerve center where theyre tracking the mers virus. Off to my right there are people who are making phone calls to passengers on the plane with the mers patient in florida. They want to know, did anyone else get sick. On this monitor a map displays the 34 states where the passengers live. We are basically trying to reach everybody. Were administering a short questionnaire that you have here, making sure theyre well. Reporter so, what kind of questions are you asking . Have you had a fever . Thats a temperature greater than 100. 4. Have you had any cough . Reporter the passengers are likely not sick. They didnt have close and prolonged contact with the mers patient. Most at risk family members and Health Care Workers. Thats why this box was rushed here. It contains specimens from Health Care Workers who came in contact with the mers patient. That box of specimens arrived here at the cdcs viral disease lab. Now, were not allowed in because this is biosafety hazard level two and that means no visitors. But all day inside here, they worked on two mers specimens from florida. So, two people fly from the middle east to the United States and bring mers here. And look at the response that it generates. Were all connected. A single plane flight can bring a virus or bacteria from any part of the world to any other part of the world. Elizabeth cohen with that behindthescenes look there. A couple of things you might notice if you do fly, airports are starting to post signs like this one, a warning about mers. Basically if you are not on the arabian peninsula, you dont have to worry about it. But if you do travel there and within two weeks you start to notice some symptoms like a fever, cough, shortness of breath, dont blow it off. Do tell your doctor. They will make sure that it isnt serious. Coming up here, one of the more controversial diseases. Surprisingly lyme disease. Going places it never has gone before. Sanjays got the details up next. Cut [bell rings] this. Is jane. Her long day on set starts with shoulder pain. And a choice take 6 tylenol in a day which is 2 aleve for. All day relief. Hmm. [bell ring] roll sound action you may have heard recently scientists issued a new report on Climate Change that went to the president and congress. What caught my eye about this was the predicted impact on human health. For one thing it says warmer temperatures will mean more mosquitos and ticks and also more of the illnesses that they carry. You can already see this with lyme disease. Kerry clark is hunting. Thats how we do it. Look, theres a tick there already. Hunting ticks. Tracing the carriers of lyme disease. This is not a blacklegged tick. It looks almost exactly like a blacklegged tick. Four years ago he felt a bite. Five days later i had this strange fatigue and some general malaise, and i had these swollen lymph nodes on the side of my neck. The diagnosis, lyme disease. The centers for Disease Control estimates that every year there are approximately 300,000 cases. It says 95 of those occur in just 13 states, all of them in the northeast and the upper midwest. Deer ticks exist in Southern States. They dont really bite humans like the northern ones do, so there may be other factors why even though the deer ticks exist in Southern States and some of them even carry the bacteria that causes lyme disease, we dont see many cases of human lyme disease. But clark was exploring in georgia when he was bitten and he says theres plenty of evidence lyme is not so rare in the south. Over time its just kind of being selfreinforced that we dont have it here, its rare to nonexistent in the south and this sort of thing. And then doctors were educated and indoctrinated into that belief. And so even when they see it, they dont recognize it. Other experts are starting to agree. Lyme disease is spreading. But lyme disease does occur in many other states. So, the question is not whether lyme disease exists in the southeast or the South CentralUnited States, it certainly does. The question is, how much of a Public Health problem is it. Scientists believe the disease will keep moving south, in part because of the changes in climate. They send me my data files. Clarks doctor put him on a course of antibiotics and his symptoms did go away, but they came back just two months later. One day i developed a headache, and it was a migraine severitytype headache. It came on immediately, and it stayed for three weeks. I had pressure in my head, neck stiffness and other things like that. While a majority of patients with lyme disease see their symptoms go away after an initial course of antibiotics, another 10 to 20 have symptoms that linger. Some like clark end up taking antibiotics for months at a time. When carefully studied where antibiotics long term have been compared to placebo we dont see any effect. The cdc told us the lasting symptoms are real but theyre probably due to nerve damage not a lingering infection. But others say that issue isnt settled. We also know from animal models that there are situations when the pathogen, the lyme bacterium, does persist, so i think that the potential for the lyme disease pathogen to persist following standard antibiotic treatment is reasonably high, and it probably is occurring in some lyme disease patients. Clark is hoping the answer may lie in some of these ticks hes rounding up. That understanding them better could spare patients all over a lot more pain. And how to protect yourself from ticks. Use insect repellent. When hiking wear long pants and sleeves and walk in the center of the trail. You know all that, right . Up next, forget the 10,000hour rule. How you can learn the basics of any new skill in 20 hours or even less. Then we gave each person a ribbon to show how many years that amount might last. I was trying to, like, pull it a little further. [ woman ] got me to 70 years old. Im going to have to rethink this thing. Its hard to imagine how much well need for a retirement that could last 30 years or more. So maybe we need to approach things differently, if we want to be ready for a longer retirement. Little things, anyone can do. It steals your memories. Your independence. Insures support. A breakthrough. And sooner than youd like. Sooner than you think. You die from alzheimers disease. We cure alzheimers disease. Every little click, call, or donation adds up to something big. Alzheimers association. The brains behind saving yours. I live in a world oi am totally blind. Ive been blind since birth. I lost my sight to eye disease. I lost my sight in afghanistan. And it doesnt hold me back. But my blindness can affect my sleep patterns. I go through periods where its hard to sleep at night, and stay awake during the day. But i learned that my struggle was with non24. Non24 is a circadian rhythm disorder that affects up to 70 of people who are totally blind and cant perceive light. Talk to your doctor about your symptoms, and learn about non24 by calling 8448442424. Thats 8448442424. Or visit my24info. Com. Now i know that non24 is real. And im not alone. Its time for a new day. You know, this wildly popular book outliers Malcolm Gladwell makes his case that it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert at something. Who has that much time on their hands . We did the math. Its 3 1 2 years and 10,000 hours so we decided to invite josh coffman, hes the author of the first 20 hours how to learn anything fast. Good to meet you. Thanks for being on the program. Good to be here. I love this idea especially as you get older you want to sort of think about learning some new skills maybe and learning things that you wouldnt have otherwise learned earlier in life or you didnt have the time. Where did the 10,000hour rule come from in the first place . So, the original rule if you look at the research came from studies of expertlevel performers, so think athletes and professional musicians and chess grand masters. And the question the research was trying to answer is what does it take to get to the top. What does it take to become the best at something, you know, some ultracompetitive field. And that research is really interesting. The result was it takes about 10,000 hours over a period of usually about ten years to get there. And that research is interesting but it doesnt really answer the question of how do we right. Get better at something. You know, if you want to pick up something as a hobby or you want to learn something for your work, it doesnt take anywhere close to 10,000 hours to just decide to learn something and sit down and learn it and get the results you want. How hard is it to just begin . So, the very beginning of this learning curve deciding youre going to adopt a new skill set. You know, the beginning of the process is actually the most difficult because thats the point were the most selfconscious about what we can and cant do and so, you know, at the beginning of the process were scared, were intimidated, we may not know where to begin. But if you just sit down and think through what it is exactly youre trying to do, what do you want to get out of this skill, and then break the skill down into smaller parts, it becomes much easier to practice and then your strategys really simple. Look at the subskills that youre going to need to know and youre going to use most often. Practice those first. Yeah. And you improve very, very quickly in a very short of time. Why the ukulele . Its very fun. I wanted to learn an instrument. Id never played a stringed instrument. Didnt know how to read music . I played trumpet in high school, not a whole lot of Transferable Skills between the two. 20 hours . 20 hours. I went from never picking up a stringed instrument to playing in front of a group of about 5 had been people at a performance in 2012. This is very inspiring and now we get to hear you . So, ill show you how this works. So, i have two young kids at home. And im finding myself playing a lot of childrens music which is a great place to start because childrens music is both really fun and easy to remember. Its also really simple so its a good place to learn how to do this. So, the only thing that you need to know to play childrens music three chords, believe it or not. C. F. And g. Okay . So, if you can do that okay. So, think . Twinkle Twinkle Little Star how i wonder what you are right . Its really simple. You can learn how to do that in a couple minutes. Right. And then the skill becomes learning how to switch between the chords yeah. To get the song you want. So you do that and then you just do fancier stuff with your right hand, right . Twinkle Twinkle Little Star right . Then when you get comfortable with that you do even more fancy stuff. Theres something called finger picking which is instead of strumming them all at the same time you hit individual strings. So twinkle Twinkle Little Star how i wonder what you are its the same thing. You just need to know how to break it down and practice in a way to make it automatic. And it doesnt take long to do that. Youre a good teacher. Thank you. Appreciate that. Part of in is people have to be good learners, too, right . Yes. Anybody can do this . Anybody can do at any age. Thanks so much for being here. Thank you very much for having me. I think people will get a lot out of it. I appreciate that. Up next a great story how an 18monthold boy literally saved the life of a wellknown opera singer. I want to cross over into yoyou are feeling powerfuld with a 4cylinder engine. E. Open your eyes to the 6cylinder, 8speed lexus gs. With more standard horsepower than any of its german competitors. This is a wakeup call. Lease the 2014 gs350 for 449 a month for 24 months. See your lexus dealer. That corporate trial by fire when every slacker gets his due. And yet, theres someone around the office who hasnt had a Performance Review in a while. Someone whose poor performance is slowing down the entire organization. Im looking at you phone company dsl. Check your speed. See how fast your internet can be. Switch now and add voice and tv for 34. 90. Comcast business built for business. The new york metropolitan opera, its one of the worlds great stages and when eric jordan sings bass there his booming voice fits right in. But two years ago when he was barely 40, it almost ended. Every time i sing, my soul is bared. When he had a stroke a year and a half ago, opera singer jordans ability to bare his soul, to sing, was stifled. 5 30 a. M. The morning of the stroke. 18monthold gabriel crawls into bed with his parents and everyone goes back to sleep except eric. He never stopped kind of moving around and jerking around. Then i realized theres something wrong. Then the moving around stop abruptly. I slapped him. He wouldnt wake up. Later at the hospital doctors removed three large clots in erics brain saving erics life. And his ability to sing. Only eight weeks after his stroke the bass was back onstage at new yorks metropolitan opera. This is a very magical house. Eric said recovering from a stroke has forced him to slow down and to savor lifes small blessings and to accept this new version of himself. How you change the way that you look at something helps you change yourself. Thats going to wrap things up for sg md but stay connected with me at cnn. Com sanjay. Lets keep the conversation going on Twitter Twitter doctorsanjaygupta. Time now to get you back into the cnn newsroom. Youre in the cnn newsroom. Wildfires are chewing through large parts of Southern California right now including many houses and businesses. But fire crews there are giving us some very welcome news. One, it looks like firefighters are finally getting the upper hand on the half dozen fires burning right now. And, two, despite the massive destruction, no major injuries and no deaths are being blamed directly on the fires that started spreading four days ago. Cnns Paul Vercammen is north of san diego right now. San