Transcript

Century of Lies / July 24, 2011

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DEAN BECKER: The failure of Drug War is glaringly obvious to judges, cops, wardens, prosecutors and millions more. Now calling for decriminalization, legalization, the end of prohibition. Let us investigate the Century of Lies.

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DEAN BECKER: Hello. Welcome to this edition of Century of Lies. Here in a few minutes we’ll be bringing Mr. Mike Hyde, father of one 3-year-old Cash Hyde who had brain cancer but who, through the use of a “controversial cannabis extract” is now in remission and doing quite well.

The following segment is brought to us courtesy of KXLY in Washington state, an affiliate of ABC, the American Broadcasting Corporation.

ROBYN NANCE: Federal agents in Spokane raided several medical marijuana dispensaries today enforcing federal law that makes selling or possessing marijuana illegal. But for some families that drug is a God-send in treating a variety of diseases.

2-year-old Cash Hyde was diagnosed last year with a stage 4 brain tumor. He nearly died more times than his family can count and was miserable from the high dose chemo that was coursing through his tiny body until his dad turned to a controversial place and gave cannabis to his young son. KXLY’s Melissa Luck is here and has been working on this story.

MELISSA LUCK: Yeah, controversial, Robyn, is an understatement. Medical marijuana is a political football both here in Washington and in Cashy’s home state of Montana. But his father said to me, “When your child is dying of cancer, you’ll do anything you can to help.” His choice defy doctors but he says it saved Cashy’s life.

The doctor’s had no answers so Mike found his own. Relief in the form of a controversial oil. Cannabis, illegal for you and I to possess and something Cashy’s doctors wouldn’t even discuss.

Mike got authorization to give Cashy the oil and without telling them why he told the doctors to wean Cashy off the nausea cocktail. Inserted through Cashy’s feeding tube, a tiny amount of oil replaced all those drugs. The result, Mike says, was almost immediate.

MIKE HYDE: You’re watching a kid who hasn’t had the will to eat in four months/five months actually take a bite of something. He hadn’t eaten a thing in 40 days and it was really incredible to actually watch him take a bite of a piece of cheese. It’s shown that he wants to live.

MELISSA LUCK: Cashy did his last round of high-dose chemo with no anti-nausea drugs. Mike said the doctors told him they were amazed. Mike never told them why.

MIKE HYDE: I wanted to tell them, “Hey, he’s on cannabis oil” but I was afraid they would take it away from him.

MELISSA LUCK: We wanted to tell the side effects, the possible dangers of giving medical marijuana to a kids as young as Cashy but even though it’s perfectly legal in Washington and in his home state of Montana, we couldn’t get a single doctor to talk to us on camera.

Sherry Allen is a Nurse Practitioner from Oregon. She comes to Spokane every couple of weeks to evaluate medical marijuana patients and sign off on their permits.

SHERRY ALLEN: What I try to do here at this office is create an atmosphere that is truly medical because I do believe that cannabis is medical and we are trying to use it as a medicine.

MELISSA LUCK: She believes in the power of this drug and its benefit for cancer patients. I asked her about authorizing marijuana for kids.

SHERRY ALLEN: It is not common, OK? And I’m not going to say whether or not I’ve authorized it for a child.

MELISSA LUCK: It’s a typical answer as doctors are concerned about federal law and company policies but Mike Hyde doesn’t care about the controversy or about the political battle over this drug. He cares that his son survived and is convinced that not only did cannabis oil make Cashy feel better it prevents long-term damage to his organs. For Mike, the living proof is in this vibrant 2-year-old boy.

MIKE HYDE : Yeah, it’s very controversial. It’s very scary. But there’s nothing more scary than the thought of losing your child.

MELISSA LUCK: A week after we did this interview Cashy was back in Salt Lake for scans finding out he’s cancer free. He’s back home in Missoula, back with his family, back to teasing his big brother, Colty. Cashy will spend his third birthday like every kid should – with the fight of his life behind him.

The state of Montana estimates that of the 28,000 medical marijuana patients in the state, 51 are kids under the age of 18. Now, Robyn, we tried to get those numbers from the state of Washington but our state does not track who has medical marijuana permits, whose allowed to get them – it’s just simply not tracked so we have no idea in Washington.

ROBYN NANCE: And after today’s raids we kind of understand that it might be even longer before we have anymore answers.

MELISSA LUCK: That’s right and that’s something we talked to the Hyde’s about at the time. We conducted this interview a couple weeks ago and that’s the one thing Mike said, “Whether you agree with it or not, every time they take down one of these dispensaries – there might be a kid or someone in a hospital somewhere that depends on it.”

DEAN BECKER: Once again that was from KXLY in Washington state and a quick Google search will show you there have been lots and lots of very positive stories and broadcasts about this circumstance.

Now, an interview I conducted with Cash’s medical marijuana doctor in Montana.

DEAN BECKER: Dr. Chris Christensen.

CHRIS CHRISTENSEN : My only rule in Cash’s medical care to date has been to see him on about three occasions. I first met the child with his mother and father when I met them and they became patients of mine. I met their child simply because he accompanied them. We discussed in rather general terms what they were facing with him in the way of proposed treatment out-of-state for his recently diagnosed brain tumor and we had our first discussion at that time about whether or not there was any literature to support or suggest alternatively a negative impact of using cannabis to manage a malignancy in a child because it was a presumed but proven malignancy at that time.

DEAN BECKER: Now I’m sure there are some folks out there listening that are saying, “Oh my Gosh. A 2-year-old using cannabis?! Isn’t this dangerous?!”

CHRIS CHRISTENSEN : Well, first and foremost, there is not a recorded fatality in any age group, to my knowledge, from any overdosage of cannabis in any form. The emphasis we place on medical use of cannabis or marijuana is on ingestion, oral ingestion, in some form where the molecules have been activated or extracted or both and the discussion we had about the potential use of cannabis in Cash’s case was because at that point he was unable to eat, he had the gastric tube already in place – that’s a tube through his nose into his stomach through which he was receiving tube feeding - and he showed little enthusiasm for even that form of nutrition.

So our first discussions related to the need to increase his appetite, to get him relief of apparent distress, what one would assume was pain associated with the physical manifestations of physical discomfort and also to help him with sleep because his sleep pattern was almost non-existent.

DEAN BECKER: Well some of the reports and broadcasts I’ve seen in regards to young Cashy Hyde have indicated that his oncologist have been quoted as saying, “It’s a miracle that he’s even survived.”

Have you had a chance to see young Cash since he’s been in remission?

CHRIS CHRISTENSEN: I saw him but actually it was at a fundraiser for the ongoing efforts in Montana to support the preexisting law. So I saw him with his parents. He was radiant and had gained weight. He was interactive with people around him.

When I first saw him and when I certified him, he was very lethargic and virtually no interaction with anyone other than his mother and it was almost all about her being able to comfort him in the manner in which she was best able to relieve his distress.

DEAN BECKER: In talking to his father, Mike, I understand that they went fishing this week. I think that’s a miracle as well.

CHRIS CHRISTENSEN : I think the word miracle in every possible connotation suggest that certainly in the odds that existed in the minds of his attending physicians in Salt Lake for stabilization of his condition given the aggressiveness and the size of his brain tumor – I think they’re expressing very legitimately a sense that what they’re seeing is no expected from the type of therapy that they were willing and prepared to administer. I think that they were tremendously gratified to see a response that was well beyond they’re expectation. I realize from conversations with the father that he had been surreptitious in his efforts to provide cannabis to his son while he was in Salt Lake. And, at one point, he felt he should be totally honest with the doctors and I think they’re response to that was they don’t know what to attribute this unexpected and remarkable improvement but the word they used was miracle.

DEAN BECKER: Thank you for joining us here on Century of Lies. That was Dr. Chris Christensen. He’s based up in Montana. He’s a medical marijuana doctor mostly these days. And with that I want to welcome our guest, Mr. Mike Hyde. How are you sir?

MIKE HYDE: Not bad. How are you?

DEAN BECKER: Mike, I hope you were able to hear that interview with your doctor. I think this brings to mind and I just want to share something with the audience. I have an injured shoulder. I can’t afford to go to a doctor to find out what it is but some days it just feels like I should put it in a sling because it’s just so hard to deal with. But, today I remember that I had some cannabis lotion which was given to me up in Seattle and I rubbed it on my shoulder and it’s pretty flexible now. There are many ways this plant, this cannabis plant can help the human condition. Am I right, Mike?

MIKE HYDE: Yeah it can truly heal almost all the ailments out there in one way or another – it can help the symptoms. Like you said, you’re should was hurting…cannabis is an anti-inflammatory so not only does it help block the pain from the nerve but it also anti-inflammatory like ibuprofen however it’s not suspended in azobenzene like all pharmaceutical drugs which could cause cancer. So what the pharmaceutical world doesn’t want you to know is that you don’t need to go to Albertsons and buy Tylenol or aspirin or ibuprofen for yourself or your kids, you can have a cannabis plant growing and you can use cannabis. And it’s safer and there’s no documented deaths, like Dr. Christensen said, in children or adults. And the simple fact is that even Children’s Tylenol has “deaths per years”. So if you go on the internet, look at the stuff you got in your household that you’re feeding your children or your using for their sicknesses and see what the side effects are and see what the deaths per year are and you’ll be amazed that most things that we most commonly give our children will actually kill them. And, we feel safe by doing it because the FDA tells us it’s OK. “Here, use this. Here, take that. Don’t use this.”

So what we’ve done, as a society, is we’ve built the FDA to protect us from ourselves and what the FDA has done is they’ve monopolized what medicines we take and what foods we eat and where we acquire them from and they’ve the best one for us illegal because it competes with everything that they represent. All the corporations, the big pharma, the big money, the textiles.

I mean, the best book for anybody out there to read is “The Emperor Wears No Clothes.” It was written by Jack Herer and it’s an amazing history of hemp. It goes back 3,000 to 5,000 years. Our famous American presidents were huge hemp farmers. If George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were alive right now – they would march our courthouses and they would demand that we grow hemp. They would not be standing around and watch good Americans be locked up on it, you know.

The book, though, there’s an 100,000 dollar reward to prove it wrong. That book’s been out…I think the first edition was like 1982 and that book has been revised about 3 or 4 times and still nobody has took that reward. You can’t prove it wrong.

DEAN BECKER: Once again we’re speaking with Mr. Mike Hyde, father to probably the world’s youngest medical marijuana patient, his son, Cashy Hyde.

MIKE HYDE: He is the youngest but that’s after 1936 when it went illegal. Prior to 1936, there was like 20-something marijuana tinctures on the shelf. They weren’t called marijuana though because its name is cannabis. So, if you want to look into the history in the U.S. pharmacopeia – from like 18-something to 1910, I believe, you can look and find cannabis listed as a medicine for caulicky mothers and children and everything in between and the reason is is it’s the safest medicine to give anybody and it’s the most therapeutic out there because it literally will hit almost every element…Crohn’s disease is swelling of the intestinal lining and then it tears and then you get feces into your bloodstream and you have to get feet and feet of your intestinal tract removed. Well, with cannabis oil, like I rehealed Cashy’s stomach after the chemo damaged it…but basically cannabis oil is an anti-inflammatory so it reduced the swelling. It’s an anti-bacterial so it takes care of the blood and the feces matter. When your epithelial lining tract is damaged – it promotes CB1 growth. When CB1s get cannabis, it promotes the death and discretion of dying and sick cells.

So your stomach will actually push the dead and sick cells out as its using the cannabis as a anti-bacterial as it’s going anti-inflammatory as it going through the anti-inflammatory process. Once that takes place and the dead cells are out of there, it promotes CB2 receptors which promote the growth and healthy function of new cells. And you can replicate that procedure I just explained on every part of your body that has these receptors – it will do that. And you have receptors from your brain all the way down to your intestinal lining. The only part of your body, well not the only part but one of the major parts that does not have the receptors is a part of your brain stem that controls your respiratory and your cardio. And that is why there is no documented deaths to cannabis because you literally can’t stop your heart or your respiratory system with it.

Now Cash “Code Blued” at least 7or 8 times last year. A Code Blue is when they overdose you or your heart stops or whatever and they have to revive you. Every time that Cash “Code Blued” it was because they had just put a narcotic in him, Estenocam (?) or Ketamin (?) or Thetanol (?) or crazy drugs that they’re giving children and they were really stopping his heart. I couldn’t do that with cannabis oil because it’s not possible and that’s why I felt so safe to give him this medicine right out of the gate.

And people ask me, “Well weren’t you worried that giving him this drug and you don’t even know what it is.” And I was like, “No, man, I wasn’t worried a bit.” Dr. Ethan Russo discovered the endocannabinoid system existed and he explained why it’s the most safe and therapeutic medicine out there. So, once you know that, you should know that you can give this to your kid and feel way better than giving him McDonald’s. Let’s face it, McDonald’s is killing our youth, you know.

So, once we look at society and where we’re at and what we’re giving our kids and giving ourselves and we look at the numbers…there’s 44 kids a day diagnosed with pediatric cancer. Pediatric cancer is the leading cause of death in our children of the United States of America. 1% of all money raised goes to pediatric cancer research. So when you see these runs and you see these marches, you know that if you kid gets cancer - none of the money going to help them out. They’re going to get the same exact treatment that a full adult’s is going to get. There’s no cotton candy chemo for your little 2-year-old kid. They’re going to give them the real deal.

DEAN BECKER: OK, Mike, let me interrupt you again. Once again we’re speaking with Mr. Michael Hyde, father of Cashy Hyde. Now, when you first learned of Cash’s condition – it wasn’t just the cancer but there were other major complications that came along with it. Do you want to outline those?

MIKE HYDE: Yes, one of the biggest scares or worries for any cancer patient or their family is the complications that come along with cancer and it’s not necessarily the cancer – even though cancer does have its own side effects – but chemotherapy and bone marrow transplant have a list of side effects that are very dangerous. People don’t realize when they’re first given the option to take it on. One of them, the biggest side effect of chemotherapy is hearing loss. Little Cashy has severe hearing loss from the type of chemotherapy they used on him.

Second is chemotherapy can cause a different cancer to come back – an even more scary cancer that’s immune to chemo. That’s why when you hear of people who fought cancer once with chemo – when they get it again, they die because their bodies are too weak to fight it and the chemo isn’t going to kill the cancer because it’s resistant to it. Like, it mutates, it becomes a super-cancer.

Bone marrow transplant…one of the biggest fears of bone marrow transplant is called pulmonary hemorrhaging. If you look it up on the internet and link it to cancer patients you will see that 80% of every recorded case of pulmonary hemorrhaging in a bone marrow transplant patient, that 80% died – there’s no getting around it.

Then, on top of that, if you’re immunocompromised, you’re next biggest fear is infections and the hospital is full of bacteria and it is almost impossible to keep these kids from getting these blood infections. Cashy got a handful of them last year between May and when he got the grand finale in October. But, basically, after we gave Cashy this medicine and we improved his quality of life 100% and we got him eating again and he did his 6th round of chemotherapy and bone marrow transplant – not one narcotic or anti-nausea drug and the doctors documented it as amazing for weeks and weeks in a row…I have the records sitting in my kitchen and you can read. You can see him coming off the list of drugs. They have his quality of life – they have it all listed – it’s all right there. And, after that, he got a blood infection and it was a vancomycin resistant blood infection. And vancomycin is the top gun, if vancomycin won’t kill your infection – you’re going to die. And with infections the biggest scare is septic shock and stroke because your organs basically go haywire and they release…your body when you have septic shock or stroke, your body releases these free radicals. And these free radicals will destroy your brain, destroy your organs – they destroy everything and that’s why people don’t make it out of stroke and they don’t make it out of septic shock. And when your organs are fried from chemo, it don’t take much to kill them.

So, again, the cannabis oil is documented and patented by the United States Government as an anti-oxidant and a neuro-protectant. You can go to our website, http://cashhydefoundation.com, and click our cannabis page. I actually have the patent number listed there and the article that goes along with the patent as well as a link to the National Cancer Institute which is http://www.cancer.gov and they actually acknowledge cannabis as a valid medicine for cancer patients. They explain the history of cannabis. They explain why it’s so safe. They explain everything about it and they contradict the federal stance on cannabis so it shouldn’t be a Schedule I drug.

But….anyhow…Cash experienced septic shock, stroke and pulmonary hemorrhaging all at the same time on the same day and we were told that he was going to have brain damage. We were told that his organs were going to fail and we were told that there was no way that they could rebuild his lungs and that he was ultimately going to die.

They put him on an oscillator(?) life-support system which blew a hole into his lungs which then put a bunch of air/oxygen on the outside of his lungs and re-collapsed his lungs so they had to put holes into his chest to drain the air off his lungs. That’s when the doctors explained to me…this was probably…I’d have to look at the records to get the exact date – probably the second week of November – and the doctor told me that there was no way that we would ever be able to rebuild Cash’s lungs and that, by chance, were able to heal (which he never believed it could happen) that it would take 6-7 months of him on a tracheotomy – basically have a vent through his neck and he would have to live milk his lungs back to health and that they were doing everything that they could do to rebuild his lungs.

That’s when I told the doctor that he should be ashamed of himself to call himself a doctor and that if he looked he would see numerous studies that have proven that cannabis promotes growth within your lungs. So cannabis will actually do the same thing I explained within the intestinal tract – if you have sick cells, it’ll help your body get rid of them…in your lungs, it’ll actually help promote the growth of new cells. He walked out of the ICU three weeks later after that conversation…not on life- support system, not on anything – his lungs were healed.

DEAN BECKER: Well, that’s just astounding and the fact of the matter is, a 2-year-old undergoing so much medical and physical turmoil and to pull through like he’s done is just nothing short of amazing. Now, we got about a minute left. Mike I wanted to ask you right quick…you and Cash went fishing last week, right?

MIKE HYDE: We went fishing last week….

DEAN BECKER: He’s thriving, right?

MIKE HYDE: He’s thriving. Yesterday me and him spent 6 hours at CannaFest trying to help raise money to sue the state of Montana for trying to take the medicine away from our patients. The state of Montana has made it virtually impossible for me to help anybody. I had to get rid of all of Cashy’s medicines and strains to follow state law. It’s a real scary time right now because it’s federally illegal for me to save my child. It’s federally illegal for you to save your child. That’s not acceptable.

Everybody that’s listening needs to get together, unite and we need to demand the rescheduling of cannabis, we need to take the scheduling away from the feds. They have lost the responsibility to do that for us because they have lied to us.

As a nation we need to demand safe access to cannabis and reclaim our hemp agriculture that was stolen from us over 70 years ago.

DEAN BECKER: Mike, real quick, your website and be sure to give Cashy a hug for me. I’m so happy for you.

MIKE HYDE: Awesome, thanks for having me on Dean. Our site is http://cashhydefoundation.com. Google it. Check out what we’re doing. Every dollar helps. We fight cancer with smiles, prayers, positive energy and, of course, cannabis oil.

DEAN BECKER: Alright, Mike, I thank you.

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MARY JANE BORDEN: Hello drug policy aficionados, I’m Mary Jane Borden, editor of Drug War Facts. The question for this week asks, “What is the Single Convention Treaty?”

A 2008 article in the Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics describes three key multilateral drug conventions enforced today with the 1961 United Nations Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs as the centerpiece.

The Organization of American States goes on to describe the Single Convention as a,

“Universal system replacing the various treaties signed until then to control the cultivation, production, manufacturer, export, import, distribution of, trade in, use and possession of narcotic substances paying special attention to those that are plant-based: heroin, opium, cocaine and cannabis.”

However the 2010 United Nations Special Rapporteur Anand Glover found that,

“The primary goal of the International Drug Control Regime as set forth in the United Nations Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs is the health and welfare of mankind with the current approach to drug use and possession works against that aim.”

A 2007 report from another United Nations Special Rapporteur found that,

“Indigenous people have the right to their traditional medicines and to maintain their health practices including the conservation of their vital medicinal plants, animals and materials.”

Two weeks ago the International Drug Policy Consortium reported that citing the rights of indigenous people,

“Bolivia presented a formal notification of denunciation of the Single Convention to the UN’s General Secretary in New York”

effectively withdrawing from the treaty. The consortium concluded,

“The 50th anniversary of the Single Convention this year, in fact, is an opportune moment to start considering a revision of some of its outdated and misplaced provisions.”

These facts and others can be found in the United Nations and Civil Rights chapter of Drug War Facts at http://www.drugwarfacts.org. This marks the 50th program I have produced for Dean Becker’s remarkable Drug Truth Network. Many thanks to all listeners for tuning into these programs and to Dean for broadcasting them.

So remember, when you need facts about drugs and drug policy – you can get the facts at Drug War Facts.

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DEAN BECKER: Alright, thank you for joining us on this edition of Century of Lies. I want to thank Mike Hyde and his son Cash. It makes me wish that when my mother had her stroke a few years back I would have had some cannabis extract. Perhaps she’d still be with us today.

And, as always, there is no reason for this drug war to exist. It is a cluster…something or another. Please visit our website http://endprohibition.org. Prohibido istac evilesco!

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For the Drug Truth Network, this is Dean Becker. Asking you to examine our policy of Drug Prohibition -

The Century of Lies.

This show produced at Pacifica Studios at KPFT, Houston.

Transcript provided by: Jo-D Harrison of www.DrugSense.org