Dad Gives 2-Year-Old Medical Marijuana to Ease Cancer Symptoms: Compassionate or Dangerous?
When 2-year-old Cash Hyde was diagnosed with life-threatening cancer last year, his father took matters into his own hands.
Doctors said Cash would likely die after they found a stage 4 brain tumor surrounding his optic nerve, ABC News reports.
Cash was so sick he went 40 days without eating -- and that's when his father, Mike Hyde, decided to break the law, slipping cannabis oil into his son's feeding tube without informing doctors.
While medical marijuana is legal in Montana, where the Hydes are from, Cash was being treated in Salt Lake City, Utah, where it's illegal.
And not only does Hyde believe the marijuana oil helped Cash eat again, he believes it can cure cancer.
"In two weeks he was weaned of all the nausea drugs, and he was eating again and sitting up in and laughing," Hyde told ABCNews.com.
There's a 50 to 80 percent chance that Cash's cancer will come back, but as of right now, he has recovered.
Dr. Linda Granowetter, a professor of pediatrics at New York University and chief of the Division of Pediatric Hematology and Oncology, said cannabis is effective in treating adult nausea that accompanies chemotherapy, and it can increase appetite and improve mood. But there have been no clinical trials in children, and she called the notion that it can cure cancer "ludicrous."
Moreover, she said the drug is most effective in teens who have previously used marijuana.
"In young adults or children who have not had it before, it can make them paranoid," she told ABC.
Nevertheless, we applaud Mike Hyde's efforts to help his little boy. Do you think you'd do the same?
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