Hugh Hempel explains why he and his wife changed their minds about medical cannabis after it changed the lives of his identical twin daughters who suffer from rare and fatal neurodegenerative disease called Niemann Pick Type C. After giving up high flying careers in Silicon Valley’s tech world to pursue research to help his daughters who suffer from this disease also known as “childhood Alzheimer’s” found that cannabis improves the quality of the children’s lives.
The improvement in his daughter’s lives astounded Hugh as he assumed that cannabis was bad after all the information (propaganda) he was fed in the education system as a young man, but after looking at cannabis more closely he realised that it is in fact a very helpful and powerful medicine without all the nasty side effects in pharmaceutical medication that leaves children like zombies.
He is asking for others to open up their minds to the realities of cannabis and its potential as one of man’s best defences against disease and illness. The cannabis oil that he gives to his daughters contains CBD and a very low amount of THC as the CBD only does not work as well as whole plant extraction. Hugh discusses the many factors that prevent access and research to cannabis medicine, how prohibition doesn’t serve the public and makes crime out of something that shouldn’t be criminal.
The Tedx Talks are independently organized TED events that brings an inspirational information platform to the world.