Stacey Chillemi
A puzzling ailment afflicts millions of women and men. Patients complain of extreme tiredness or fatigue. “I’m always exhausted, no matter how much sleep I get,” they say.
Fatigue seems the main symptom. Yet, patients may report problems sleeping. “I wake up tired, even though I slept well,” they say. Patients may have difficulty thinking clearly, concentrating or remembering. They complain of frequent headaches, muscle and joint pain, a severe sore throat or tenderness in the neck or armpits. These symptoms may flare up after limited mental or physical effort.
Often unable to detect a known illness, physicians diagnose Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS). The diagnosis is mostly descriptive. Treatment is often a rebuke, “Pull up your socks and get back to work or school” or antidepressant medication.
As the pace of life gains speed, more physicians diagnose CFS. Social classes or ethnicity offer no shelter against the symptoms or diagnosis of CFS. Women are twice as likely as men to report CFS symptoms. Children are as likely as the elderly receive the CFS diagnosis.
The CFS diagnosis applies to about 4 million Americans. The number of such diagnoses goes up every year. One-in-four of those diagnosed, with CFS, can’t work or on disability. More and more, disability insurance companies find ways not to pay those diagnosed with CFS.
Byron M. Hyde, M. D., is Director of the Nightingale Research Foundation. He’s a leading authority on CFS and related illnesses. In this interview, Dr. Hyde talks about the essence of the ailment and problems of diagnosis. He offers new insight about the ailment and the diagnosis.
As Dr. Hyde notes, a psychiatric disorder haunts up to half of the women and men diagnosed as CFS. It’s not surprising many victims don’t seek medical advice; they want to avoid the baggage of mental illness. The misdiagnosis also leads to the wrong treatment.
Some patients present as CFS, but have serious, treatable illnesses. These illnesses include diabetes, thyroid disease or substance abuse. Undiagnosed, the patient gets worse when they could get better.
Looking behind the façade, of CFS, notes Dr. Hyde, calls for digging. All patients need a full work up before a physician offers a valid prognosis. Thorough research is essential.
A former geophysicist, Dr. Hyde is a published poet. In his premedical days, his instinct for decisive action saved the lives of actors, Yoko Tani and Anthony Quinn. For more than 40 years, he’s practiced a learned form of common sense medicine. The Nightingale Foundation, which he founded, in 1988, provides hope, compassion and cures to new patients, every day.
If you’re living under a diagnosis of CFS, you need to read what Dr. Hyde has to say.**
* * * * *
Grub Street (GS) The diagnosis of CFS and related illness seems on the rise. What do you see, at the Nightingale Foundation, daily?
Byron Hyde, MD (BH) Overall, circumstances are troubling. We see patients, at the Nightingale Foundation, every day. Patients come to the Foundation, with a diagnosis, made by other physicians, of Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME) or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS). The CFS diagnosis relies on the most obvious symptom, exhaustion, by physicians who usually don't take the time to research the patient.
These women and men present exhausted. Usually, they are also ill. Often, these patients need 12-to-15 hours of sleep, at a stretch. They can’t go to school or work because they are so desperately exhausted and ill.
Mostly what’s noticed and focused on, by other physicians, is the obvious fatigue. This leads to a diagnosis of CFS. From this point forward, medicine lists these men and women as psychiatric patients.
GS CFS, then, is an oversimplified diagnosis, often given if a physician doesn’t know what else to say?
BH I guess you could say that.
GS At the Foundation, you do more?
BH Yes; at the Nightingale Research Foundation we try not to give such a diagnosis, when we see these patients. We research them and their condition. Often, our investigations reveal unnoticed conditions. Of the people that we’ve seen in the last five weeks, for example, we picked up an overlooked case of lung cancer.
At the Foundation, we also picked up a case of a young [professional]. A reputable physician, at the Ottawa Hospital, examined him. The physician decided he had CFS. The treatment plan included antidepressant medication.
What this young [professional] suffered was serious. The main aorta, coming out of his heart, was ready to burst. The aorta was at the point of rupturing, and the patient would have died.
GS How can anyone overlook such a serious condition?
BH If you don’t research, you don’t know. Physicians should be asking what illnesses do such patients diagnosed? How can patients be so exhausted, fatigued to the point of collapse? These are basic questions. The answers lead you to the right diagnosis.
GS Are ME and CFS the same illness?
BH Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) is not an illness. It’s a definition of a syndrome or set of symptoms. It’s not much of a definition, either. Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME) is an illness.
There’s much confusion, when it comes to CFS, for many reasons. I studied medicine at the University of Toronto and then at he University of Ottawa, about 40 years ago. Many patients, at the time, presented with severe fatigue. Physicians, then, assumed women and men had tuberculosis. A long-standing infectious disease, malignancy or Multiple-Sclerosis (MS) illness was a second thought. Today, the diagnosis, of a patient presenting with severe fatigue, is CFS.
In the old days you would explore, order tests and consider the results. This led to the cause of patient fatigue. Today, it seems, the easy assumption is CFS and a psychiatric diagnosis.
There seems no cure for CFS, as it’s a definition or, maybe, a symptom. The solution is thus a lifetime of medication. The patient must find a way to live, perhaps, on disability insurance or welfare. The extra stress of the easy way out, that is, a CFS diagnosis, piles stress on stress.
GS Seems if a Tibia is intact, even though the Fibula is split, there’s no broken leg.
BH We’ve reached a point, now, where patients, who present with severe exhaustion, almost reflectively receive diagnoses of chronic fatigue syndrome. A physician assumes CFS and a psychiatric diagnosis, without fully exploring. At the Foundation, we see many patients, diagnosed with CFS, but suffering more serious illnesses. Besides the cases of lung cancer and the aortic problem, we also discover misdiagnosed cases of multiple sclerosis (MS). Also known as disseminated sclerosis or encephalomyelitis disseminata, MS is an autoimmune disorder. If you have MS, your central nervous system (CNS) attacks your autoimmune system. We’ve also picked up a case of syphilis of the brain.
GS This is frightening.
BH Now, to give you another example, I’ve been practicing for 42 years. I examine every patient for syphilis. In 42 years, I’ve only picked up three cases of syphilis.
The question is: is it worth checking people for syphilis, today? It’s so rare. You’ll pick up AIDS before you pick up syphilis. The answer is yes.
At the Foundation, we had one professor, with syphilis; essentially eating his brain. It was obviously treatable, but there was a specific test necessary to identify the problem. As long as you did this test, the problem was manageable. No one did the test before he came to the Nightingale Foundation.
GS The physician assumed he had CFS? This seems a baseless assumption.
BH Yes; we must treat men and women, with chronic fatigue syndrome, until we know otherwise. We have to treat them, not as ill, but as exhausted, until we know why. CFS isn’t an illness. It’s not a disease. CFS is a symptom, of something. We have to look behind symptoms to find out what’s causing it and consider what we can do to treat the problem.
GS Many people, physicians or not, might find doing much research tedious. It does tax knowledge and skills.
BH Research is an enjoyable pursuit. The patients are intriguing. I don’t know from patient to patient what you are going to find. We often find illness, in most of these patients. Most patients come to the Foundation ill. What we uncover is treatable, in one-way or another.
GS On your website, you write there’s a difference between ME and CFS.
BH Well, from our view, the two are different. Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) is a symptom. Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME) is an illness. It usually picked up in epidemics, but also sporadically. As far as I’m concerned, ME is a picked-up, measurable, diffuse injury in the central nervous system (CNS), chiefly the brain. The CNS is the brain and the spinal cord.
We don’t have good technology, in Canada or the United States or anywhere, for that matter, to examine, properly, how the brain works. There’s no technology to evaluate, in any full sense, the physiology of the brain or spinal cord. You can do an X-ray, Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRIs), Spect-scan or Positron Emission Tomography (PET scan), but those don’t give you the physiology. You have to see the blood circulation and the metabolic changes in cells, which you can do in the brain, but we haven’t mastered that area as far as the spinal cord, as far as I’m concerned.
GS Have you lost faith in proper diagnoses?
BH No, I haven’t lost faith in physicians. There are brilliant physicians in Canada, the United States and in the entire world. That’s not the problem.
Part of the problem is that medicine doesn’t pay any more. When I started practicing, 42 years ago, I was able to buy a house – which I still live in – for $39,000. I was able to pay off that house mortgage in four years. I was able to put aside $10,000 a year for four years and pay off that house.
These days, the same house is worth maybe $800,000 to a million dollars. If I were starting, in practice, now, I couldn’t pay off that house, in my lifetime from my medical earnings. That yardstick gives you some hint of how much the income of physician has eroded over the last 40 years.
GS How have practitioners responded to their eroding income?
BH Most physicians come out of medical school owing a huge debt. Medical school is not cheap. Immediately, they must choose: work a hospital, clinic or larger practice or set up their own practice. They go into a practice and find that they can barely survive.
A physician, managing a practice, is a small businesswoman or man. His or her products are medical knowledge and information; sometimes consultation and compassion. As in any small business, a physician tries to hold on to his or her practice by becoming more efficient. More efficient is seeing a patient for seven minutes; I think that’s an average time a physician sees a patient in North America and Western Europe. Physicians get patients in and out, quickly.
A good way move patients, in and out, quickly is to give a psychiatric diagnosis. No one can approve or disapprove a psychiatric diagnosis. If you say, “Oh, this person is depressed, this person is anxious,” nobody can fault your diagnosis. You can say, “Well, he or she acted depressed, had a great deal of anxiety or complain of not sleeping, being anxious and so forth. We did the routine tests and didn’t find anything. So, it must be psychiatric.”
GS What’s involved in routine testing?
BH The routine tests are mostly what physicians see of patients. Routine testing involves no more than a dozen blood and urine tests. Rarely is an X-ray, of the chest, done or an Electroencephalography (EEG).
When I began practicing, chest X-rays were common. You wanted know who had tuberculosis and who didn’t. A chest X-ray was the most effective way to answer this question. Evacuation of tuberculosis is no longer a major or even a minor problem, in Canada, except among certain immigrant groups. So, physicians have almost stopped doing chest X-rays. An X-ray is the height of technology used by most physicians, today, although much more seems necessary.
Let me give you an example. If you had a patient, with a fatigue syndrome, you might think, “Oh maybe this is thyroid.” Thyroid is a common cause of fatigue. Most physicians would do one to three thyroid tests. They’ll do a thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH) test and, maybe, a T3 maybe a T4. When the test results are normal, they say, “Well, it’s not thyroid, it has to be something else.” Maybe you are … overworked or stressed. A psychiatric diagnosis follows.
Most physicians don’t have time to go further. There are about ten thyroid tests a physician can order. For instance, if the patient has Hashimodo’s thyroiditis, which is an autoimmune disease that destroys the thyroid, you won’t see in the three tests I mentioned. So, most physicians wait until the patient is severely ill, when the symptoms are most obvious. This may go on for years. All the while, the patient was treatable.
At fault is how physicians earn money. Increasingly, too, physicians don’t use the wonderful medical technology that exists. In Canada, this technology is free, for every patient and physician. As a result, physicians turn into Luddites, now. For the sake of efficiency, we avoid using some of these brilliant medical tools, which are now have available to us.
GS How much time do you spend with patients, at the Foundation?
BH My first patient visit is a day and a half. That may seem excessive, but my patients often come in great anxiety, suffering much stress. She or he may have lost their job, their family or their savings. They may be a single mother, who can’t support her children, because she doesn’t get welfare. A family might eat away at their assets, which lessen quickly. So, of course, my patients are nervous and expectant. We must take time, with them, to avoid overlooking or missing the cause of their symptoms.
Other physicians often give these patients a psychiatric diagnosis. Physicians often tell patients, “Pick up your socks and go back to work or school.” These men and women may need 14 or 15 hours, of sleep, a day, because of pure exhaustion from their illness. How can he or she work or go to school?
GB Doesn’t medical school encourage thoroughness?
BH There was a famous Ontario physician, William Osler. He’s probably best-known as the father of modern medicine. Essentially, he developed the idea that unless you properly research a patient, you don’t know what is making them ill nor can you adequately treat them. I follow this as a rule because we just don’t know. I don’t know how many other physicians follow the lead of Osler.
For instance, let me get back to this young professional we diagnosed. His aorta was in serious trouble and ready to rupture. There are two main possibilities, in such circumstances.
The first idea, but the rarest cause, of this aorta condition is brucellosis. I’ve only picked up about four or five cases in 40 years. It’s not a common disease, but it can destroy the aorta. Why do I know a little about that? It’s what my father died of when he was 48. You look for causes you know about.
We tested this patient, the young professional. The test results showed positive brucellosis. He’d been in a country where brucellosis was common. He had a positive reaction.
I could have assumed that was the problem, but I asked if he had any family members, with problems with the aorta. I asked because there’s another disease, Marfan’s, which, if you don’t catch, usually bursts the aorta, when the patient is 20-to-30 years old. Marfan’s is fatal, but if you catch it, early, an aortic transplantation solves the problem.
Most people, with Marfan’s, are obvious. You picked up the symptoms early and easily. Still, many are less obvious.
This young man was such a case, although not readily obvious. I asked him, “Were there any family member, who had Marfan’s?” He said, “Absolutely not.” I asked him to take a family history, and come back to me in 10 weeks. He complained, “It’s a waste of time.” I said, “Please can you do it anyway.” He found three second cousins, who had their aortas replaced in their 20s and 30s.
Here we have a diagnosis of a patient who presents with CFS. The diagnosis, by an eminent professor and physician, at the Ottawa Hospital, was CFS. The physician put him on an antidepressant. Thank gawd, the patient didn’t take the medication, he could have died. All we had to do on him was an echocardiogram. Marfan’s showed up immediately, in the echocardiogram.
You have to explore these people. You can’t consider CFS or ME a psychiatric or low-weight disease. We are dealing with an illness here.
GS What motivated you to give up your regular practice, and start the Nightingale Research Foundation?
BH In 1984, I was busy, as always. A young Irish physician, Sean, and his wife, also a physician, were white water kayaking on the upper Ottawa River. They stayed overnight at my house, in Ottawa. When they were leaving, the husband said, “Stop working for a couple days, Byron, and come join us at a party, in Montreal. It’ll be fun and interesting.”
I’d interned in Montreal, and love the city. The idea was tempting, but I was too busy. I didn’t go.
About a week later, I get a call from Sean, my friend from Ireland. He and his wife, and about half the people at the party, had fallen ill with a strange disease. They shivered with pain, had severe headaches and didn’t have the energy to get out of bed.
I thought, “My God! What in the world is going on?” I kept in contact with Sean and his wife. She was running, I believe, an outpatient department at McMaster University medical school hospital, at the time.
They didn’t get better. In fact, the wife has never got better. That’s 1984 to now. We are looking at 24 years. Sean didn’t get much better, either.
Sean went into psychiatry, which allowed him to see only a few patients a day. In general practice, you are going night and day; interns and surgeons never stop. You need much energy to work this profession. In psychiatry, you can take one, two or three patients a day, depending on your ability to cope with your exhaustion.
That was the first motivation to start the Foundation. Then my daughter fell ill, in September 1984. I thought she had the same illness. I phoned the Center for Disease Control in Ottawa, but no one had any idea. I called the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, in Atlanta, and no one knew anything about it, either.
Atlanta referred me to a good physician, Dr. Charles Poser. He’s a world-famous neurologist, at the Harvard University, School of Medicine hospital. Someone, in Atlanta, said, “He knows more about this illness than anyone in the United States.” I called Poser, right away. He said, “Well, why don’t you come down and I’ll tell you what I know.”
My daughter got better. She had a viral infection that knocked her down for two or three weeks. Then she was well enough to do university, earn a graduate degree and work, without any problems.
GS It’s always strangely interesting how important contacts form.
BH Yes; at this point, I decided to take a month off. Poser was the leading expert in Multiple Sclerosis (MS), and a wonderful neurologist. I went to Cambridge, Massachusetts, and spoke to him. I wanted to see what I could learn about this strange illness I had never heard about.
Poser took an entire day. He talked to
me about what he knew and how often patients were coming to him, with a
diagnosis of MS, when they had Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME). They didn’t have
any brainwave lesions, but they did have oligoclonal banding. When you see
oligoclonal banding in the spinal fluid, you know there is brain damage.
Immunoglobulins form oligoclonal bands, in the spinal
chord. A simple test checks for inflammation-related substances in the
cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), found the spinal chord and brain.
The presence of immunoglobulins suggests inflammation of
the central nervous system (CNS). The presence of oligoclonal bands may be a
sign of multiple sclerosis (MS).
Poser told me I should go and see two or
three physicians, in England, who know about ME. One of these physicians was John
Richards. Charles Poser and John Richards changed my life. It was astounding, in
England. It made my life more interesting and enjoyable, and rewarding. I’ve
been able to help many patients, with ME.
GS What
is the effect on the psyche when a physician decides not to take the condition
seriously?
BH You
become an island into your own. There are many charlatans, ready to jump on
these patients. Many patients throw their last dollar, at these charlatans, who
play to hopes and dreams of getting better, if not cured.
Some physicians drive patients to these charlatans, by not taking patients
seriously.
Those who run to charlatans are in
panic. They are in severe anxiety. They lose their houses. They sometimes lose
their families. Devastated is the best way to describe their lives, when they
come to Foundation.
Besides, chronic illness in young people
is no fun. It’s no fun in elderly people, either. For older women and men,
though it might be a little easier. Many older people have stopping working.
Retirement income helps ease the mind. Whether they get better or not, their
pensions keep them going to some degree.
For the young person, who hasn’t built
their fortune, hasn’t build their nest egg, there may be severe psychological
issues. If you are young and ill, that’s enough, but many of the younger
patients realize their future, their hopes and dreams, are at stake. They just
simply don’t know where to turn. It’s a pleasure trying to help these people
and, with the help of some lawyers, in Montreal and Toronto, I’ve been able to
help these people get their disability insurance.
GS
Disability insurance has a reputation of not delivering, when needed.
BH
Getting disability insurance causes much anxiety. When I started the Foundation,
24 years ago, insurance companies were much kinder, more understanding of people
with illness. Insurance companies took physicians seriously whey they said, “Look,
this patient can’t work because of his or her illness.”
Starting 15 or 20 years ago, certain
insurance companies began gobbling up their competition. The consolidation was
so great, that to an extent, there are fewer disability insurance companies,
today, than 20 years ago. Amalgamation resulted in three or four major insurance
companies. Now, it’s often more difficult to get disability and keep it.
This handful of companies decided, as
far as I can see, to not pay anyone on disability, [if possible]. We’ve severe
cases, patients who are obviously bedridden. They can’t fight; insurance
companies simply don’t pay them.
Sometimes, it seems, companies offering
disability insurance arbitrarily cancel a great many policies. Those patients,
who complain, get their disability insurance reinstated. Those who don’t
complain lose out. On top of being severely ill, these patients, too often, have
to fight, and fight long and hard, to get the disability insurance benefits they
paid for.
Some disability plans effectively help
patients. It seems when the Canadian Medical Association (CMA) takes part,
patients are better off. Cooperation builds plans in a way the insurance
companies can’t get out of paying. In other cases, for example, the Ontario
Teacher’s disability insurance, devastates teachers, to such an extent, they
have to fight four-to-six years before they get back pay, of their disability.
It’s an unfair mess.
GS What
happens if the patient is a single mother, with two or three children?
Everything vanishes. The stress and anxiety aggravate her condition.
BH At
the Foundation, we deal with anxiety, daily, not caused only by chronic illness.
We are dealing with anxiety, fear and frustration caused by the insurance
industry itself. It’s a problem.
I feel sorry for anybody who is ill and
we can’t treat, properly. There are many [health problems] medicine can’t treat.
This is also part of the ethos of illness, today. For instance, most people out
there think that if they fall ill, there’s a magic pill. Patients believe
there’s a magic physician … who can see them, diagnose their illness, give them
this magic pill and they’ll be back to work.
GS
Opinion seems a large part of the problem. Patients, who suffer hard-to-detect
illnesses, receive a psychiatric diagnosis. Patients think physicians have magic
bullets.
BH Yes,
and the fact we are a work-oriented society makes the problem worse. You don’t
earn much money, in today’s terms, by working. For most people, you have to work
hard for your dollar and it usually takes two people’s income to raise a family
today.
Well, it’s a myth that there’s a magic
pill for everything. It’s a myth we have some understanding of every disease
that we can treat. For instance, we have no idea, today, what causes Multiple
Sclerosis (MS). We know it’s an injury to the blood supply, of the fine
blood-vessels going, to myelin areas of the CNS. We know that it’s one of those
diseases that first occurred after Columbus discovered America. It’s still more
common among Native North American than non-Natives and still less common in
Europe. Columbus took MS back with syphilis to Europe.
We know almost nothing about the cause
of rheumatoid arthritis. We know almost nothing about the cause of MS. We know
little about whole areas of illness.
The biggest reward, in medicine, in the
20th century, and the end of the 19th century, is how far
we have come. Still, we haven’t gone far enough. It’s going to take a long-time
before we understand all illnesses.
GS How
does Canada compare with the rest of the world in diagnosing CFS or ME cases?
BH I
don’t think any one, in any country, is good at diagnosing Myalgic
Encephalomyelitis (ME) or Multiple Sclerosis (MS), for that matter. It’s better
known and diagnosed in the United Kingdom (UK) and England. This is because
there’s more of it in the UK.
The dense population, of the UK, doesn’t
help. My own family roots from the UK. Tuberculosis killed many of them, from
1850-to-1890. Tuberculosis flourishes in densely populated areas. My great-great
grandmother, who married in 1852, had eight children. Two of them survived into
adulthood, six died of tuberculosis, usually in their first year or two of life.
The American side of my family are from
Alabama. Most died because of bullets in the US Civil War. Not one died of
tuberculosis. Ha!
MS has a well-known epicentre around the
North Sea. Scotland and Northern England have the biggest concentration of MS,
in the world. The cause is a long incubating virus, but we’ve never found what
exactly causes MS.
GS MS
and, by implication, ME are similar to tuberculosis.
BH At
this point, MS shows in dense populations as does tuberculosis. MS appears
strongly linked to anything that results in a diffuse brain injury. Many
physicians, especially in the UK, believe MS is an enterovirus.
An enterovirus enters the body through
the gastrointestinal tract. Polio is an enterovirus, and Coxsackie, too. Any
contact, with saliva, say, by an unprotected sneeze, may cause taking in of an
enterovirus. Infected secretions stay on public door handles: you open the door
and, a little later, put your hand to your mouth and in go the enterovirus.
There’s much wisdom in washing your hands, often.
At the Foundation, we’ve looked at
Canadian patients, studied their blood in Glasgow, and been able to recover
these viruses. There’s no laboratory for the average physician in Ontario today to
even order an enterovirus test. In this way, controls exist here, but not in the
UK.
GS What’s a typical day for you?
BH I get up at 5:30 am, each day. I wake up rested, even after an hour or two. If I
have a good six hours of sleep, I can take on the day.
I get up, read the newspaper, walk my
dog, put away the dishes and then I’m usually in the office by 7 am, working on
the charts. I usually finish by 6 pm and sometimes do paperwork till about 8 pm.
It sounds like a boring life, it isn’t at all. It’s rewarding, trying to figure
out what’s wrong with these patients.
GS
That’s a long day. Sleep for an hour only. Guess you don’t have ME or CFS
symptoms.
BH No,
I didn’t say that. If I’m exhausted, I can immediately go to sleep and wake up
in an hour feeling great. At night-time, I usually sleep like a log for five or
seven hours.
GS How
do you manage to sleep, so well, with your hectic schedule?
BH My
workdays are often exciting. You never know when a new patient walks through the
door, what in the devil you may find. You don’t know if it’s going to be a
cancer or an aorta that’s going to break. You don’t know if the patient has an
injury from an immunization or what you’ll find.
GS I
read you are wary of immunization.
BH The
results of immunization are something we look at, closely. There was a patient,
just this week, injured by a Recombinant Hepatitis B immunization. We’ve
probably seen well over 250 patients injured by that particular immunization.
That’s something else. You can’t talk
about injury by immunization because immunization is next to gawdliness. In
truth, what happens, today, is a third of the people out there, if it wasn’t for
immunization, would either be dead or severely disabled. Immunization changed
the face of medicine. In a sense, immunization is the most successful the most
successful treatment priority that medicine has found. An immunization has saved
more lives than any physician has ever saved, but there’s some risk.
Still, you cannot be too critical of
this area. Certain immunizations have serious dangers and one of them is the
Recombinant Hepatitis B vaccination. When we look at women and men, who’ve had
this form of immunization, they present with classic fatigue CFS, if they
haven’t died already.
We’ve had five deaths following this
immunization. Is that a lot? I don’t know. The rate is likely 1 out every 5,000
to 10,000 of those who receive a Recombinant Hepatitis B vaccination. Is this
too high? One death is too many, but there’s some risk, always, with everything.
When I presented these data to the
Canadian Government, in the early 1990s, no one took me seriously. A study
appeared arguing there was no basis to blame immunization, in the 65 cases we
offered, in evidence. It was alarming. After a little examination, I found the
government fudged the study. No one examined the case files and patients used,
in the study. This government published the study, in the Canadian Medical
Journal, on two occasions.
GS This
is scary. Why would the government tolerate falsified research?
BH I
don’t know why the government would do this. Was the [researcher] in the pay of
the pharmaceutical company? I don’t know. What is true is that [the researcher]
lied about the research and lied about the danger to these individual patients.
I don’t understand a lot about why such
events happen. We have seen injuries from immunization and shoddy research,
related to CFS or ME. The personality and events are intriguing, in a bizarre
way.
GS What
was life like for you before medicine?
BH Oh
it was great. I was a geophysicist before I was a physician. I went to the
Provincial Institute of Mines, in Haileybury, Ontario. It was a great, great
school that no longer exists as a mining school.
I worked as a geophysicist, which, in
effect, trained me for medicine. When you are looking for a gold, copper or
nickel mine, you do layers of technology. You do a map. You do different kinds
of geophysical treatments to the land. You induce radio currents and measure the
distortion as it goes through the land. In geophysics, you use various tests and
techniques. You gather much data, in map form. Then you put these maps one on
top of the other, to get a full picture.
Essentially, this is what I do in
medicine, today. We put medicines, one on top of the other. In this way, we can
pinpoint areas of pathology in the human body.
GS What
medical school did you attend?
BH
After a brief time, working geophysics, I went to the University of Toronto,
School of Medicine. I was one of about 168, mostly men, in the first year of
medicine. We were so busy, it was unrealistic.
I was one, of four students, who made
time to take an extra course, in forensic medicine. The course ran for a whole
year. The crime lab, on Dundas Street, of the Ontario Provincial, was our
classroom.
Forensics was astounding. We had all
this technology and all these instruments to diagnose who killed whom, and how
they did it. I still use the techniques, I learned in the crime lab, to research
patients, especially, if we were going to court, with their lawyers, to get
their disability insurance. The biggest lesson was never relying on one
indicator, of anything.
We never go, to court, without evidence.
We try to get as much evidence, of illness, as we can. This is where what they
did at the crime lab comes into use.
I was fortunate enough to study, in the
forensics lab, when Professor Lucas was one of the chief people. He was a
professor of the University of Toronto. He didn’t have a medical degree or a BA.
He’d never been to university.
Professor Lucas taught us never go to a
court without three pieces of evidence. This has helped me researching patients,
as well. You might call the three pieces of evidence triangulation, which is
hard to beat.
Then I went off to the Jackson
Laboratory, in Bar Harbour, Maine, to study biochemistry. That’s where I met Dr.
White. He was another wonderful, capable man, who influenced me.
Dr. White was one of the physicians
confirming cigarettes caused lung cancer. He worked at Jackson Laboratory for
nine months a year. He gave two months a year to a third world country, to help
them conquer disease. He worked one month a year for Philip Morris, which was
paradoxical.
While Dr. White was at Jackson Lab, for
nine months, he’d publish one or two papers showing how cigarettes caused
cancer. In those days, the late 1960s, physicians were furious. They’d say, ‘How
can you do this?’ Most physicians smoked.
GS
You’d think physicians would know better than to smoke?
BH Yes;
they, more than anyone, should understand the deleterious health effects.
Medicine calls for much concentration, for obvious reasons. Nicotine, according
Dr. J. P. Changeux, director of the neurology laboratory, at the Pasteur
Institute, in Paris, mimics acetylcholine, a natural chemical, which helps us
concentrate and relax. Although smoking destroys our organs, especially the
lungs, it does help us concentrate and relax. Not much of a trade off, but some
people accept it.*
GS Back
to Dr. White.
BH When
White worked, for a month, at Philip Morris, he’d reputedly publish three or
four papers showing cigarettes did not cause cancer. One day, I asked, ‘Why do
you do this?’ He said, ‘Well, Philip Morris pays me in one month what I earn for
nine months at the Jackson Laboratory.”
GS This
contradicts the basic principles of good science.
BH Yes;
I had graduated from the University of Toronto, with the religious notion that
science was perfect. That science was better than any religion and it was the
religion of the future. I saw what White was doing and I thought, “Oh my gawd.
My gawds have been cast down at my feet.”
One summer, Dr. White went off to work
in India, where he died of an infection. I felt so sad to lose him. Even though
he worked a paradox, at Jackson Laboratory and Philip Morris, he was one of the
most wonderful people in the world.
GS What
did you do after the Jackson Laboratory?
BH I
returned to Toronto. I became the Chief Technician, of the Electron Microscope
Unit, at SickKids. SickKids is the Hospital for Sick Children, in Toronto, an
affiliate of the University of Toronto. It’s a major health care, teaching and
research hospital, only for children.
Working at SickKids was wonderful. The
physicians, with whom I came in close contact, were wonderful. They knew what they
were doing; it was a paradise for me. Anyone who gets a chance to work at
SickKids can only count themselves lucky. As I was working in the crime lab, as
I was at working at Bar Harbour, Maine, I’ve had wonderful experiences, in
medicine, and it’s always been rewarding.
GS I
heard that you had an interesting connection to Anthony Quinn, the actor.
BH Who
told you that story? Ha! That was a long-time ago.
In the late 1950s, I was working the
North West Territories; Eskimo Point, specifically. I was in charge of a
geological team. We were looking at some interesting mineral deposits.
We were flying DC3s on skis, into Eskimo
Point. We needed a big plane because we had to carry enough gas to get there and
back. There was no place to fuel in most of those places in the North West
Territories.
Fort Churchill, Manitoba, became our
home base. We’d fly to Eskimo Point from Fort Churchill. One time, when I got to
Fort Churchill, everything had melted and frozen again. I was stranded, for a
month.
I didn’t drink or smoke. There wasn’t
much for me to do. My [crew] and some other men were in the tavern breaking
using their teeth by opening beer bottles with them. There wasn’t a whole lot to
do in Fort Churchill.
One day, I went for walk. I met an old
Eskimo woman. She said she’d make me a pair of mukluks, if I could shoot a seal.
I got my gun and walked about five or six miles out, on to frozen water of
Hudson Bay, to find to an air hole, where the seals were coming up.
It was beautiful, so far out on the ice.
When you are on the ice, of Hudson Bay, it isn’t white. Depending on the colour
in the sky, it is various pastel colours; just beautiful, almost hypnotic.
It was hot, on top of the ice. I had my
parka on and I would be watching, with my gun ready. I kept falling asleep.
Every time a seal popped up, I woke up, but I’d be too late.
Suddenly, I saw this tank come up about
1000 feet from me. Behind this tank was a jeep. It was an enclosed jeep, with
two doors for the driver and the passenger side.
The tank broke through the ice. It had
tracks, so it was able to get out of the hole. The jeep, following right behind,
went head down into the hole. Only the end of the jeep was sticking out. Just
like a duck’s tail.
I saw all this happen, in an instant. I
immediately started running toward the tank, with my gun in my hand. As I got to
the tank, the soldiers were climbing out of the turret.
I was only 23 or 24, but I’d been
running men in the Arctic for four years and used to commanding, giving orders.
Without thinking, I started commanding the soldiers and I said, “Do you have a
chain?” They said, “Yes.” ‘Well,” I commanded, “get me the bloody chain and hook
it up to the tank.”
I took one end of the chain and hooked
it up to the tank. I grabbed the other end of the chain and dove into the water
of Hudson Bay, through the seal hole. I hooked the chain to underneath of the
front axle of the jeep. As climbed out of the water, I told the soldiers haul
out the jeep out, fast. They did. The jeep popped out, of the water, on to safe
ice.
Suddenly, I was cold. Ha! I thought I
was going to die. I was soaking, from head to toe right down to my skin, and it
was below zero water.
I went up to the jeep and asked, “Can
you drive me to the shore?” They said, “Sure.” I crawled in behind two people I
think are Eskimos, sitting in the back. I was just shaking, I was shivering so
badly.
I turn to the woman and said, “My name
is Byron Hyde.” She said, “I’m Yoko Tani.” I had seen her in a movie called,
“The Wind Cannot Read,” and fallen in love with her. She was so gorgeous, and
soaking wet. Ha! I said, “It’s Yoko Tani. I must be in a bloody dream!”
I turned to the other Eskimo and said,
“My name is Byron Hyde.” He said, “My name is Anthony Quinn.” Well, I hadn’t a
clue about Anthony Quinn or who he was – “Zorba the Greek” was still a few years
off. He and Tani were making a movie called, “Savage Innocents,” near Fort
Churchill.
When we got to the edge of the water,
Quinn and Tani didn’t want to drive across the water. Anthony Quinn, who usually
played rugged roles, started yelling. Scared stiff and soaking wet, he wasn’t
the macho man he was onscreen.
Anyway, the soldiers carried him on
their backs. He was yelling and crying. I got to carry Yoko Tani, who was half
Japanese, half-French.
Later, Tani hired me as her driver. I
had the only free truck in Fort Churchill. I made more money renting the truck
to the film company that month than I did on-the-job. It was wonderful. Then a
month was gone and I flew up into the Territories and we did the work on that
mine.
That’s how I saved Anthony Quinn.
GS
Wasn’t Peter O’Toole in the movie? Was he almost drowned, too?
BH Yes;
O’Toole was in that movie. He had a drinking problem and still does, seemingly.
O’Toole was already out of the end of the ice when the jeep went into the water.
He didn’t have anything to do with the incident. I think he had s bottle of
whiskey and was drinking away (laughs). It was all great times.
GS
You’re also a poet. When did you first start doing this?
BH When
I was a child, teachers made us commit long poems or passages to memory. I don’t
have a rote memory. I made up my own poems, to help practice memorization, and
kept my own poems, initially. That’s how it all started.
Some great poets, such as Dylan Thomas,
Hafiz and Mayakovski, influenced me. When I was in grade eight, I was ill, with
polio. I was in bed for a whole year. In a sense, it was a most wonderful
experience. I got to read for a whole year, and not go to school.
When I started reading poetry, I had the
books of Dylan Thomas. His poetry enthralled me. His Welsh way of putting a word
with another word is impressive. It was a wonderful time.
I started out mimicking great poets,
including Vladimir Mayakovski and Hafiz. In time, I developed my own style. I’ve
published two books of poetry, so far.
GS What
do you consider your greatest accomplishments?
BH My
four children are my greatest accomplishment. My oldest son Christophe is a
geophysical prospector working out of Vancouver. He was diamond prospecting for
Rio Tinto. Now, I think, he’s doing nickel.
My second son, Christian, is a lawyer,
in Paris. He's a telecommunications lawyer, and works all over the world. He was
just doing a job for the World Bank in Liberia, last week, and has worked in 41
African countries as well as Central Asia and Central and South America.
Then my daughter, Dominique is Deputy
Chief, of the United Nations (UN), in Nepal. She’s in charge of World Food.
My youngest son is Martin. He’s 32, and
a painter who succeeded in not working, a day of his life, other than painting.
He has two children.
I got a bit of everything.
GS What
are your hopes for the Nightingale Foundation?
BH I’d
love to raise $1.2 million dollars. The British government has asked me to come
to England. It promises 15 million pounds to set up a foundation, such as I have
in Canada, to examine the ME patients, in England.
I told them that number one, I didn’t
trust governments to come across with money or hire a staff and set up a
foundation. I’ve at least two university students who’ve offered to house me,
but I thought, if I give up my practice here, I can’t afford to wait for two
years for the money to come or not.
If I had $1.2 million pounds or dollars,
I could not only set up the foundation, in the UK until we did get funding. That
amount of money would also allow me to come back to Canada and set up at the
university here as well to also properly research these people.
GS What
are your hopes for the patients?
BH I
think my biggest single hope has two parts. First, the medical community must
take patients, with Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME) or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
(CFS), more seriously.
Second, the tyranny of the insurance
companies needs curbing. I consider bullying ME patients, the way insurance
companies do, diabolic. A patient worked. At work, he or she paid medical
insurance premiums. When the patient needs support, the insurance companies
refuse. What happens to a disabled patient whose disability insurer refuses to
honour its commitment?
It’s usually the men who win the
lawsuits. They fight and are more aggressive. They’ve got more testosterone,
which works for them.
Women with children, especially single
moms or single, and no one to support them when they are down, well, they give
up. They don’t have financial support, and that’s the point.
If there’s a couple, who are both
working, the story is different. If either gets sick and the insurance doesn’t
come through, one wages war and the other words to keep the family going. I do
believe that men, because of their aggression and support, with their wife, are
in a better position than are women in winning legal actions against insurance
companies.
One fact, to keep in mind, when you
battle an insurance company for a rightful claim, is you never make it into a
courtroom. The insurance company agrees to live up to its responsibility on the
steps of the courthouse. It settles the day before you are due in court or the
morning of. Insurance companies say, “Okay, we’ll pay, but you can’t disclose
this information.” So they protect themselves, even then.
GS
Thank you.
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* Jean-Pierre Changeux and Stuart Edelstein (2006), “Nicotine Acetylcholine
Receptors: from molecular biology to cognition,” published by Odile Jacob.
** This is a verbatim transcript of a taped interview, given by Dr. Hyde, on
8 June 2008, and vetted by Dr. Hyde, on 27 June 2008.
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Click here for a list of all Grub Street Interviews.
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Click here to visit the Nightingale Research
Foundation or contact Dr. Hyde. Ask for a free copy of the latest publication,
by the Foundation, "The Nightingale, Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME) Definition."
A copy of the definite work on ME and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, "The Clinical
and Scientific Basis of Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome,"
edited by B. Hyde, J. Goldstein and P. Levine, is available from the Foundation
for a donation.