My brother was diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma a years back and was incredibly ill for most of his chemotherapy. Doctors shuffled anti-nausea medications regularly looking for something that could keep him out of the bathroom after each therapy, but the only relief he found was marijuana.
Eventually, he got into a trial of Marinol, synthetic cannabinoids that entirely cured him of the effects of chemotherapy. And, it made him feel nice.
The more these stories like this one in Slate are told, the sooner the rest of the country will adopt medical marijuana officially and people like my brother and this autistic kid stop suffering.
Or, you know, stuff like Marinol, which is apparently as effective without the harmful effects of smoking. Hell, even the DEA likes Marinol: http://www.justice.gov/dea/ongoing/marinol.html
I'm fully in favor of legalization. I don't think it should be predicated on bogus reasons.
over the childhood of most autism patients, as that suggests why it will be important to do placebo-controlled, double-blind studies of any medical intervention proposed for autism. See
for a detailed discussion by a science-oriented medical doctor on why variations in disease severity can confuse anecdotal accounts of what treatments work for what diseases.
I feel for the parents who have children with autistic behaviors, so I hope they get the benefit of sound science as they seek help for their children.
"it will be important to do placebo-controlled, double-blind studies of any medical intervention proposed for autism."
The author isn't proposing giving marijuana to all childhood autistics. She's just saying that it helps her son.
Besides, doing placebo-controlled, double-blind studies on whether marijuana is an effective medicine is like doing placebo-controlled, double-blind studies to figure out which is the best girlfriend. There are dozens of strains to choose from, and there's no reason to believe that a strain which is good for one person would be good for someone else, or even the best strain today would be ideal for tomorrow.
But, Alex, while I believe that no mother would actively harm her own child, the mother in question is not medically trained, and she has NO IDEA whether or not the long-term effects of marijuana are better for her child than the long-term effects of
a) doing nothing at all for his autism,
b) doing whatever is current standard practice for treating autism,
or
c) doing something that is bizarre and zany for autism.
She sees some behaviors change for the better, behaviors that might have changed for the better on their own. She has no way to sample the tissue of her child's brain to know what is happening to his brain. On the basis of her self-report, she doesn't appear to be doing him active short-term harm, but as a parent I try to validate what I do for my children with the observations of many other observers. She would be able to help her child with more likelihood of success if placebo-controlled, double-blind studies compare all the possible treatment approaches out there.
That's the whole point of studies. While it might seem that a lot of psych meds are just guesses, saying it's just a personal choice is wrong.
If there are several main types of strains, then well, I suppose your study needs to include more people -- not that hard. If strains change over time, that seems like another area for more study. This is what studies are for, and I cannot figure out why anyone would be opposed to it, or say it's not feasible.
Sorry - I've editted this message multiple times - so I'm just starting over. May I recommend that everyone read parts 1 and 2 or this story? She addresses in detail some of the concerns that have been voiced here, such as her own medical experience, the details of the alternatives she was given, etc... When taken in that context, her decision is much more scientific than some are giving her credit for.
One eyebrow went up at "...he made the heretofore unthinkable suggestion that I finally focus on my novel. I actually felt OK taking him up on the offer and spent a few weeks at the artists' colony Yaddo".
The other eyebrow went up, and the jaw dropped open, at "Salvation came in late October when Organic Guy managed to score some White Russian...Within two weeks, the number of times J was marked for behaving aggressively at school dropped back to the single digits, even zero on some days. This was all the scientific evidence we needed."
I'm very, very much in favor of medical cannabis. I don't doubt she saw some positive results...but her home sounds like it might itself be a bit 'dramatic' if not in fact 'volatile'. To say her story is even anecdotal evidence is a stretch -- in no way is it scientific.
Let's be scientific about coming to scientific conclusions, is what I'm suggesting. I'd love to see a valid, scientific study done on this topic, for I believe we would find benefit in cannabis. Stories like these, though well-intended, make it all seem like more of a Moonshine and Snake Oil movement.
Are you saying that, writers and artists are not to be trusted?
Regarding "all the scientific evidence we needed", do you not think the bar should be a bit different for research papers, than for parenting a single child?
At a high level of abstraction, marijuana seems to make sense to treat autism. The various flavors of autism involve difficulty seeing patterns, and THC makes pattern detection fire more often. While frequent marijuana use can take the brain too far in the other direction (seeing patterns which aren't there, synesthesia, etc.), it seems like there might be promise, though certainly not without side effects.
The only way to be sure is further research, and it's unfortunate that the political and social stigma make it so taboo.
We have a lot of "interesting" chemicals and plants available to us that can help resolve or reduce medical problems, and it's great that she lives in a country with a progressive medical system that can get those things into the hands of people who could benefit.
There are a lot of people who think the US has gone to pot (pun totally intended) in many ways but there are very few countries progressive enough to take similar steps (even in the UK, medicinal marijuana hasn't spread, legally, beyond trials).
Progressive? The US doesn't allow medical trials on marijuana. It doesn't allow research on marijuana.
This woman is a statistical outlier -- a person in one of a tiny handful of US states where it's even possible under state law to have it prescribed, and with a doctor who may well be putting his career on the line by prescribing marijuana. (Actual prescription is illegal under Federal law. They can "recommend", but I'm not sure if merely "recommended" pot is kosher with particular State laws)
Legally, the feds could walk into her house at any time, confiscate much of her property, jail her and her husband and send the child to child services.
It's great that some States are willing to press this issue, but the nation as a whole deserves no such credit and nothing but scorn.
The Federal government is the very reason that this mother is doing bad science personally to try and find out what works, rather than having trained experts doing it faster, more accurately and for the benefit of the nation.
"Peter Gorman WASHINGTON After nearly 20 years of refusing to approve a single medical-marijuana human research trial, the Drug Enforcement Administration has simultaneously approved three individual trials. All three patient trials will involve the use of smoked marijuana, and be conducted at the University of California's Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research (CMCR), at its San Diego and San Francisco campuses. The marijuana used will be supplied by the National Institute on Drug Abuse's (NIDA) federally approved Hattiesburg, Mississippi pot farm."
I would expect you to back up that statement if you want us to believe it.
that marijuana clinical trials are going on somewhere, so if there is demonstrable medical benefit from taking marijuana that is not available from some other drug, the scientific community will eventually hear about it.
[If] a researcher wants to use a variety of marijuana that the University of Mississippi does not grow -- and there are many with differing medicinal properties -- they are out of luck, Dr. Doblin said.
"As the National Institute on Drug Abuse, our focus is primarily on the negative consequences of marijuana use," said Shirley Simson, a spokeswoman for the drug abuse institute, known as NIDA. "We generally do not fund research focused on the potential beneficial medical effects of marijuana."
NIDA controls the supply, the strains available and the research on a proposal-by-proposal basis. They admit that their first priority is not accurate science, via their active discriminating against research into beneficial effects.
While I'm not going to declare all the research they've allowed is necessarily bad, it's clearly limited and incomplete to a dysfunctional degree.
In 1996 there were 250 academic journal articles published about marijuana, and in 2008 there were 2100[1]. In the US there are a handful of marijuana trials going on, but it's still very difficult to get DEA approval. I was at the MAPS conference this past weekend, and they were saying that to get approval for their psilocybin and MDMA research it was generally taking 2-4 years per study. And since marijuana is also schedule 1, the approval process is probably comparable.
[1]Source: Claudia Little in Psychedelic Salon podcast 218: http://bit.ly/doBrGA.
It's completely at the whim of the DEA, that's not legal permission it's selective enforcement. Any minute political shift could land the researchers in jail, all their assets personal or otherwise seized until trial.
This non action is the opposite of leadership, and the Department of Justice taking a slightly less conservative stance on the issue isn't progress.
> Legally, the feds could walk into her house at any time, confiscate much of her property, jail her and her husband and send the child to child services.
I think it's safe to assume, given other laws currently on the books in the US, that this is always the case, no matter what you personally have or have not done.
a person in one of a tiny handful of US states where it's even possible under state law to have it prescribed, and with a doctor who may well be putting his career on the line by prescribing marijuana. (Actual prescription is illegal under Federal law. They can "recommend", but I'm not sure if merely "recommended" pot is kosher with particular State laws)
Who has ultimate jurisdiction over this, then? If a State considers it legal to prescribe (and use?) marijuana, then under what circumstances/to what extent can the federal level of government enforce federal law? Shootout between federal agents and the local state police? :-)
The problem, as I understand it, is that the Feds have the letter-of-the-law final authority to control substances, including deciding which ones are legal. But in practice, it's state, county and city authorities (local cops) that enforce that law. In theory, the federal authorities could enforce federal law related to medical marijuana, but in practice they don't. This is a real problem, since several states have laws related to medical marijuana that contradict federal law.
Here in Colorado pot is sort of quasi-legal medically. A Dr. recommendation (not prescription as you pointed out) is required. However, Pot is not classified as a standard prescription drug, which makes it taxable. The Obama administration has issued guidance about not prosecuting folks who are in adherence with their states marijuana laws, which has greatly contributed to a boom industry in pot sales. Although the Feds haven't always lived up to the pledge as a few folks have been arrested for medical marijuana growth here.
All in all, however the Colorado system is very lax. The fact that it's now taxed gives it additional validation. It's very easy to get a card and dispensaries are abundant (I have several within walking distance of my house in central Denver).
The progressiveness isn't in the "country" it's in a few states. This is an argument for greater states rights as it leads to more pragmatic solutions to social problems. With 50 states experimenting on what works best, we are more likely to find what works.
I think some of the backlash against your statement though is that the country has outlawed mj and it is the progressive states fighting against that regressiveness that has led to what we have now. Still, due to our national laws, the author of the post can still go to jail and there would be a rallying cry outside the courthouse full of angry parents who think she is destroying her child's life.
Unfortunately, the US invented the modern Drug War in many ways, and has been involved in all kinds of horrible activities (spraying fields with lots of collateral property damage) because of it. I believe the US was one of the first countries to criminalize marijuana, in the 1930s.
I'm not really in favor of legalizing marijuana, but I would like to see it moved from a schedule I drug to a schedule II drug. This would allow medical use and research.
For comparison cocaine is a schedule II drug because dentists use it.
Reading this just reminds me of Temple Grandin lecturing on her experience with autism and treating autism. There are so many behavioral treatment options in addition to prescribed medicine that can help autistic children.
"Medical" Marijuana has side effects obviously. So does risperdal, a strong anti-psychotic, which is the approved for anger & outbursts in autistic children.
Note: I have never tried Marijuana and nor do I intend to. Most people I know who do use Marijuana are the type of people aren't going far with their careers.
Eventually, he got into a trial of Marinol, synthetic cannabinoids that entirely cured him of the effects of chemotherapy. And, it made him feel nice.
The more these stories like this one in Slate are told, the sooner the rest of the country will adopt medical marijuana officially and people like my brother and this autistic kid stop suffering.