My understanding is that autism is basically an altered state of consciousness where pattern matching isn't happening correctly, and (so?) raw unedited sensory data has much more salience than normal. Since cannabis basically makes the brain pattern match more liberally, it would make sense that it would be effective.
(But I am not a doctor, neuroscientist, pharmacist, chemist, psychologist, etc.)
From what I have read autism is a condition in which inputs cause the child to feel strong emotions that are not necessarily rational. I don't see that cannabis would cause the child to think in a rational manner unless it was to cause him/her to focus on things more.
"From what I have read autism is a condition in which inputs cause the child to feel strong emotions that are not necessarily rational. I don't see that cannabis would cause the child to think in a rational manner unless it was to cause him/her to focus on things more."
I think this is probably a symptom of what I described above, rather than the root cause. Read Temple Grandin's book Animals in Translation if you want a better account.
The book is written by an autistic woman who discovered that she has a really uncanny ability to understand animals. Basically she is able to see which stimuli are causing cattle and other animals to freak out, and the way she is able to do this is because her perception of the world is altered in a way that makes these stimuli (and their effects) more salient. For example, she will realize that the reason the cow won't move is because it sees a shadow, which no one else can recognize even though it's right in front of them. Apparently both autistics and animals are set off by some of the same things, because they don't have the natural ability to generalize phenomena. (So if they see a shadow, it's like a completely new thing to them each time and it scares them.) Although it seems like this particular author has learned to intellectualize that ability, so as an adult she has learned to get around the fact that the part of her brain which is supposed to do that isn't working. Anyway I'd really recommend this book, it sounds really flaky but it's incredibly intellectually interesting, and has so many implications for so many things it's ridiculous.
(Note that there may be several types of autism, which science hasn't yet differentiated because people could be having different subjective experiences, while the behavioral outcomes are the same. I'm not saying this is the case, it's just a possibility that has to be kept in mind, because people as introspective and articulate as Grandin are rare so understanding in these areas moves slowly.)
Am I missing something here, is it the only upside that the kid is less aggressive on Marijuana? The kid sounds stoned. Even the parents admit "his autism has become more distinct".
I feel for the parents - autism is a very difficult issue to deal with but this seems to be helping their problem more then their sons.
I think the only other upsides mentioned in the article is that he has stopped eating his clothing, that he focuses on eating real food now, and that he washed his own dish after eating.
Basically, it would appear that the upside is that his lessened aggressive behavior is allowing him to engage in more constructive behavior.
But you are right. We have to wonder if the marijuana usage is doing more for the child or more for the parents.
Unless it's harming the child, which, apparently it's not, I see no reason to stop the treatment if it's doing the child any good whatsoever, no matter how big the good it's doing the parents.
Since autism is a psychological problem, the effectiveness of the medication should be judged based on how the underlying thought processes are changed. The behavioral outcomes are only a proxy for what's going on inside the child's head.
From the sounds of it, one of the biggest improvements for the son was the elimination of his habit of eating nonfood items, which seemed to occur on a near daily basis. So I am sure avoiding all of that pain was a big plus for him.
"Do any Biohackers on here know of any sex based differences in the effects of THC?"
Marijuana itself is described by many enthusiasts (including Terence McKenna) as 'feminizing'. In other words, the way a man will perceive the world when high is somewhat similar to the way women perceive the world normally. If you want a more scientific look at this, this book is a presentation of a pretty good large scale study done on the effects of the drug.
It sounds interesting, but how can they tell if he's tripping out or not if he already has issues expressing himself normally? I guess if he's functioning at a higher level than usual, he's probably OK, but it still seems kind of iffy to me. Maybe it's just the stigma surrounding cannabis that's coloring my perception on this.
I wonder if a medical study for something like this would be feasible. I also wonder if there could be negative long term or developmental effects from a treatment like this.
I wonder if a medical study for something like this would be feasible.
Finding enough parents willing to let their autistic kids participate would be challenge enough. But on top of that they would all have to live in California, where you can get the legal pot license, and the study would have to performed without causing a big uproar in the community.
Sounds like it would be quite challenging, but not necessarily infeasible.
"But on top of that they would all have to live in California, where you can get the legal pot license, and the study would have to performed without causing a big uproar in the community."
IIRC it doesn't matter what state the research is done in once the study gets approval from the federal government, which is needed anyway. That's why they're allowed to do psilocybin research at Johns Hopkins. (Which they still need about 70 more volunteers for; if anyone wants to participate, check out csp.org.)
As far as I remember from an undergraduate degree in psychology, autistic parents are some of the most willing to try experimental approaches. Autism is incredibly difficult for everyone involved and parents are often desperate to find something that works.
As far as having to happen in a state w/ medical marijuana, I also don't think that's necessarily true. Human research on controlled substances is pretty common, but requires the researcher to get past a lot of DEA & institutional HSRC paperwork. That's how the research that supports medical marijuana was performed in the first place.
Amazingly, a google scholar search for marijuana (or thc) and autism turns up nothing relevant. Really? It's amazing how little we know.
Medical studies don't need to be declared to the public, all they'd need to do is contact the doctors who already prescribe medical marijuana and ask them if they have any patients willing to participate.
If you're contacting practitioners who already prescribe MM they're unlikely to speak out against the study, besides you could force non-disclosure agreements on participants. It's kind of morally-grey, but if there's big enough concern about getting shut down then you'll get enough people willing to sign an NDA in the chance they might be able to help their child.
This wouldn't be the sort of study you stick an ad for in the sunday paper.
I suggest it may also have, possibly, more reason to do with the autism, which is an interesting topic of mind which has a lot of interest at Hacker News. Also, there are lots of cases of autism in and around silicon valley which raises consciousness of the topic in the minds of many hackers.
There's nothing odd about being fascinated by drugs and/or altered states of consciousness. The fact that our laws, culture, art, and religions are seemingly inseparable from their influence is intellectually interesting, to say the least.
I'm not saying that everyone should do drugs, certainly not, but if you don't at least take the time to learn about this stuff then you're cheating yourself out of a big piece of the human experience.
It's on Slate, not some hemp advocacy site, and it was interesting. Hence, submitted. I don't think I have an odd fascination with drugs (I actually think expirimenting with cannabis on a disabled school-age boy is ethically repugnant).
Here I might add, for no particular reason except human interest, that I have never in my life consumed marijuana.
It points to a moderator specifically changing how the sorting algorithm is applied to this story. Vote weighting. Or maybe it's a new change to automatically vote weight stories where there are more comments than points.
I didn't do anything specific to this story, and there is still no vote weighting yet.
I changed the frontpage ranking algorithm slightly yesterday, and I tweaked it again today. The reason it seemed to take effect suddenly is that I had pasted the new version yesterday into the server repl, and news had restarted since then. When I pasted the tweaked version into the repl 2 hours ago, it visibly changed rankings.
At least it isn't as bad as reddit where it's nearly everyday that an article about drugs gets upvoted. It could be worse, and at least this article is an interesting read namely due to the fact that they're not claiming it's a miracle or a cure, it just helps.
It may not have to do with hacking but it has the hacking attitude. I mean who would think to give their kid pot to try to cure autism?
It is a daring move that I'm sure will bring much criticism from less liberal members of society. That by definition makes it something that I as a hacker would be interested in. I upvoted it for that reason.
No, because he is not using the word 'liberal' to denote a Liberal, but rather to denote someone that doesn't let (social) conventions get in the way of what he deems possible and worthy of following through. That sounds like the hacker spirit to me.
Obviously not. My point is that I as a hacker am a person interested in people who do things in a nonstandard way. Giving a kid pot to treat autism is nonstandard, therefore I am interested in it and in other people's responses to it whether they be liberal or conservative.
Having said that I'd still prefer hacker news had a sort of programming/startup/tech focus. Articles like this are always on Reddit for those who want to see them.
Irresponsible parents would give their children illegal drugs as an attempt to "cure" an ailment, I suppose. I still don't see how that has to do with hacking or startups.
Right. I would place this under "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity," thus it is on-topic. That said I'm interested in some intellectual discussion on the article now that we have pretty much concluded that it is on-topic.
Icey, you've been here for over 900 days, and you're arguing with the second sentence of the first graf of the site guidelines:
On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
I can't ask a question regarding why this is hacker news? Because I really don't see how it is.
I didn't say it's not hacker news. I said I don't see what it's got to do with a site ostensibly titled "Hacker News". I think that's a fair question, isn't it?
It's right there in the paragraph that I quoted for you. I'm sorry the story didn't gratify your intellectual curiousity. It did mine. Autism is also a hotbutton issue among hackers.
I do want to say that I think you're really overreacting though. I was asking why this was hacker news because I was trying to give you (and by extension all of the upvoters) the benefit of the doubt. Ordinarily I'd just flag something like this and move on, but since you usually have pretty insightful things to say about a wide variety of topics, I admitted that I didn't get it and asked for clarification. I think it's unfortunate that you took it as some kind of attack on your person or on your taste, or whatever. I know what the guidelines are on this site, I spend more time here than I spend with my wife; so I don't really need them quoted back at me.
I also get that autism is a big deal, I have 2 family members who work with autistic children every day; and I can tell you that they aren't going to start telling people to get their kids high because it worked for one person who had the idea to toss a pot brownie junior's way.
I think there's a small amount of overlap between hacker culture and drug culture. From the Jargon File:
Limited use of non-addictive psychedelic drugs, such as cannabis, LSD, psilocybin, nitrous oxide, etc., used to be relatively common and is still regarded with more tolerance than in the mainstream culture. Use of `downers' and opiates, on the other hand, appears to be particularly rare; hackers seem in general to dislike drugs that make them stupid. On the third hand, many hackers regularly wire up on caffeine and/or sugar for all-night hacking runs.
I was also surprised, but explained it to myself like this: Autism (and Asperger's, which is something like high-functioning autism) have a certain natural affinity with hackers. If there's something that works for autism, we might collectively be curious if it translates to asperger's as well.
1. Autism is more common among children of engineers.
2. If a computer receives unexpected input, it may exhibit abnormal behavior. When it is given such input intentionally, we call that either hacking or taking drugs, depending on the computer.
(But I am not a doctor, neuroscientist, pharmacist, chemist, psychologist, etc.)