“Kid’s got autism? Get’em high!” demonstrates more physician ignorance on medical marijuana

Who do you think knows better how cannabis helps her autistic child - the mother, Mieko Hester-Perez, or some blogging internist in the Great Lakes Region?

I just found this blog called “White Coat Underground” written by “PalMD”, who is “a practicing internist in the Great Lakes region of the U.S.”

Today over at Science-Based Medicine, Dr. Novella has a review of the so-called “biomed” movement in autism treatment. Anyone should be able to understand the desperation of parents with sick kids, but grief can lead to very bad decisions. As physicians, one of our jobs is to guide people away from these decisions and not to give false hope. Telling people what they want to hear might make you as a caregiver feel good, but as physicians, our goal is not to make ourselves feel good but to help others.

It pained me to read this story about a mom who gets her autistic son stoned. As a father I can only imagine the devastation of not being able to communicate with my child, but I hope that my better judgment would keep me from feeding her pot.

But it’s not the mom’s poor judgment that upsets me the most—it’s her report that she found a doctor willing to help her. There are no studies to support the use of cannabis to treat the symptoms of autism, and given the potential harm of exposing an already neurologically-impaired child unknown doses of a powerfully psychoactive substance, this could be easily construed as child abuse. Additionally, any doctor who would recommend the use of cannabis on an autistic child would find little sympathy from me if he were hauled up in front of a medical board or better yet, a judge. The only reason this is any better than the case of the religious wackos who prayed while they watched their daughter die of diabetes is that its unlikely that pot will kill the child. But imagine being autistic, being unable to separate out various stimuli and communicate effectively, and then suddenly finding yourself feeling strange, not knowing why, perhaps even suffering from a severe anxiety reaction, not uncommon with acute cannabis intoxication. That’s not death, but it is torture.

I am the host of NORML’s talk radio program (NORML SHOW LIVE at http://live.norml.org) and I have interviewed Mieko  Hester-Perez personally (hear for yourself at http://stash.norml.org/stash-for-wed-dec-16-2009) about her use of cannabis to treat her son’s autism.

I’m always stunned at the moralists who will demean the parents who use cannabis, a non-toxic and safe herb, to treat their children’s conditions and yet think nothing of the parents who pump their kids full of Ritalin at the slightest hint they may be a bit fidgety in class. Cannabis isn’t OK, but bring on the children’s Robitussin, children’s Tylenol, and any number of children’s over-the-counter formulations and nobody bats an eyelash, because they’re in pretty boxes with barcodes and the folks at the FDA (who approved Vioxx, thalidomide, and phen-fen) say they are safe.

And the notion that the autistic child is being “tortured” by cannabis is ludicrous, something that could only be written by someone who has not tried cannabis personally. Mieko told me of her son exhibiting over 300 “incidents” a day where he was violent to himself or others; following her use of cannabis brownies, she found him happy and smiling and calm, playing with his toys and exhibiting no “incidents”. Doesn’t sound like someone being “tortured”.

She told me of her son dropping to 46 lbs. before cannabis and putting healthy weight back on after cannabis. Doesn’t sound like someone being “tortured”, either.

For those who are nervous that cannabis hasn’t been scientifically and medically tested, you do have a point. However, 5,000 years of human use have shown cannabis to be extraordinarily safe. The testing you desire is something every medical marijuana advocate desires as well. Problem is that the National Institutes on Drug Abuse won’t allow scientists to do those studies. They tell us marijuana hasn’t been scientifically tested, but then they won’t let us do the studies.

In the meantime as we push for scientific studies in the short term and legalization for all in the long term, do we force Mieko to give up the therapy she’s found to be successful for her son? Is she to allow him to return to emaciation and self-injurious behavior until we can finally change enough politicians’ minds in five years, ten years, twenty years?

It’s also very disingenuous to compare the “faith healing” cases to Mieko’s case. The “faith healers”* are denying proven medical treatments to save their child. Mieko had tried all the proven medical treatments and they didn’t work. She is now trying an unproven medical treatment that does work; you cannot deny the improvement in her child’s autistic syndromes after using cannabis brownies.

Finally, supposing that the autistic child is going to experience the same anxiety or panic that affects a small minority of non-autistic adults who use cannabis is a huge leap. We know that certain mental illnesses respond to drugs in ways contrary to how the same drug affects a non-mentally ill person. The perfect example would be that Ritalin we feed the kids with ADHD – to non-ADHD kids, Ritalin is speed, but to the ADHD kids, the Ritalin slows them down. If cannabis was having an adverse effect on Mieko’s child, it’s hard to believe he’d be as calm and relaxed as Mieko tells me he’s become.

This post and many of the comments on it exhibit the worst qualities of Reefer Madness – an emotional reaction to cannabis use as a sinful, immoral, dirty habit, rather than a dispassionate look on a natural herb that appears to be a successful therapy for some children with autism.

Russ Belville
NORML Outreach Coordinator

*Full disclosure: My wife grew up in that “faith healing” religion and knows personally the families involved in the most recent “faith healing” headlines in the state of Oregon.