Hospital ICU and other places," Maa said.

"The mania needs to calm down. I've never seen this level of frenzy," said Dr. Orrin Devinsky, director of the epilepsy center at New York University's Langone Medical Center. Devinsky has one of the few clinical trials ever approved in the U.S. for a marijuana derivative, cannabidiol, and receives hundreds of calls from beseeching parents after publicity about Colorado epilepsy cases.

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Longtime researchers are struck by the openness of current parents to marijuana derivative treatments, Devinsky said.

"There's a comfort level" among those who have used or been around marijuana for a generation, he said.

By contrast, Devinsky said, "There's a group of medical leaders that are appalled by what's going on."

Colorado's status as "ground zero" for new, unauthorized research went national in recent monthsof her suffering," Paige Figi said of the moment two years ago when they first tried the oil. Now she is among volunteer parent advocates pushing for medical marijuana legalization in New York and other states as part of an effort to broaden the experiments.

Figi acknowledges and agrees with doctor precautions about unproven medicines, and says she always calls for rigorous testing. Yet she quickly adds a doctor's standard is different from the judgment of a parent whose child is dying a slow and violent death.

On a recent sunny afternoon in Fox Run Regional Park, Charlotte sat on a sled and ate grapes while her fraternal twin sister and her brother played nearby. The back of the car had grocery bags with eggs and paper towels from an