On ethnography, hallucinogens, improvised knife, etc.

[migueldiaz]

Originally Posted by fearn

I'd also recommend Davis' One River. Although it's mostly about ethnobotany (as is Serpent and the Rainbow), there are some weapons related things in there as well. Curare, for instance (in One River), or zombie making (in Serpent and the Rainbow). As for Carlos Castaneda, if you haven't read any of his books, I'd suggest checking out the Wikipedia articles first, just so you know what you're getting into.

Thanks for the additional tips, Fearn!

On Davis, the moment he said ...

"To have that [ethnic psychoactive] powder blown up your nose is rather like being shot out of a rifle barrel lined with baroque paintings and landing on a sea of electricity."

... I instantly became a disciple of Davis

What I meant by that is that the guy sure can communicate and captivate his audience's imagination. And for that, I like the man already (better late than never).

But what is really mind blowing for me is not the recreational or meditative uses of these plants among the natives.

Rather, it's the fact that as said elsewhere and everywhere "while 25% of Western pharmaceuticals are derived from rainforest ingredients, less than 1% of these tropical trees and plants have been tested by scientists".

I'm sure the cure for cancer, AIDS, cardiovascular diseases, etc. are just there, lying in those forests!

[KuKulzA28]

Originally Posted by migueldiaz

Thanks for the additional tips, Fearn!

On Davis, the moment he said ...

"To have that [ethnic psychoactive] powder blown up your nose is rather like being shot out of a rifle barrel lined with baroque paintings and landing on a sea of electricity."

... I instantly became a disciple of Davis

What I meant by that is that the guy sure can communicate and captivate his audience's imagination. And for that, I like the man already (better late than never).

But what is really mind blowing for me is not the recreational or meditative uses of these plants among the natives.

Rather, it's the fact that as said elsewhere and everywhere "while 25% of Western pharmaceuticals are derived from rainforest ingredients, less than 1% of these tropical trees and plants have been tested by scientists".

I'm sure the cure for cancer, AIDS, cardiovascular diseases, etc. are just there, lying in those forests!

And it may be that those trees can sing too, to ears who's minds are receptive to that concept.

[fearn]

Sigh. There are already herbal cancer drugs (i.e. taxol from yew) and heart disease (digitalis from foxglove). It's all well and good to wish for a miracle drugs, but things like exercise and safe sex still work best. Boring, isn't it?

Incidentally, it's also worth noting that the archeologists now think that the Amazon (at least along the main, whitewater rivers) was home to a lot more people than we thought even a few years ago. I'm venturing into speculative territory, but I'm guessing that one reason there is this sophisticated use of hallucinogens throughout the Amazon is that it used to be more, well, civilized, and they had the time and numbers of experimenters to work out the drug interactions that Davis talks about. Diseases brought by the Spaniards and Portuguese probably wiped out most of the river cultures, and the tribes we see now are the isolated remnants after 500 years.

Something similar may have happened in the Congo, too, since there's plentiful pottery remains and former cultivated fields in the upper basin, in areas that were once thought to be virgin rain forest.

Anyway, getting off topic. Fun stuff!

F

[David]

Originally Posted by fearn

Sigh. There are already herbal cancer drugs (i.e. taxol from yew) and heart disease (digitalis from foxglove). It's all well and good to wish for a miracle drugs, but things like exercise and safe sex still work best. Boring, isn't it?

Sadly this is not true Fearn or i am sure that my mother would still be alive today.
Again, "while 25% of Western pharmaceuticals are derived from rainforest ingredients, less than 1% of these tropical trees and plants have been tested by scientists".
To keep testing the plants of the Amazon region is hardly "wishing for a miracle drug", it is merely common sense research.
The continued destruction of the rain forest however is nothing but short-sighted stupidity.

[KuKulzA28]

Originally Posted by David

Sadly this is not true Fearn or i am sure that my mother would still be alive today.
Again, "while 25% of Western pharmaceuticals are derived from rainforest ingredients, less than 1% of these tropical trees and plants have been tested by scientists".
To keep testing the plants of the Amazon region is hardly "wishing for a miracle drug", it is merely common sense research.
The continued destruction of the rain forest however is nothing but short-sighted stupidity.

It's tough when many poor people need to feed themselves by carrying out the short-sighted stupidity of their overlords... and many of these folks adopt their paymaster's views as well.

[fearn]

Originally Posted by David

Sadly this is not true Fearn or i am sure that my mother would still be alive today.
Again, "while 25% of Western pharmaceuticals are derived from rainforest ingredients, less than 1% of these tropical trees and plants have been tested by scientists".
To keep testing the plants of the Amazon region is hardly "wishing for a miracle drug", it is merely common sense research.
The continued destruction of the rain forest however is nothing but short-sighted stupidity.

Speaking as one of those scientists (I'm a trained botanist), there's this one little problem with that statement. It's incomplete.

Yes, few plants have been tested. There's a reason. Some plant families are rich in drug-type chemicals. The tomato family is a good example of this, and has given us atropine, scopalamine, nicotine, etc. Some families are not rich.

Basically, the are ~800 species of figs in the tropics, and there are hundreds of species of oaks. The chemistry of both groups is known fairly well, they're pretty consistent among species and they're not good sources for new drugs. I could go on at length, but the reason no one is checking the plants that we know about is because there's a very low probability that we'll find anything new in them.

Wade Davis is not neutral in this process. As an ethnobotanist, he has an interest in promoting bioprospecting, specifically by finding out what native tribes use as medicines, and then determining whether those plants work by some new chemistry, whether they work by some chemistry that's already known (the normal case), or whether they work by sympathetic magic (i.e. placebo) alone (also very common).

Bioprospecting goes in and out as a fad among drug companies. Right now, they're bioprospecting in the ocean and in animals, because they're finding new classes of pain killers (cone snails) and antibiotics (frogs, alligators, etc) to study. I'm sure that they will eventually go back to the rainforests, but even then, they're probably going to be looking at things like fungi, bacteria, and animals, as much as the plants.

I'm sorry to hear about your mother, but I'm not sure that the plants of the rain forests held any cure for her. That was definitely true for my late father, by the way.

Best,

F

[migueldiaz]

Originally Posted by fearn

Speaking as one of those scientists (I'm a trained botanist), there's this one little problem with that statement. It's incomplete.

Yes, few plants have been tested. There's a reason. Some plant families are rich in drug-type chemicals. The tomato family is a good example of this, and has given us atropine, scopalamine, nicotine, etc. Some families are not rich.

Basically, the are ~800 species of figs in the tropics, and there are hundreds of species of oaks. The chemistry of both groups is known fairly well, they're pretty consistent among species and they're not good sources for new drugs. I could go on at length, but the reason no one is checking the plants that we know about is because there's a very low probability that we'll find anything new in them ...

Bioprospecting goes in and out as a fad among drug companies. Right now, they're bioprospecting in the ocean and in animals, because they're finding new classes of pain killers (cone snails) and antibiotics (frogs, alligators, etc) to study. I'm sure that they will eventually go back to the rainforests, but even then, they're probably going to be looking at things like fungi, bacteria, and animals, as much as the plants.

Thanks for those comments.

Can I just request for your comments please on my two back-of-the-envelope calculations?

Here's quick-and-dirty calculation no. 1 --

[a] there are currently about 13,000 drugs per US Food & Drug Admin., if I understood correctly this webpage;

[b] if the stat we picked up was correct in that 25% of Western drugs came from rainforest ingredients, then that would be 3,250 out of the 13,000;

[c] again if it's true that only 1% of rainforest flora has been tested, then shouldn't that mean that the 99% untested plants ought to give us thousands of more new drugs?

On the one hand, I myself like anybody else will find it ridiculous if someone will say that we expect to see 321,750 new drugs (i.e., 99 x 3,250) once the remaining 99% have been tested.

On the other hand, if we are to say that no significant new drugs are to be expected from the 99%, wouldn't that be swinging to the opposite extreme?

After all, the 1% tested did yield 3,000+ drugs.

Could it be that the most likely scenario will be somewhere in between? (though perhaps skewed towards the scenario you just described, in that the success rate will be much lower this time, on account of the similar traits of many species, etc.).

Just thinking out loud ...

I'll post next that second rough calcs

[fearn]

Originally Posted by migueldiaz

Thanks for those comments.

Can I just request for your comments please on my two back-of-the-envelope calculations?

Here's quick-and-dirty calculation no. 1 --

[a] there are currently about 13,000 drugs per US Food & Drug Admin., if I understood correctly this webpage;

[b] if the stat we picked up was correct in that 25% of Western drugs came from rainforest ingredients, then that would be 3,250 out of the 13,000;

[c] again if it's true that only 1% of rainforest flora has been tested, then shouldn't that mean that the 99% untested plants ought to give us thousands of more new drugs?

On the one hand, I myself like anybody else will find it ridiculous if someone will say that we expect to see 321,750 new drugs (i.e., 99 x 3,250) once the remaining 99% have been tested.

On the other hand, if we are to say that no significant new drugs are to be expected from the 99%, wouldn't that be swinging to the opposite extreme?

After all, the 1% tested did yield 3,000+ drugs.

Could it be that the most likely scenario will be somewhere in between? (though perhaps skewed towards the scenario you just described, in that the success rate will be much lower this time, on account of the similar traits of many species, etc.).

Just thinking out loud ...

I'll post next that second rough calcs

Hi Miguel,

As I noted above, it isn't a linear calculation, because diversity isn't evenly distributed among plant families, and because some groups of plants are far more likely to have potential drug properties than others.

For example, the three most common plant families worldwide are the asters, orchids, and grasses. Of these, we're alive as a civilization because of the grasses (they're our main food source), and we get some interesting herbals (echinacea, wormwood, etc) from the Asters. Orchids? Pretty flowers and vanilla, yet they're the most diverse family in the tropical forests. It isn't that people don't use orchids for various things (like fiber or pretty flowers) but they aren't a drug source.

Figs are another great example. I suspect there are some herbal uses that might even be useful for medicine. There are 800+ species of figs, and they're a keystone of life for tropical forests, because they fruit all year. Yet as far as I know, they all have much the same biochemistry, so no one is looking at figs as a source of medicine. That's another 800 species.

I can keep on going until I run out of space, but the point is that, while most plants have some basic herbal use, often those uses are things we already know about. Finding a genuinely new drug is like finding a needle in a haystack.

Those 1% that were already tested belonged to families that we knew contained drug compounds (like the nightshade family) or were used by indigenous people to do amazing things (like the curare plants or Davis' hallucinogens). Effectively, we've high-graded the forests for their easily accessible drug plants. While I'm sure that there's new undiscovered drugs out there, I don't think it's going to be easy to find, and the cost of finding those unknowns is what's keeping people from testing them.

Hope this helps. It's nothing like a linear calculation. It's more like gold-mining.

Best,

F

[David]

Originally Posted by fearn

Speaking as one of those scientists (I'm a trained botanist), there's this one little problem with that statement. It's incomplete.

Yes, few plants have been tested. There's a reason. Some plant families are rich in drug-type chemicals. The tomato family is a good example of this, and has given us atropine, scopalamine, nicotine, etc. Some families are not rich.

Basically, the are ~800 species of figs in the tropics, and there are hundreds of species of oaks. The chemistry of both groups is known fairly well, they're pretty consistent among species and they're not good sources for new drugs. I could go on at length, but the reason no one is checking the plants that we know about is because there's a very low probability that we'll find anything new in them.

Wade Davis is not neutral in this process. As an ethnobotanist, he has an interest in promoting bioprospecting, specifically by finding out what native tribes use as medicines, and then determining whether those plants work by some new chemistry, whether they work by some chemistry that's already known (the normal case), or whether they work by sympathetic magic (i.e. placebo) alone (also very common).

Bioprospecting goes in and out as a fad among drug companies. Right now, they're bioprospecting in the ocean and in animals, because they're finding new classes of pain killers (cone snails) and antibiotics (frogs, alligators, etc) to study. I'm sure that they will eventually go back to the rainforests, but even then, they're probably going to be looking at things like fungi, bacteria, and animals, as much as the plants.

I'm sorry to hear about your mother, but I'm not sure that the plants of the rain forests held any cure for her. That was definitely true for my late father, by the way.

Fearn, i am sorry to hear about your father as well. My post was a reaction to your statement that "It's all well and good to wish for a miracle drugs, but things like exercise and safe sex still work best". My mom was a very active woman who practiced yoga and went hiking all the time. She had a good, health, well balanced diet. Yet she battled breast cancer and was finally taken by leukemia. So i stand by my response that "exercise and safe sex" was not the answer there.
While i understand your comments that the not all plants are viable sources for drugs and that the 1% figure is therefore misleading there are so many species of plants in the Amazon that i am convinced that it is well worth the investigation. My worry is that by the time scientists get done with cone snail and "eventually go back to the rainforests" there nay not be any rainforests to go back to. They are disappearing at an amazing rate.

[migueldiaz]

Originally Posted by KuKulzA28

And it may be that those trees can sing too, to ears who's minds are receptive to that concept.

That's a possibility, though at the moment such claim is classified as pseudoscience I believe

Mythbusters if it can regarded as a good experimenter (perhaps it is), is supposed to have busted the belief (though some claim that the same experiment proved otherwise).

Personally, I don't believe that plants or trees are sentient (anatomically, they don't have a brain or a nervous system, etc.). And I'm sure Fearn can elaborate on this more.

But after knowing that those Indians do perceive something from plants and they have evidence to prove such allegation, I'm now having second thoughts

[KuKulzA28]

Originally Posted by migueldiaz

That's a possibility, though at the moment such claim is classified as pseudoscience I believe

Mythbusters if it can regarded as a good experimenter (perhaps it is), is supposed to have busted the belief (though some claim that the same experiment proved otherwise).

Personally, I don't believe that plants or trees are sentient (anatomically, they don't have a brain or a nervous system, etc.). And I'm sure Fearn can elaborate on this more.

But after knowing that those Indians do perceive something from plants and they have evidence to prove such allegation, I'm now having second thoughts

I meant that comment as a half-joke, and half alluding to the fact that these people may be better at discovering the beneficial properties of some plant species than we are. But, some people just have a good sense of the world around them. Some people can just read people. Some just understand dogs, don't know why but they do. Perhaps some people can just tell something about plants. This "tree-listening" is a whole new concept to me, never looked at things that way.... even if technically trees don't speak.. it's the concept I mean, not the actually "communication"

[migueldiaz]

Originally Posted by KuKulzA28

I meant that comment as a half-joke, and half alluding to the fact that these people may be better at discovering the beneficial properties of some plant species than we are. But, some people just have a good sense of the world around them. Some people can just read people. Some just understand dogs, don't know why but they do. Perhaps some people can just tell something about plants. This "tree-listening" is a whole new concept to me, never looked at things that way.... even if technically trees don't speak.. it's the concept I mean, not the actually "communication"

Agree

Talking about having that good sense of one's surroundings, I think it was Jared Diamond in his Guns Germs and Steel who made the same allusion in said book.

IIRC, Diamond said that if you drop a Papua New Guinea (PNG) native in the middle of Manhattan or something like that, the PNG native would be totally disoriented of course.

But in the same manner, Diamond said that if he [Diamond] was dropped in the middle of the PNG rainforest, he won't survive.

Thus Diamond was saying that he's not really smarter than the PNG native. Rather, each one of them merely adapted to his own native surroundings. And having made that adaptation, the heightened sensitivity is there.

To cite another example, Spanish missionaries during the colonial period had often recorded how Filipino seamen masterfully navigate the seas by merely "reading" the cloud formations, the floats encountered in the sea, the type of fishes that swim by, the looks of the waves, etc.

I'm sure seamen who are Polynesian, Mediterranean, etc. also possessed the same heightened sensitivity to his surroundings.

So yes, we are saying the same thing after all

PS - Maybe somebody should ask Wade Davis what exactly did the Indians mean when they said that they hear those plants "singing" under the moonlight. It's also possible that something was lost in the translation.

[KuKulzA28]

Sounds good, I agree with your agreement and elaboration

Originally Posted by migueldiaz

PS - Maybe somebody should ask Wade Davis what exactly did the Indians mean when they said that they hear those plants "singing" under the moonlight. It's also possible that something was lost in the translation.

Possible... or maybe he chose to translate it and present it literally to the audience for the affect of it... because if he said "they have a culture that has a good sense of its surrounding, especially with regards to plants, which they often observe under moonlight..." then it's not such a cool statement... Hell when I'm in the city I have a general idea of where the restaurants are and what to look for to see if it's a good one or not before risking a trial.... but those restaurants don't sing to me unless you could advertisements

[migueldiaz]

Originally Posted by KuKulzA28

... Hell when I'm in the city I have a general idea of where the restaurants are and what to look for to see if it's a good one or not before risking a trial....

... in the same manner that females have greatly honed their shopping instincts

[David]

Originally Posted by migueldiaz

PS - Maybe somebody should ask Wade Davis what exactly did the Indians mean when they said that they hear those plants "singing" under the moonlight. It's also possible that something was lost in the translation.

I believe that even you and i would be able to hear the plants singing under the moonlight if we were to participate in a peyote ceremony.
I don't make this as a flippant remark. Castaneda was always asking Don Juan, "did that really happen? Is it true or just a hallucination?". Well this "separate reality" thing can get complicated.

[VANDOO]

IT IS QUITE POSSIBLE FOR PLANTS TO TALK TO YOU WHEN USING SOME OF THE VARIOUS PLANTS USED IN CEREMONIES BY SHAMEN AND OTHERS FOR MANY CENTURIES. MANY OTHER THINGS ARE POSSIBLE AS WELL WHILE MUCH THAT IS EXPERIENCED IS NOT POSSIBLE TO PROVE OR FOR AN OUTSIDE OBSERVER TO CONFIRM THINGS ARE SEEN THAT CAN BE CONFIRMED.
OBSERVERS HAVE SEEN A PERSON HANDLE DANGEROUS OR WILD CREATURES OR FOR WILD CREATURES TO WILLINGLY COME TO A PERSON UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF A DRUG. WITH SOME DRUGS THE VISION BECOMES MUCH BETTER SO YOU CAN SEE THINGS YOU NORMALLY CAN NOT SUCH AS COUNT HOW MANY TIMES A FLY FLAPS ITS WINGS AS IT FLIES BY OR SEE THE HEAT RISING ABOVE A PERSONS HEAD IN SWIRLS AND SEE THE GNATS RIDING THE THERMALS ABOVE A MANS HEAD LIKE THE VULTURES RIDE THERMALS. DID YOU EVER WONDER WHY GNATS LIKE TO COLLECT AROUND AND ABOVE YOUR HEAD, THATS WHY.
MANY MORE THINGS CAN BE OBSERVED THAT CAN BE PROVEN BY CAREFUL STUDY BUT MANY OTHER HAPPENINGS CANNOT SUCH AS TALKING TO TREES OR PLANTS AND EVEN KNOWING THE PERSONALITIES OF DIFFERENT ONES. INDEED MANY THINGS HAVE BEEN DONE THAT CAN'T BE EXPLAINED AND THAT GO FAR BEYOND MAN'S NORMAL SENSES AND ABILITIES AND NOT ALL IS FICTION, ITS JUST NOT POSSIBLE TO PROVE OR EXPLAIN.
I THINK WE HAVE MUCH MORE POWER AND MANY MORE SENSES THAT WE CANNOT USE HERE IN THIS LIFE AS THERE IS A GOVENOR SHUTTING THEM OFF AND PERHAPS THE SHAMEN FIND A WAY TO PARTIALLY UNLOCK THESE SENSES THRU THE USE OF THEIR DRUGS AND RITUALS TO HELP THEIR TRIBE.

FOR ALL MAN'S ACCOMPLISHMENTS AND KNOWLEGE IT WOULD BE JUST A SMALL SPECK AMONG ALL THAT GOD HAS CREATED. WE HAVE AN AWFUL LOT TO LEARN AND REALLY ARENT THAT SMART AFTER ALL.