On ethnography, hallucinogens, improvised knife, etc.

[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.

[Rick]

Anyone here read 'At Play In The Fields of the Lord' ?

The movie ??
Meh .

We share the same planet but not the same world .

[fearn]

I'd also point out that plants do make sounds pretty routinely. Trees creak and groan under strain, and if you have a stethoscope, you can hear the sounds of fluids moving within the stems.

Yes, I'm aware that this is probably not what the "singing hallucinogenic plants" is about, but it's just as short-sighted to think that plants don't make sounds, move, communicate with each other, or sense their environments. Each of these has been proven by science, and none of these is news to anyone who pays close attention to plants in any culture.

Best,

F

[David]

Originally Posted by Rick

We share the same planet but not the same world .

Ain't that the truth.
Wow, this conversation sure is getting esoteric....and way off forum topic. Hope those other mods don't shut us down.
Yes Fearn, creaking and groaning under stress and fluids running through plant systems is definitely not what we are talking about here, nor is it plants sensing their environments or even communicating with each other. What we are talking about is basically a "shamanistic" journeying experience where information about plant use is brought back from the journey and applied to "real" life situations....and proves to actually be correct and work! Certainly it is next to impossible to verify these experiences in any scientific way, but results are still results and i am not one to argue with them. Anyone who has had a peyote or "magic" mushroom experience can probably relate better to this, but maybe discussions of such personal experiences might be better left to private chats.
So i get what you are saying Fearn, really i do. The 99% of untested plants in the Amazon are not likely to yield anywhere near the number of medicinal drugs that we have already discovered in that 1 percentile. But what if they yield just a fraction, say 100 new drugs....or just 50....or only 25? What if they yield just one. What if that one is the cure for leukemia?

[fearn]

Hi David,

Check out Vincristine or vinblastine (link). We already have leukemia drugs from tropical plants.

Anyway, I know more about shamanism than I'm willing to talk about here, but that's only half my point. A bigger point is that we're assuming that, because they're hallucinogens, the people must have been hallucinating to hear the song. I don't know that Davis went out to check, but for all I know, you can hear the difference around the different cultivars of that vine. Maybe it has to do with the mosquitos that were buzzing around it, or something. Miguel's comment was right on: most shamans aren't stupid, and the ones I've met are pretty darn observant. Instead of wallowing in the mysticism of the comment, it's good to ask them whether they can teach you to hear that song, so that you can evaluate their evidence for yourself. It might be that all you have to do is stand under a vine and listen, simple as that.

As for the cost of finding a new drug.... That's a complex question. I'll approach it by telling some anecdotes.

1. A lot of the initial scientific research on Echinacea is incorrect, because the researchers were bad taxonomists and chose the wrong species for their sample. Moral: Correct identification is CRITICAL. This week, the New York times ran an article, one of many noting how taxonomy is a disappearing science. Think about the connection for a second.

2. Drug companies can only make money off of novel products. There's a huge number of drug plants out there, but as one herbalist noted, "how many cures for an upset stomach do you need to know, anyway?" A lot of plants have similar chemicals and work in similar ways. Good for the herbalists, but useless for the drug prospectors. If they can't patent it in some form, they're not interested.

2b. How much does it cost to screen plants? Depends on the method. Davis and his cohorts try to short-circuit the screening process by checking out known herbal medicines. Still, it costs around a billion $US to bring a drug to market in the US, and that includes finding something that might work, clearing all regulatory hurdles and safety tests, plus that wonderful 30% of the budget to marketing (When the time is right...Cialis). This raises the question of how much it is worth to go prospecting, considering how big the strike has to be to pay off for the financiers.

2c. Who owns the knowledge? A company in Texas patented bismati rice, and someone attempted to patent yoga, both in the US. The Indian government has been creating a multi-lingual database of ayurvedic healing preparations, so that anyone who tries to patent a traditional Indian drug in another country can have their patent rejected out-of-hand. Nevertheless, people will use the patent process, especially in the US, to take advantage of tradtional knowledge and even to lock out the people who gave them that knowledge as a gift. I think Davis is a strong advocate for traditional knowledge, but there still is the question about whether the healers and shamans should be talking to him at all, if someone else is going to exploit their knowledge without recompensing them.

2d. Similarly, one can look at the drug molecules as a form of knowledge, and talk about whether the drug prospectors are willing to pay to conserve the forest they're prospecting in. In many cases, they are not, because the economics are messy. You only have to find the drug until you can synthesize it in a lab. Once it's synthesized, the forest is irrelevant to the drug company. Whether this is fair and reasonable is an ethical question.

As I noted before, bioprospecting is a fad among drug companies with about a ten-year return interval. What happens is that they send out a bunch of drug prospectors, test whatever they find, and if they're lucky, bring something to market. If not, they get discouraged, and turn to some other field (like combinatorial chemistry or metagenomics, or whatever) to find new sources for potential drugs. When those fields don't pan out, they hear about some new, neat research about a class of novel biologicals, say the antibiotics found in the skins of frogs, and off they go to the jungle again.

And so it goes. Long answer to a short question, David, but bioprospecting really is like any other form of prospecting. It's risky, and as a result, it tends to be faddish. Is it worth it? You tell me. I'm too busy panning for gold, given the current inflated market (oh wait, that was last year ).

Best,

F

[Andrew]

This thread has drifted way off topic!!!!111!!!11one!!

Let's get immediately back to fecal blades and penis-bone knives.

[David]

Originally Posted by fearn

Anyway, I know more about shamanism than I'm willing to talk about here, but that's only half my point. A bigger point is that we're assuming that, because they're hallucinogens, the people must have been hallucinating to hear the song.

hmmm....well i, for one am not assuming that. Firstly i prefer to refer to these substances as entheogens. Hallucinations imply something that is not really there. I do not believe that is the case with the visions produced by these substances. Nor do i believe that these substances are necessary in order to hear the plants "sing", but they have been know to guide the people to the knowledge of this kind of listening.
And i guess you are right, we do already have a couple of leukemia drugs from tropically plants so i guess it makes no sense to keep looking for one that might actually cure the disease.