Subscribe
A group of practitioners, activists, scholars, lawyers and human rights defenders has come together and proposed a set of ethical guidelines that they say can guide Western psychedelic research and practice on traditional indigenous medicines.
The set of eight ethical principles — each beginning with the letter ‘R’ — can address increasing concerns among many indigenous nations regarding the cultural appropriation of their traditional medicines.
The proposed guidelines come even as the use of psychedelics for therapeutic purposes is on the rise. The group noted in a recently published academic paper that there are now more than 30 million estimated psychedelic users in the United States (US) alone.
There were 367 registered clinical studies on psychedelics as of 2022. An increasing number of cities and states in the US have also legalised their use.
“The economic profits alone of the psychedelic industry is expected to grow to 6.85 billion by 2027,” the paper added.
Indigenous healing medicines like Ayahuasca are rising in popularity. Yet, the economic profits hardly accrue to the communities and regions from where these medicines originate.
The paper noted that while Western psychedelic practitioners and facilitators can reach average earnings of $10,500 per service event, indigenous medicine practitioners may earn between $2 to $150 for their services in their communities of origin.
On the other hand, international demand is driving people to unsustainably harvest iboga, the plants used to make ayahuasca and the hallucinogenic cactus peyote, according to an article on the website of the journal Science.
The authors of the academic paper also noted that traditional Indigenous medicine was not widely protected by law.
“As of 2022, only the constitutions of Bolivia (Art. 42) and Ecuador (Art. 57) include regulation specific to Indigenous traditional medicine,” they wrote.
There are frameworks that mention indigenous rights to the use and development of their traditional medicines and related practices. These include the Article 8 (j), Article 16 and Annex 1 of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) as well as the Articles 7 and 12 of the CBD’s Nagoya protocol on Access and benefit-sharing (ABS).
However, countries like the US where research on psychedelics using traditional indigenous medicine is being carried out, are not signatories to the CBD and therefore also not party to the Nagoya protocol on ABS.
On December 19, 2022, delegates at the 15th Conference of Parties (COP15) to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) adopted the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF). The framework has 23 targets that the world needs to achieve by 2030.
“This agreement means people around the world can hope for real progress to halt biodiversity loss and protect and restore our lands and seas in a way that safeguards our planet and respects the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities,” said Achim Steiner, UN Development Programme Administrator.
The group that has authored the paper included indigenous representatives from Canada, Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Kenya, Mexico, Peru and the US.
“This is the first time to our knowledge that a globally represented Indigenous led group has been brought together with the purpose of engaging directly with the psychiatric and research community on this topic through formal scholarship,” the authors wrote.
They worked from October 28, 2021 to March 11, 2022 and came up with eight ethical principles to address indigenous concerns: Reverence, Respect, Responsibility, Relevance, Regulation, Reparation, Restoration, and Reconciliation.
These were categorised within four overarching categories:
Western psychedelic research had turned the ‘kincentric’ approaches (treating all relationships, including medicines, as kin) of indigenous medicine systems to anthropocentric approaches (human-centric).
For instance, westerners travelled thousands of kilometres (increasing their carbon footprint) to take part in indigenous healing ceremonies (like ayahuasca). This failed to promote environmental care.
“Therapies based on indigenous wisdom reorient attitudes towards better relationships with human, other-than-human, and Mother Earth,” the authors wrote under the ‘reverence’ principle.
Western psychedelic research and psychedelic tourism is also leading to excessive extraction of ingredients used in traditional medicines. Indigenous traditions are not properly acknowledged in medicines, rituals, ceremonial use, they noted under ‘respect’.
No ‘responsibility’ was being taken while making use of traditional benefits, benefitting from it or the harms that were being caused due to it.
The authors of the paper urged formal efforts to establish indigenous-led intellectual foundations in Western psychedelic science, therapy, and curricula to make indigenous knowledge ‘relevant’.
They called for ‘regulation’. Indigenous people should give their free, prior and informed consent on the use of their medicines and practices. Benefits from any use must be shared with such communities.
Institutions and organisations using psychedelics for research and/or therapies must provide ‘reparation’ in the form of promotion and safeguarding of indigenous self-determination.
The authors also called for indigenous voices to be made a part of deliberations on psychedelic science, therapies, training, product development, etc.
Ethical principles of traditional Indigenous medicine to guide western psychedelic research and practice was published in the February 2023 edition of The Lancet Regional Health - Americas