Ethical Concerns about Psilocybin Intellectual Property

This commentary (2021) provides a historical overview of past and current psilocybin patents and highlights ethical concerns over intellectual property claims that extract value from indigenous communities and bypass their cultural heritage. The article highlights the need to protect and develop traditional medicine via reciprocal and reparative arrangements that serve indigenous communities and diverge from ongoing extractive economic practices.

Abstract

“Since a 1957 exposé in Life Magazine, chemical compounds derived from Psilocybe mushrooms have been the focus of dozens of attempted and successful patents, most recently to treat depression. Regrettably, the Mazatec indigenous communities who stewarded these traditional medicines for millenia are not party to any of these patents, despite a number of international treaties asserting indigenous rights to their intangible cultural heritage.”

Authors: Konstantin Gerber, Inti García Flores, Angela Christina Ruiz, Ismail Ali, Natalie Lyla Ginsberg & Eduardo E. Schenberg

Summary

Chemical compounds derived from Psilocybe mushrooms are being patented to treat depression, but the Mazatec indigenous communities are not party to any of these patents.

Life magazine published an article on psychedelic mushrooms in 1957, and within two years, psilocin and psilocybin were isolated, characterized, synthesized and named.

Six decades later, North-American and European businessmen disproportionately reap financial gain from psychedelics. A pharmaceutical company focused on developing psilocybin for the treatment of depression went public in 2020, and has a current market value of approximately $1.5 billion.

Psilocybin research and drug development tells a story of extraction, cultural appropriation, bioprospecting, and colonization. R. Gordon Wasson betrayed his promise of secrecy and revealed his teacher’s identity, curandera Maria Sabina, in his second volume: Mushrooms, Russia and History.

After Wasson’s article, the Governing Body of the International Labour Office convened in Geneva and established the Indigenous and Tribal Populations Convention No 107.

The UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage 2003 recognized the importance of indigenous communities in the production, safeguarding, maintenance and re-creation of intangible cultural heritage.

The CBD is an international treaty that protects the rights of indigenous peoples to their intangible cultural heritage. However, there are still important issues pending and ongoing debates on how to best achieve just and fair consultations and agreements.

Psilocybin research is configuring a bioprospecting project that is pursuing innovation through intellectual property rights, without reciprocity with or compensation for the indigenous communities that have protected these traditional mushroom practices for millennia.

Many species of mushrooms are now identified in thegenusPsilocybeandtheissueofspirituality, but little to no evidence of interest in their medical properties in western scientific literature before Wasson’s historical account. The Mazatec use the mushrooms primarily as medicine, to treat sick people, although in a context and worldview which can be characterized as spiritual.

Psilocybin research and development are intimately intertwined with Mazatec intangible cultural heritage, raising concerns about harms caused by intellectual property regimes.

Raids and extractive activities continue to this day in the Mazatec land. Western scientists and researchers tell the Mazatec chojta chijne (wisdom bearers) that they are naming the mushrooms incorrectly and that they do not know the range of their local mushrooms.

Depression is a disorder based in social determinants, and colonial and extractive enterprises can exacerbate these determinants by causing conflicts, tensions, disconnection, poverty, and suffering in the communities from which the knowledge and tradition originate. This suffering can track onto our understanding of how one’s social and cultural environment can affect mental health.

Since 1957, no one has sought reparation or reciprocity with the Mazatec communities. This implies extraction in all aspects and meanings.

As the third decade of the 21st century unfolds, indigenous peoples and our natural world are gravely threatened by construction, mining, logging, and energy “development programs” for the benefit of shareholder driven corporations.