wirikuta hikuri hallucinogen mexican peyote flower.

Should Sacred Plant Medicines Have Standing? The Original Instructions and Western Jurisprudence

By Keith Williams and Ariel Clark

The resurgence of interest in psychedelics, or sacred plant and fungal medicines and their psychoactive constituents, has been described as a kind of “renaissance” much like the European renaissance that blossomed between the 14th – 17th centuries. The comparison is apt—for, in addition to a flowering of learning and human achievement, the psychedelic renaissance, like its namesake, is only possible because of the underlying extractivist colonial logic informing activity in this domain. We are both writing as people with ancestry from Indigenous communities, and we have a profound interest in respecting, honoring, and becoming-with our more-than-human kin. A business-as-usual approach to the so-called psychedelic renaissance will only reinforce the harmful extractivism inherent in contemporary global capitalist culture and will foreclose the kind of collective healing possible with reciprocity as an orienting principle. This post offers a brief sketch of the potential for Rights of Nature legislation to safeguard these sacred medicines by recognizing them as rights holders unto themselves and by embedding into law a relational positionality of respect and responsibility with our plant and fungal kin.

Read More

Composite collage image of four peoples' hands holding lightbulb puzzle pieces.

Common Problems in Psychedelic Science, and How to Fix Them

By Eiko I. Fried and Michiel van Elk

Much optimism has been expressed about the potential of psychedelics to treat mental health problems such as suicidal ideation, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder. This optimism goes hand in hand with a notable increase in research publications, investments from pharmaceutical companies, patent filings, media exposure, as well as shifts in political and legislative landscapes. In the U.S., hundreds of ketamine clinics have emerged in the last years, and Australia just recently acknowledged psychedelics as medicines.

In our new paper in print in the journal Therapeutic Advances in Psychopharmacology, titled “History repeating: Guidelines to address common problems in psychedelic science,” we critically discuss whether this optimism is warranted, given current empirical work. One of us (Dr. Eiko Fried) is an Associate Professor in Clinical Psychology who studies and teaches conducting and evaluating clinical trials for mental health problems such as depression, with a focus on the question what valid inferences can be drawn from empirical data. The other (Dr. Michiel van Elk) is an Associate Professor in Cognitive Psychology, with a long-standing interest in the topic of altered states of consciousness (including, but not limited to, states induced through psychedelics), who, together with the PRSM lab, uses a multi-method research approach, open science practices and replication studies to study these experiences in the lab and in naturalistic settings.

Read More

Colorful vitamins, pills and tablets on green background.

History Rhymes with the Psychedelic Boom

By David Herzberg

As a historian of psychoactive pharmaceuticals in the 20th century U.S., I see history rhyming in potentially dangerous ways in the current psychedelic boom. After decades of being associated with insanity, violence, and social disorder, psychedelics are now being embraced as potential wonder drugs. What appears to be a radical, 180-degree shift in reputation, however, masks an underlying similarity: both of these mirror-image stories belong to the mythologies of the consumer culture, which attribute broad transformational power to individual acts of consumption. Seeing drugs through this mythological lens prevents us from accessing their potential benefits, while exposing us to the real possibility that they could make things worse.

Read More

iridescent holographic waves.

The Psychedelics Industry: Psychedelic Evangelism in Second Wave Research

By Patric Plesa

As interest in psychedelics research and popular psychedelics culture resurges, it is becoming progressively more difficult to discern facts from fantasy. As an academic with expertise in psychology, I too share in the growing enthusiasm for psychedelics research, especially toward therapeutic ends. But I believe a critical perspective, characterized by open science practices and critical theoretical lenses, is indispensable if this field is to avoid the errors of the past and the neoliberal pitfalls of the present.

Read More

Doctor asking patient to fill out survey before medical treatment.

Psychedelics in the Clinical Setting: The Potential for Harm and the Promise of Healing

By Caroline Hayes

The psychedelic renaissance is well underway, with hundreds of clinical trials currently looking into a plethora of different mental health conditions. I was a sub-investigator on a clinical trial researching a psychedelic study drug to treat depression, but I have since stepped back from psychedelic clinical trials due to personal ethical concerns about the way the field is evolving. Despite the seemingly boundless optimism for their potential as pharmacological treatments, there are a number of unique issues that psychedelics present in a clinical setting that are yet to be adequately addressed. I believe it is essential that these issues are rectified to minimize the potential harm to those desperately seeking relief from their mood symptoms.

Read More

colorful soap bubble bursting.

Introductory Editorial — Critical Psychedelic Studies: Correcting the Hype

By Neşe Devenot

Since the 2022 publication of “Preparing for the Bursting of the Psychedelic Hype Bubble,” a JAMA Psychiatry Viewpoint by David Yaden and colleagues, a wave of scholarship and commentaries has emphasized the ethical importance of nuanced science communication about the still-nascent field of psychedelic medicine.

Read More

scales on blue background.

Conclusion to the Symposium: From Principles to Practice: Human Rights and Public Health Emergencies

By Timothy Fish Hodgson, Roojin Habibi, and Alicia Ely Yamin

In developing the digital symposium, From Principles to Practice: Human Rights and Public Health Emergencies (which ran from October – December 2023), as editors we endeavored to get scholars, human rights advocates, judges, and policy makers to engage critically with the expert Principles and Guidelines on Human Rights and Public Health Emergencies (the PHE Principles), published by the International Commission of Jurists and the Global Health Law Consortium in May 2023. In doing so, we encouraged contributors to comment on the Principles’ potential usefulness as guidance in addressing real emergency situations, as well as any possible gaps and weaknesses.

While summarizing the entire content of the 13 blogs comprising this symposium in any depth is not possible here, this concluding post will attempt to synthesize some of the major inputs from the contributions. We also provide some of our own observations, as participants in the drafting of the Principles, with the aim of pushing the discussion prompted by the posts forward.

Read More

Clockwise from top left: Daniela Cepeda Cuadrado, Lucía Berro Pizzarossa, Natalia Pires de Vasconcelos, Thalia Viveros Uehara

Introducing the Global Health and Rights Project’s New Affiliated Researchers

(Clockwise from top left: Daniela Cepeda Cuadrado, Lucía Berro Pizzarossa, Natalia Pires de Vasconcelos, Thalia Viveros Uehara)

The Petrie-Flom Center is excited to welcome four new affiliated researchers to the Global Health and Rights Project (GHRP).

Through regular contributions to Bill of Health, as well as workshops and other projects, GHRP affiliated researchers will bring their expertise to bear on both national and global problems, advancing critical socio-legal scholarship both within and beyond Latin America. We look forward to learning from and sharing their insights with a wider audience, and to contributing to enlarging international networks of critical praxis in global health and human rights.

Read More

A surveillance camera on a white background.

Combatting Elder Abuse in Long-Term Care: Challenges and Opportunities of Electronic Monitoring

By Laura C. Hoffman

The aging population is growing at an extraordinary rate in the U.S. By 2040, it is anticipated that the U.S. aging population (defined as those ages 65 and older) will double, totaling 80 million.

Given this growth, preventing elder abuse must be at the forefront of policymaking. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has recognized elder abuse as a “serious” problem that is commonly occurring, yet significantly underreported, in the U.S.

Read More

see saw with earth as fulcrum and a pile of vaccines weighing down one side with nothing on the other side.

The Case for Procurement Transparency

By Tara Davis and Nicola Soekoe

In January 2021, the Director General of the World Health Organization (WHO) observed that the world was on the brink of a “catastrophic moral failure” if wealthier nations did not ensure the equitable distribution of COVID-19 vaccines. Global health activists and civil society organizations who worked transnationally to curtail what came to be referred to as “vaccine apartheid” faced a pharmaceutical industry that globally relied on secrecy, capital-friendly trade laws, and brute economic force to shirk considerations of human rights. In many ways, pharmaceutical companies and the states that protected them, including by failing to achieve consensus at the World Trade Organization (WTO) for a waiver of intellectual property rights with respect to vaccines, seemed impenetrable.

Unsurprisingly, given the extreme position of power from which pharmaceutical companies were negotiating contracts, there were widespread reports and allegations of inequitable contractual terms and a culture of bullying in the development of contracts. This was an issue of global concern for a long period during the pandemic. In South Africa, the Health Justice Initiative (HJI), a local advocacy organization, joined the global calls for greater procurement transparency.

However, when the South African Department of Health refused to disclose even the names of the entities with which it had entered into vaccine-related agreements, the HJI was forced to turn to the courts for relief.

Read More