Magic mushroom companies are on the Nasdaq now. That’s a recipe for a bad trip
Some of the organizations researching and advocating for the therapeutic use of psychedelics are nonprofits, and a number of these signed on to a recent statement promising to take an “open science [and praxis]” approach that does not involve patents.
But other psychedelic-assisted therapy companies are traded on Nasdaq, eager to lock in profits through the use of intellectual property law. They are developing “proprietary formulations” and synthetic versions of plant medicines that have been used for centuries. Once treated as a mysterious gift of nature, psilocybin is being commodified, transformed into private property… the Oxycontin story showed that the profit motive in medicine brings many dangers: overprescription, a loss of freedom of choice for patients, extortionate prices, the aggressive suppression of those who use or provide a drug outside of corporate pathways. We need to be wary of repeating the same mistakes with psychedelics… profit-driven companies can expand or simply invent diagnoses, creating huge new demand for the product they want to sell. A familiar drug – whether opioid or psychedelic -can be tweaked, granted a new patent, and bring enormous profits for the seller, at great cost to patients. Researchers are also exploring ways of administering psychedelics through patentable “tamper-resistant” patches like those that were used for fentanyl.
Original Article (The Guardian):
Magic mushroom companies are on the Nasdaq now. That’s a recipe for a bad trip
Artwork Fair Use: Openclipvectors
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