Health Canada Orders Doctor to stop treatments with Ayahuasca

Yeh sure, give them manipulated pharma drugs that can create more problems..

Vancouver physician Gabor Maté – the subject of a recent CBC documentary on his use of the Amazonian plant medicine ayahuasca to treat addicts – has drawn the wrath of Health Canada. Facing threats of criminal prosecution if he didn’t stop immediately, Dr. Maté has complied, of course. But he has said he will seek an exemption to continue with his treatments.
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Putting aside for the moment all the legal and public policy issues that surround the use of a psychotropic medicine, we shouldn’t lose sight of the larger context. We have to ask ourselves how open we are as a society to other modes of healing – especially from cultures so far from our own.

Ayahuasca is a sacred shamanic medicine from the Amazon, used for centuries by indigenous and mestizo peoples to heal all manner of psychological and spiritual ills. It has, in the past few decades, found its way out of the Amazon into ceremonial use throughout the Western world. Used in the right context and guided by experienced practitioners, it is achieving impressive success in alleviating suffering from addictions, depression and several other psycho-spiritual afflictions.

We know that many of our most sophisticated medicines in the West have their origins in the indigenous knowledge of plants. We have no trouble with that.

In fact, pharmaceutical companies are always scouring the rain forests for new plant medicines that, with a genetic twist, they can turn into patented products. Nature’s cornucopia is vast, but it’s the knowledge of how to use these plant medicines that is the wisdom and strength of the indigenous shaman. It would be the height of arrogance and ignorance on our part not to recognize the scientific knowledge accumulated over millenniums from people who are not Western.

Ayahuasca is an astonishing brew made from two different plants that don’t even grow anywhere near one another. Its creation is a feat of extraordinary pharmacological inventiveness – especially when you consider there are more than 80,000 different plant species to choose from. The knowledge of how to use ayahuasca is passed down through apprentices, and some of these apprentices are now from the West. With the arrival of ayahuasca, the Western medicine cabinet has just expanded, and we shouldn’t lose the opportunity to learn more about its benefits.

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