2008 Woodie Awards
Ethnobotanist speaks for Center for Ethics
Aaron Solomon
Issue date: 11/4/04 Section: News
- Page 1 of 2 next >
Last Tuesday, the College hosted Dr. Mark Plotkin as part of the Center for Ethics series entitled Disease: Representation, Research and Rights.
Plotkin is an ethno-botanist who studies how different Amazonian cultures use plants in traditional medicine.
He received his degrees from Tufts and Harvard and has been featured in seven documentaries. He is also the President of the Amazon conservation team.
Plotkin's presentation focused on the ongoing destruction of the cultures of the indigenous peoples of the Amazon and the need to safeguard their cultures.
"Conservation is a spiritual and ethical exercise," said Plotkin.
In his opinion, the best people to protect the forests are the indigenous peoples who live there, and they should be given the tools to effectively carry out conservation.
"There is an incredible amount of diversity in the Amazon. A single acre has more species of trees than the U.S. west of the Rockies," said Plotkin.
Hidden within this fragile ecosystem is a wealth of plants and other materials that indigenous peoples have been using as medicines for hundreds of years.
Plotkin noted that many of these medicines are made from poisons. For example, curare is a poisonous plant that has been used by natives and now by western medicine as a muscle relaxant.
The poison found on the skin of certain frog species can also be used as a painkiller that is as effective as opium, but does not have opium's addictive qualities.
"New technologies make mother nature more important than before," noted Plotkin.
A successful marriage of western technology and the traditional knowledge of Amazonian peoples will result in the creation of medicines which will combat a wide variety of ailments.
However, a major problem exists in the way the Amazonian tribes have been treated by pharmaceutical companies.
In many cases, Amazonian tribes receive little or no money from the profits of pharmaceuticals, or they are compensated in Western technology, which is introduced in a manner which has succeeded in destroying their indigenous culture.
Plotkin is an ethno-botanist who studies how different Amazonian cultures use plants in traditional medicine.
He received his degrees from Tufts and Harvard and has been featured in seven documentaries. He is also the President of the Amazon conservation team.
Plotkin's presentation focused on the ongoing destruction of the cultures of the indigenous peoples of the Amazon and the need to safeguard their cultures.
"Conservation is a spiritual and ethical exercise," said Plotkin.
In his opinion, the best people to protect the forests are the indigenous peoples who live there, and they should be given the tools to effectively carry out conservation.
"There is an incredible amount of diversity in the Amazon. A single acre has more species of trees than the U.S. west of the Rockies," said Plotkin.
Hidden within this fragile ecosystem is a wealth of plants and other materials that indigenous peoples have been using as medicines for hundreds of years.
Plotkin noted that many of these medicines are made from poisons. For example, curare is a poisonous plant that has been used by natives and now by western medicine as a muscle relaxant.
The poison found on the skin of certain frog species can also be used as a painkiller that is as effective as opium, but does not have opium's addictive qualities.
"New technologies make mother nature more important than before," noted Plotkin.
A successful marriage of western technology and the traditional knowledge of Amazonian peoples will result in the creation of medicines which will combat a wide variety of ailments.
However, a major problem exists in the way the Amazonian tribes have been treated by pharmaceutical companies.
In many cases, Amazonian tribes receive little or no money from the profits of pharmaceuticals, or they are compensated in Western technology, which is introduced in a manner which has succeeded in destroying their indigenous culture.