Partially Confirmed
Indigenous Amazonian pharmacological knowledge is accurate enough to have produced every major plant-derived drug in the modern pharmacopoeia, suggesting an empirical system of knowledge generation that Western science cannot yet explain.
Claim source
Plants of the Gods, IntroductionCurrent evidence · confidence: high
Newman & Cragg (Journal of Natural Products, 2020): approximately 50% of drugs approved 1981-2019 were natural product-derived or inspired. Fabricant & Farnsworth (Environmental Health Perspectives, 2001) reported that most plant-derived drugs they reviewed are used in ways related to their traditional uses; a '30x more efficient' figure could not be found in the paper (Source not found; under review). Every compound in current psychedelic clinical trials, psilocybin, ibogaine, mescaline, DMT, was first identified through indigenous use. The accuracy of indigenous pharmacological knowledge is not disputed; the mechanism by which it was acquired is.Citation
Newman & Cragg, J Natural Products (2020); Fabricant & Farnsworth, Environmental Health Perspectives (2001)