and yucca and everything you grew there,
 gave us a very unhappy chicken, which went all the way back to
 Keto's with us.
 And, uh,
 but you know a chicken's a valuable gift in there,
 because chickens are not native.
 So,
 when we got going, I said, "You told me you didn't know anything about
 plant medicines, how come?"
 He said, "Well, I didn't know it would cure that,
 but I thought it would, because it cured me of carnosidad,
 and if it'll cure carnosidad, it'll cure anything."
 And, carnosidad is what they call pterygium,
 which is very common in tropical countries.
 It is actually, technically I'm told, it's a benign tumor
 that begins at the tear duct and gradually spreads,
 it makes a layer about a millimeter thick,
 and until it covers the whole eye and you're blind.
 It is, people who can afford it can have it removed by surgery,
 which is expensive, and very frequently means the loss of an eye.
 But if you don't have radiation,
 afterwards it'll be back in a couple of years,
 and you have to go through it all again.
 And so my boatman, whose name is Natividad,
 told me that he had had pterygium, he'd had carnosidad so badly,
 that he was beginning not to be able to see.
 And he went to an old, he was living in Brazil,
 and an old woman there told him to use this treatment.
 He said it took him two months.
 But look at him now, well, look at him now,
 he didn't have a trace of anything wrong with his eyes.
 It had cleared it and cured it.
 Well, that, I think, might, just might in many cases,
 do away with the need for corneal transplants,
 if it's the right kind of injury.
 What do you think, Doctor?
 I think if you found a cure for pterygia, a permanent cure for pterygia, you really...
 Oh, I know two or three.
 ...it would make you wealthy and noted throughout the world.
 Well, I know two or three.
 The Indians use them, and there is a cypress, which is a sedge, but it's a scleria.
 But those things take a long time.
 For pterygium, the treatments must be given every day.
 It doesn't hurt.
 In fact, the man on the shore told me that it had felt very cooling when he put it in, very soothing.
 And that takes two months for pterygium, six weeks to two months, everyday treatment.
 But in the case of infection, it seems to work very much more rapidly.
 Do you have a question?
 Yes.
 Please interrupt me any time to ask a question. I like it.
 Nicole, I heard a story about you from a reliable source a few years ago that told me that you had gone from village to village
 and managed to meet the old women in the village who had knowledge of their contraceptive herbology.
 Yes.
 And that you had found out about different herbs that had very different kinds of effects.
 I remember she was telling me one herb you could take it and a couple years later it would keep the woman infertile for two years.
 Yes.
 Another one, if they took it, it would be irreversible for a long time.
 And I've never heard you talk about it. I'm wondering if you could tell me a little bit about your experience.
 Well, there are a number of them.
 You see, although these people have been using oral contraceptives since time immemorial.
 Nobody knows how many centuries.
 We still put them into circulation in 1960.
 But before, earlier, 1920 when Carsten wrote an article about it,
 they called him crazy or a liar or something because they said nothing taken by mouth can cause a woman to become sterile.
 Well, time has moved on and the Indians were right.
 So there are a number of these cases.
 I think I told you the other day about the Campo missionary.
 The missionary with the campos.
 This was before there were oral contraceptives on the market or any publicity about them, that I'd heard of at least.
 And that's a Bauhinia.
 If I remember correctly, it has to be taken, it's birth, taken immediately after giving birth.
 I met a woman whose husband was running a very large cattle ranch in the jungle, a very large fundo.
 They made cattle.
 They had cattle, they raised pigs and they raised sugar cane and they had a distillery for making aguardiente.
 It was a big outfit.
 There was a lot of money behind it.
 And she and her husband ran it.
 She told me that when she was very, very young, she got married, I think she was 14, which is not unusual,
 and she went to live with her husband on his property in Campo country.
 Campos are great tribes, they're great warriors, great trackers, very lively people and smart.
 And she had a child very shortly after marriage, I think nine months and two days or something.
 And she had a very difficult birth.
 Of course, she'd never been in jungle before, for one thing, she was reacting rather badly to the climate.
 And the Indian midwife who attended her said, "You can't have another child for three years because you'll die if you do."
 They were doctors, of course.
 And she said, "But I can't leave my husband. I don't want to leave my husband."
 She said, "Why should you leave your husband? We'll give you some medicine."
 So they did. And the medicine, that particular medicine, is one that, to my mind,
 is a magnificent example of freedom for freeing women.
 It stops menstruation for three years without any evil effects at all.
 And at the end of those three years, you just don't menstruate.
 It brings about an artificial menopause, but no menopause symptoms.
 And so then, at the end of the three years, she got pregnant almost immediately.
 And then she had, in rapid succession, I think it was in ten years, she had eleven children.
 So now with a total of around a dozen, she decided that was enough.
 And she took the same herb again.
 And she had been taking it every three years since, and she was, at the time I met her, 49.
 She said she didn't think she was going to have to take it again because she thought she would probably have menopause.
 But she took it every three years. The children, every one of the twelve, was alive and healthy.
 And they were grown up by now.
 And they had their own families. And her daughters and daughter-in-laws controlled their fertility in the same way.
 Had children when they wanted them.
 The plant is a Desmodium.
 Now there are four species I know of.
 Desmodium canum is the one I know best.
 Desmodium...
 I can't remember. Canum is the one... Oh yes, Ascendens and Axillary.
 And then there's one other.
 Well I don't know which of the species... I'm not certain which of the species it is,
 but because I've since learned that the Kampa, beside the Kampa, the Yagwas, Shipibos, Konibos, and Kokama,
 all say this is good stuff and they use it.
 I think it was Friday evening that there was also a plant or something that could be taken orally for abortion that the tribe...
 Yes, there is. But that's one of the sedges I had.
 That we have finally decided the active principle is caused, or the active principle is a fungus that grows in the plant
 and it's practically impossible to determine unless you are a member of the tribe and have grown that.
 They've handed it down from generation to generation, a plot of abortifacients, a plot of those which are supposed to enhance fertility,
 a plot which eases childhood, and believe me, that one's great.
 Because I had a friend who was a school teacher. I met her in a little village I stopped at,
 and she was teaching a Shipibo village and she took... this is my... she was my first link with the Shipibo tribe.
 They're the ones who make that beautiful... those beautiful textiles you showed last night.
 And she... I went to stay with her at the tribe and got to be great chums with all the Indians.
 I recorded their singing, which is beautiful.
 And one of the songs I love best, it's the women's songs, they're very plaintive and haunting.
 Very high, pure voices, beautifully flexible and very true and very soft.
 And this one song was particularly moving. It was the kind of thing you kept going through your head.
 And I find... it's very hard to get them interpreted because they're sung in an archaic language.
 And I finally found somebody who would interpret it.
 And what they were saying was, "Let us gals have a few drinks."
 And then that's smart as it sounds.
 Because at fiestas, I learned, when they sing that song, "Pappy can't have a drink."
 The men have to stop drinking when the women start... when the women drink.
 They never drink very much. They're too conscious of their children and taking care of them.
 And usually they're nursing one or two.
 And so they... but when they... so when things are getting a little rough,
 very often they will sing this song and they'll have a bit of a messato.
 And the men just have to sit there.
 Well, she had gone... I went back to visit two years later,
 because I had become great chums with them, especially after they discovered "Brasilis."
 I had done my washing and hung it on the line.
 And a boat came along. I didn't have my own boat then.
 And I was... one came along, a peke-peke, it would take...
 it was a collectivo, it takes people aboard.
 They sort of worked like buses on the river.
 And I had to hurry to catch it.
 And I had just got in when some of these beautiful little women came running,
 and they were running down, holding up a brassiere that I'd left behind.
 And then they also held up some of their... they'd copied it.
 They had made them all. And the whole community...
 Now all the shipibos look a lot better.
 They do, especially after they get to be about 30.
 And so I had... Yes? Question, Pat?
 Yes, back to the birth control method.
 Do you know if there are fewer negative side effects?
 There don't seem to be any. According to our informants, there are none, zero.
 What are the hormones that we use here?
 I haven't heard of any side effects. I tried very hard to find some.
 I'm told there are none.
 And what about menopause? Do they use similar pills?
 What?
 Rather than hormones?
 Menopause.
 Menopause.
 Well, yes.
 She told me her sister had been having a bad menopause,
 and she gave her this same thing.
 And it took her through menopause.
 I know of one that's very good for menopause.
 It's not a contraceptive.
 But there is one for any dysmenorrhea.
 I have given it... I gave it to the maid,
 a little girl who had very severe cramps and hemorrhaging.
 I fixed her up in a day or so.
 And then I was... the people I was staying with,
 Lilith was going through menopause and having a bad time
 with the hot flashes and all that and hemorrhaging.
 And I gave her... suggested she try it.
 I had planted it in her garden a couple of years before when I was there.
 And... because it has pretty flowers.
 And she took it.
 And what is it? Could you tell me?
 It's an iris. It's called... they call it...
 Yawar Piri Piri.
 Yawar means blood, and Piri Piri means Piri Piri.
 But this is not a sedge. It's an iris.
 It's an iridescent.
 And it is...
 What is it?
 I can't think of the...
 genus just at the moment.
 I'll think of it in about five minutes.
 Drop the penny and I'll get the answer.
 And do they use the bulb or...?
 Yes, you take the bulb,
 and you can just grind it up in water raw,
 but more often you boil it a little while.
 And that does the trick.
 It seems to regulate menstruation,
 whether it's menopause or not.
 And they drink it just one time?
 A couple of times, maybe.
 Maybe for two days.
 It doesn't seem to be toxic in any way.
 There haven't been any tests done on it.
 But I've never heard of anyone having any bad effects.
 Terence, have you brought any of these plants over?
 I think that the Chanca Piedra, is it?
 Oh, yes, that.
 I think we have that.
 Yeah, I think you can get that.
 And what did you put on your knee?
 Capinuri.
 Capinuri. We have that.
 And I would have to have the full printout in front of me,
 but these are precisely the same plants that we're involved in.
 The Piripiris, Nicole has mentioned that there are contraceptive ones,
 abortive ones, and so forth.
 You can't tell which are which.
 There's also a hallucinogen.
 Oh, yes. Chikoro.
 Chikoro Piripiri.
 And I've made great effort to get that one,
 but not wanting to induce an abortion.
 Now that I have it, I'm not sure what to do with it.
 It's a different... I think it's a...
 I don't think it's chorombosis.
 Well, I don't know. They look...
 I'll check it. I have it in my files.
 I have three species of Piripiri,
 and they basically... the only way in which they're different
 is they're little, middle-sized, and big before they stop growing.
 But otherwise, I can't tell them apart,
 and they're chemically very complex.
 Nobody can.
 I know.
 Yeah.
 No, but the kinds of plants that Nicole is talking about...
 I gave up on those because of this.
 Because of...
 Because of the fact that it's apparently not...
 there's no change, no difference in the genus or the species,
 and there's not a... it's not a variety.
 It's some external influence, such as a fungus.
 Well, so, conceivably...
 Because they are different chemically.
 Someone could do a project where you grew out an uninfected strain
 and then attempted to infect it.
 Yes.
 With these very strange...
 But you'd have to get the originals from the shibibos, though.
 You see, throughout history, you will go to any village,
 and you will see little round plots,
 only about that big around, usually, in a village,
 of Piripiri.
 And one will be...
 Oh, there will be for any one of the 22 uses that I know of,
 and probably some more.
 Running from broken bones.
 I told you about the ones you wash your husband's pants with,
 so he'll be impotent with another woman.
 And the ones for hunting.
 They'll make you a good hunter.
 You rub them on your blowgun.
 You'll never miss your shot.
 That sort of thing.
 Which I don't really think we have much need for in our civilization.
 What is the name of the grass that is used on the eyes?
 That's Paspalum conjugatum.
 P-A-S-P-A-L-U-M-C-O-N-J-U-G-A-T-U-M.
 It's a graminea.
 This family, the graminea, have many, many indoles and growth hormones,
 and it seems to be a family loaded with stuff.
 It's very interesting.
 Very interesting.
 There is another grass that the shipibos say has saved more lives.
 You see, the shipibos have some other interesting customs.
 If a woman is caught with a man who is not her husband in a compromising situation,
 why, everybody drops everything and there's a big fiesta.
 And the woman is now punished.
 The man has to be severely punished because it's his fault.
 I am in favor of this civilization.
 (LAUGHTER)
 And he is at the fiesta.
 Everybody gets very drunk.
 And then the husband has a special knife for this.
 Every shipibo man wears one on a string.
 It's called a "wishati."
 And it's a knife with a little handle that is this peculiar shape,
 and a curved blade is cut out of an old machete.
 And the blade is only about so long and about as wide as my finger.
 And the culprit, the seducer, gets a cut across the back of his neck.
 And he bleeds profusely. It's a deep cut.
 And, of course, some of them are proudly scarred.
 (LAUGHTER)
 And they say he would bleed to death but for this grass.
 And I don't remember the scientific name.
 They call it "caña negra."
 I have it in my notes.
 I only got it identified by Sydney.
 I had been trying for 12 years to get that one identified,
 and nobody knew it.
 It looks like sugar cane, and it's purple, but it isn't quite sugar cane.
 And it's not sweet.
 And it would stop bleeding. It's a hemostatic applied locally.
 And it's wonderful stuff.
 And he says that all the men in the tribe would practically have bled to death
 if it hadn't been for that grass.
 Because they always keep it growing nearby.
 And I was saying the woman never gets punished.
 Well, she does, only if the other wife decides to take a hand in it,
 the betrayed wife.
 And then they have a hair-pulling contest.
 I was lucky enough to see one.
 Unfortunately, I didn't have my camera out at the time.
 And it was back in the boat.
 And these two women--
 the women cut their hair straight across here, down here,
 and then long in the back.
 It's straight and thick and very shiny and beautifully kept.
 And these two women had each other by the hair.
 And their heads were down.
 They looked like fighting elk.
 And their heads were down.
 And they weren't going this way.
 They just were pulling steadily, and they're walking around in a circle.
 It seemed to be a sort of ritual.
 And everybody was standing around.
 And they were all laughing.
 And the women were furious.
 And finally they broke it up.
 But for about five minutes while I was there,
 they were pulling--they didn't pull it out.
 I don't quite understand it, but it was very interesting to see
 and extremely funny.
 Nicole, what part of this mountain is you--
 It's the whole plant.
 It's a weed that grows about so high.
 You use root, leaf, stems, and fruit, and flowers.
 It has these little birds that stick to you.
 That's why--they say why it's called Amor Seco.
 It loves to stick to dry things.
 But there is the contraceptive.
 I think that's a rather nice name for one.
 There's a Desmodium in India that contains DMT.
 Desmodium pucillum.
 It's a very big genus.
 Yeah, it's a big genus.
 The hitchhiker plant in Hawaii is a weedy Desmodium.
 You may have it there. It may be one of them.
 I know, and I think how much time I've spent trying to eradicate it.
 There's a certain irony.
 I'll have Dennis go to work on it.
 Yes, right.
 Nicole, what do you think about the future of the Amazon?
 Well, I think that if we can only get the word around
 there's money to be made by doing other things
 than cutting it down and burning it,
 then some of it may be saved.
 So extractive foresting is the thing to make people aware of.
 I think it's essential.
 Because as it is, well, you know the statistics as well as I do, if not better,
 and that one species is disappearing a day.
 Not necessarily a plant species, but a species of something.
 And these medicinals are disappearing.
 Did you...
 Everybody wiggles their head. I think they mean me.
 Yes?
 I guess I'll ask this question to both of you.
 Is it true that the pharmaceutical companies in America
 are basically highly discouraged by law
 from being able to use plants in their products,
 and that's why it's difficult to get?
 Why is it that there's such a resistance to using...
 For instance, if there are plants in the Amazon that are valuable for their medicinal use,
 I understand it takes something like eight years to get a new drug approved.
 And if it comes from a plant source,
 the company does not have any kind of a monopoly on it.
 You can't get a patent on a plant.
 So it's to no advantage of any kind of drug company.
 There's not... Also, some of them are too efficient.
 For example, the ones for arthritis that rarely cure it.
 Who wants arthritis cured?
 Certainly not the pharmaceutical houses.
 What was the name of that herb that cured the arthritis?
 It's not a herb. It's the spark of a tree.
 It's a euninopsis. I've forgotten the species.
 There aren't very many. It's not a big genus.
 But I have it.
 It's a rubeaceae.
 And that's the one that is also effective, very effective, for controlling diabetes.
 To everybody's surprise, it's not touted for that.
 And so now I know half a dozen people who are using it for diabetes.
 So I have an idea that this is like the uña de gato and tabibuia, which is the paudarco.
 They are things that...
 Well, they work entirely by stimulating and restoring the immune system, the autoimmune system.
 I found them a tremendous help when I get any infection.
 There are a number of infections that are not easily treated with antibiotics.
 And I found that taking that and the antibiotic...
 And they're now trying to get somebody to try for AIDS because that is the obvious.
 I think it's the obvious remedy.
 Paudarco?
 Well, any of those...
 Tabibuia.
 Paudarco is a tabibuia.
 And that is also... In Iquitos, it's known only as a cure for diabetes.
 And the owner of the Johnson Motor franchise for all of Peru, the outboard motors,
 was so helped by it that he keeps it in his desk in all stores,
 or in the manager's desk, to be given to anybody because he feels he's so indebted to it for what it's done for him.
 You know, a lot of the paudarco coming out of the Amazon is now thought to be phony.
 I wouldn't be at all surprised.
 Since nobody up here knows what it looks like, and you're getting fancy prices for this powdered bark,
 they can powder up anything.
 So immediately, once something is discovered that's effective, then fraud becomes a possibility.
 Oh, yes. Look at the sangria de grado.
 Even I was fooled by one.
 It foamed like the proper one.
 They put detergent in it.
 They get the sap of any...
 Lots of trees have sap the color of blood, of sort of old blood, dark red.
 And so they put a little detergent in it
 because if you do this with sangria de grado, the marvelous healing and hemostatic agent,
 because it does definitely speed regeneration of healthy tissue,
 and then it will foam if you do that.
 Okay, take any old tree sap and put a little bit of any kind of detergent in it, and bingo, you got it.
 There's no substitute for growing your own, because then you know what you have.
 Your trees are about ready to be milked, aren't they?
 Yes, we have sangria de grado trees in Hawaii, and we're propagating it furiously.
 It's a wonderful, fast-growing tree.
 I know. It's a pretty tree, too.
 It's a little lechleri.
 Do you sell seeds and cuttings from things? Is that part of what you do?
 Yes, when we can. I mean, our collections are small,
 but every plant that we have, we're trying to get cuttings off of.
 It's tricky for a 501(c)(3) to make a lot of profit out of its business ventures.
 Some of you may know Daniel and Ellen's business.
 Their catalogues have been around.
 We are wholesalers to them, as are many other companies.
 And we want to spread this stuff out, get it to other botanical gardens in the Hawaiian Islands
 and other places, because what if the volcano were to blow up and wipe out our scene?
 Then all this would be shot. So it is important to spread the stuff around.
 Most of the plants that we have have not been studied at all the way they should.
 I mean, we have plants for impotence, baldness, kidney stones, diabetes.
 What's the one for baldness?
 I don't know what the Indians call it. The scientific name is scoparia.
 It's a scoparia.
 I have some scoparias I don't remember what for.
 I think it's scoparia dulcis.
 Scoparia dulcis, yes. That is also... I have it, but I haven't got it for her.
 As a matter of fact, I've wondered about that.
 The Wittotas maintain that Bixor... no...
 Bixolana?
 Not Bixolana, but...
 That's a Chote.
 The Witto, you know, the black stuff that they use to paint their skins black,
 will grow hair.
 But I have never seen a bald Indian.
 Bald Indians and fat Indians seem not to be genetically possible.
 So I'm a little dubious about the things that are supposed to keep you slim and elegant,
 or fine and hairy.
 In fact, I'm very dubious about most things, and it takes forever to establish a thing
 well enough for me to put it in my notes and a frightful lot of work.
 Yes, some of these things you try, and you sort of realize that it lies in a domain
 of language and expectation, and that something you define as unpleasant,
 they might define as pleasant and worthwhile.
 For instance, they have a plant that, after you've carried your backpack along the trail
 all day long, they say that your muscles are stiffening up.
 So they have this plant that's like a nettle.
 Well, they are nettles. They're just ordinary nettles.
 Yes, they pat all over. And they urge you to do this.
 All the Indians swear by it.
 Why should you do this? What a terrible idea.
 I think so, too, and they all use it.
 I've had my bearers, at the end of the day, always just beat themselves with nettles.
 And they say it feels great.
 And there are also, you probably encountered this, Nicole,
 there is this concept of a culture-specific disease,
 and there are a lot of these in the Amazon, and a lot are cured by ayahuasqueros.
 I can't remember the term. You probably know it, Nicole, but when your luck goes off.
 Oh, ayahuasqueros, and irie, I thought it meant I smelled bad, but it didn't.
 It meant I'd been having a lot of bad luck. Everything went wrong.
 Mal-ire.
 Mal-ire, and that's a disease. You have a problem.
 Seusto. Seusto is interesting, too. Seusto is fear.
 You get sick from it if you're badly startled.
 And babies, especially, are susceptible to this.
 Give a baby a bad scare and you'll get sick.
 Well, maybe. Do they do that now in civilization?
 Not really.
 You don't get a chill.
 Huh?
 Well, get a chill. Some people think that if you get a chill, that you'll get sick from it.
 Similar sort of shock, I guess.
 But they recognize a lot of psychological states as being the cause of illness.
 Depression, or... you don't see much of that.
 In fact, remarkably few neuroses have this notable.
 Well, this, I think, is the legacy of shamanism.
 I do, too.
 Where shamanism is a healthy institution, neurosis is virtually unknown.
 You do see an occasional psychosis.
 But that could be a genetic predisposition.
 It can also be through injury.
 True. True.
 Yes, serious psychosis seems to arise from a different set of causes.
 But neurotic activity is... and people suppress...
 It's very rare.
 It is rare.
 Well, so is psychosis.
 But the chulichake is supposed to make you nuts.
 Is that the guy with the beard who comes...
 No, he's the one with his feet on backwards.
 Oh, yeah.
 They have all these demons that they fear.
 Augustine says he knew a chulichake.
 He saw him quite often.
 He had a lot of friends.
 I wouldn't put a past Augustine.
 He's a sculptor, a magnificent... he's come to live in the States.
 His work is superb.
 It's frightfully interesting.
 Augustine Arriva.
 Yeah.
 Yeah.
 I'm sure there are people here who know him.
 He has quite a reputation.
 Pat?
 Yes, that was a question I was saving for this afternoon.
 About what?
 I don't understand that neurosis and psychosis have increased in...
 in another part of the world, like obsessive neurosis, anxiety, depression, and...
 psychopathological...
 Well, yeah, is that getting colds in the head, too?
 Are there any...
 what medicine that are being used in the way that we use psychoactive drugs?
 Ayahuasca.
 That's what it is.
 The reason psychosis and all this is increasing is simply that stress is increasing worldwide.
 And that's why they...
 I mean, just as they have got measles now and whooping cough,
 which are incidentally fatal there,
 because they don't have the immunities that we have developed.
 And they kill an awful lot of children
 unless they're vaccinated.
 The mission is now, most missions, no matter what kind,
 vaccinate all the children they can get to because they want to save them.
 We were also talking previously about the American or the Western pharmaceutical companies
 wanting to make profits.
 Are there any more outfits that, quote, a non-profit like Direct Relief
 who distribute American-owned drugs like for measles vaccination?
 Why isn't there a non-profit organization from Western civilization
 to go to these other companies and extract the...
 Because that's not what they're for.
 That's not what pharmaceutical companies are for.
 They're out to make money. They're not out for...
 Well, you see, it would be possible, you would think,
 for like a feminist collective to create a non-profit pharmaceutical company
 to concentrate on these drugs that relate to women and reproduction.
 This is the kind of political action that hasn't been tried yet.
 Everything is done old style, but I think there would be tremendous opportunities for...
 And I think great support.
 Yeah.
 And there is nothing right now.
 No botanical dimensions, which is far from that, is the closest thing.
 But you need somebody who's really intensely committed to getting these contraceptives out.
 And as a political thing, with no motivation or very little motivation to turn a profit,
 then you could probably get somewhere.
 This abortion pill that's being developed in France,
 which is the pharmaceutical equivalent of one of these abortificents,
 is obviously going to change the whole reproductive freedom argument.
 Much of the position of the right-to-life people just becomes irrelevant.
 All it means is that we're going to have one more illegal drug to worry about in this society,
 but one addressed not to psychoactivity, but bioactivity.
 Well, Terrence, the main problem is getting the plants from over there over here.
 No.
 No, the development, testing, and satisfying of the government.
 Well, who needs that if you just have a seed catalogue and you're selling seeds to people?
 Well, who knows what's going to go on?
 Some of these things are very difficult.
 And you have to be careful.
 If you're going to interfere with the reproductive system, I mean, this is delicate stuff here.
 You want to know that you're not going to have a negative fallout 20 or 30 years in the future.
 But getting the plants is not a problem.
 A $50,000 investment would get all of these plants back to Southern California in a greenhouse, catalogued.
 Wouldn't it be greenhouse long, though?
 No. It would take $5 million to go from there to a product on the market freely available to women.
 It's the development, testing, and certification that is just fiendishly difficult.
 At this place?
 Because these chemical companies, it's a big boys game.
 Well, you know that most of the FDA people who are in big jobs, who have the important jobs,
 go on to very highly paid jobs with pharmaceutical houses.
 So what I'm looking at is sort of a small industry where people are encouraged to plant their own plants.
 Well, I would be afraid of that.
 You'd be afraid of that?
 Yes. Because how do you know they get the right stuff?
 You'd have to be very sure of that, because some close relations are apt to be toxic.
 We had an idea that is still alive.
 It was not clear it was for Botanical Dimensions to do, but someone could do it,
 of what we called the Botanical First Aid Kit.
 What you would do is you would survey the entire world's known catalog of medicinal plants,
 and out of that you would select a plant for migraine, a plant to cause abortion, a contraceptive,
 a hallucinogen, an antidiuretic, an anti-dysentery, say, 12 plants.
 And then you would grow these in a huge greenhouse and build little care packages of living plants
 that could be then sent to third world people, and they would just grow these things in their dooryard.
 Most third world people have local, but you know, if the ayahuasca is prophylactic for malaria,
 you distribute it in the kit throughout the world.
 But isn't it supposed to be rather good for parasites, too?
 Oh, it's proven for parasites. The malarial thing is more speculative.
 Well, that's a parasite.
 But you see, you're giving people a self-renewing pharmacy in their own backyard.
 But even right here in the United States, there are all kinds of people who,
 given a few seeds or cuttings of something, would...
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