Biodiversity of the Earth - with Mark J. Plotkin | The Empowering Neurologist EP. 6

Hello everyone, I'm Dr. David Perlmutter. Welcome to The Empowering Neurologist. Today I'm going to be interviewing my longtime friend, Dr. Mark Plotkin. Dr. Plotkin was educated at Harvard, Yale, and Tufts University, and he is a renowned ethnobotanist who has studied indigenous plant use with elder traditional healers in Central and South America. He's done this for the past 30 years. As an ethnobotanist, he is a scientist who studies how and why societies have come to use plants for various purposes. Dr. Plotkin carried out the majority of his research with the Trio Indians in southern Suriname, which is a small country in northeastern South America. But he's also worked with shamans everywhere from Mexico down to Brazil. Dr. Plotkin has served as research associate in ethnobotanical conservation at the Botanical Museum at Harvard University. He has served as director of plant conservation at the World Wildlife Fund, and he is now president of the Amazon Conservation Team. I want to emphasize the name Amazon Conservation Team because one of the main reasons we're putting this program together today is so that you can look at the Amazon Conservation Team A wonderful not-for-profit organization that can use our support. He co-founded this organization with his, with his fellow conservationist and wife Liliana Madrigal in 1996, and now this organization has well over 15 years of success dedicated to protecting the biological and cultural diversity of the Amazon. And we're going to find out why that's so, so important. So important in our interview today. In 1998, he played a leading role in the Academy Award-nominated IMAX film Amazon. Time magazine has hailed him as an environmental hero of the planet, and his work has been featured on a PBS NOVA documentary, in an Emmy-winning Fox TV documentary, on the NBC Nightly News 48 Hours. in Life magazine, Newsweek magazine, Smithsonian magazine, and even the New York Times, along with appearances multiple times on public radio. Dr. Plotkin's TED Talk, which deals with protection of the Amazon's uncontacted tribes, has had more than 1 million views, and we will certainly post a link to his TED Talk later in the program. So let's just jump right in and say hello to Dr. Mark Plotkin. So how are you doing, Mark Plotkin?

Fine. It's great to be here.

I was just reviewing your recent TED Talk again, watched it several times. And, you know, I think for our viewers, we've known each other for a long, long time, and we're doing work that is so very, very different indeed. But when you think about it, it's very, very similar. I mean, we're involved in looking at the biodiversity of gut bacteria, And that's really been a central theme for your work all these years, hasn't it been?

Well, shamans talk about the interconnectedness of all things. In Western terms, you might refer to it as the butterfly effect. What happens in one place far off may affect you right here at home. And whether you're looking at the microbiome of the human gut or the diversity of the rainforest, like you said, David, there's obvious connections.

So why should we care about biodiversity in the Amazon?

Well, you're a physician. I'm an ethnobotanist. That is a scientist who works with indigenous peoples to document the uses of local plants. First and foremost, as an ethnobotanist, I think it's because of the medical secrets they hold. I mean, there's no doubt that Western medicine is the most successful and sophisticated system of healing ever devised, but as you know, it's full of holes. It's full of holes in our inability to cure pancreatic cancer. It's full of holes in the fact that we do things or eat things that are bad for us. And there's lessons to be learned from these people who some people in our own culture might dismiss as primitive.

You tell a very interesting story, and I think it's very compelling, about your foot injury and how you had mainstream treatments with anti-inflammatories and cortisone and you name it. But then one of your colleagues down in the jungle came after you with a machete, or took your machete, I think it was. Tell us about that.

Well, I'd injured my foot and I was in the village looking for plants and he noticed that I was limping and he said, huh, take off your shoe and give me your machete. I did as I was told and I measured this. He went to a palm tree 3 meters away, scraped off a fern, and ferns according to botanists don't have any real interesting chemicals in them, threw it in the fire, applied it to my foot, threw it in a pot, and had me drink it. And the pain cleared up immediately, although it did come back 7 months later, at which point I went back to the jungle. I went back to the shaman. He treated me the same way, and that was 4 years ago at this point, and I've been pain-free. So sometimes you see these people can cure things that we cannot.

Not always, of course. You've been in the jungle, basically in and out of the jungle for 30 years, and are we making progress in the right direction, or are we losing ground?

Well, it's a tough question to answer because we're burning the candle at both ends. There's more awareness of the importance of conservation than ever before. Witness the success of the meetings in Paris recently. But there's also an enormous amount of destruction. So there's no simple answer to this. It's not a yes or no thing. The answer is that there are good things happening, there's bad things happening, and the race is on to protect as much as possible.

You know, one of the interesting things you pointed out in terms of the value of the diversity in the jungle is how, you know, we are leveraging that information to develop pharmaceuticals. And, you know, you talked about ACE inhibitors, and there are various things. In fact, most, I would expect, of our mainstream pharmaceuticals have some form of natural derivation. Is there ongoing efforts to really look at that even these days?

Well, not enough. And the reason is that the pharmaceutical companies were pretty abusive in the old days, and not a nickel from ACE inhibitors, which originated in the forests of Brazil, not a nickel from beta blockers, which originated in the hallucinogenic mushrooms in Mexico, went back to the Indians, went back to the countries. So that's no longer an acceptable way of doing business. That being said, There are models now to do it better, but the pharmaceutical companies, by and large, have turned their back on natural products for a variety of reasons, which I think is not only a terrible mistake but a very stupid one. No one is a greater believer in the power of high-tech chemistry to do and find and manipulate stuff but to write off Mother Nature who's been doing high-tech chemistry for 3 billion years.

What is a guy like you— how does a guy like you end up in the jungle? How did that all come about?

Well, I had dropped out of college at the age of 19 and enrolled in a class in the botany and chemistry of hallucinogenic plants. This being the end of the '60s, it had a certain appeal. And I just went off to the jungle in search of romance and adventure, and I found it. And I've just turned 60, but I'm still at it. I have the most interesting job in the world. And there's nothing else I'd rather be doing. The problem is the destruction of the forest, the destruction of these cultures. I'm watching this stuff literally go up in smoke before my eyes, and it's my job and the job of all ethnobotanists and caring physicians and caring people to put a stop to this, put a stop to it for ethical reasons, put a stop to it for climatological reasons, because the carbon that goes up in the atmosphere is driving climate change. Put a stop to it for medical reasons because there are wonder drugs there and they are disappearing. I will say this, that as an ethnobotanist, I was taught to focus on plants and taught to focus on shamans. But after decades of work, it became obvious to me that they're not just using plants. They're also using insects. They're also using frogs. It only was after decades of research that they revealed these secrets to me. So once again, it's obvious that they know way more than we even thought they knew. But again, it's disappearing, and it's our job to protect it and put it to use in an ethical way where everybody benefits, not just us.

Well, how are we preserving that information aside from your work? I mean, what's happening to keep that information available?

Well, David, I've been criticized because I don't publish this information, and my response is, Well, it's not my information. It's a secret. It's trade secrets. So what I've been doing at the Amazon Conservation Team, the organization that I run, is training these people to write it down in their own language, training these people to make films in their own language. First and foremost, it should be protected by them because as they make the transition from preliterate cultures to literate cultures, they can write it down themselves. And I have to say it, even though it pains me somewhat, this is a really good and powerful thing that missionaries have done. is create written languages from these tribal languages and teach them how to read and write. Of course, they do it so they read and write the Bible, which is useful but of limited utility when you're fighting off gold miners, limited utility when your forest is disappearing. So the Bible has its place in terms of teaching the Golden Rule, but it doesn't have all the answers, which unfortunately some missionaries still tell them is the case.

You know, to me, you're a bit of an Indiana Jones, and so I, I really enjoy hearing about your adventures. Let me get back to this kind of comparison between the importance of the biodiversity, which obviously we are losing, uh, in leaps and bounds in the Amazon and globally, um, at a rate estimated between 100 to 1,000 times more, uh, quickly than in the past. But I, I've talked and written about the importance of biodiversity in terms of the, the gut organisms to give us Right. So we're losing that in the Amazon, and that's having global impacts.

Absolutely true. First of all, I want to go back to Indiana Jones. Remember that Indiana Jones was a tomb robber, so the analogy is not completely a flattering one. But as a person who got people interested in tropical fieldwork, there's no better archetype, and I'm proud to say that Harrison Ford is one of our financial supporters. Secondly, in terms of what we can do, learn from these people, what we need to know about these people, the value of these people. You and I were talking earlier about the Hadza, which are the last hunter-gatherer tribe in Africa. A fabulous documentary was just made about them by my friend Bill Benenson, which I highly recommend. And one of the unforeseen things that's come out of research on these primitive people is that they have this fabulous gut biome, much more diverse than ours. And the takeaway lesson is is that originally, we, having evolved on the savannas of East Africa, probably had a much more diverse gut biome. And as you've said powerfully in your writings, that the bad thing about the modern diet is it screwed up who we are, that our modern diet may be destroying this. And only by going back to the Hadza, going back to the uncontacted or the recently contacted people in the Amazon, there's lots to learn. So it ain't just about new medicinal plants for cancer. It ain't just about shamanic diagnostics, which is a whole other interesting field in and of itself. I was asked once, what's it like working with shamans? I said, it's like that Chinese box puzzle where you open up a box and there's another box inside, and you open up another box and there's a box inside. Just get to the smallest box possible with the ultimate answer to your question. There's another box inside. So this is just one more manifestation of why, A, it's important to understand, protect these people, and B, why the world is a much more interesting and diverse place than we ever dreamed possible, whether it's the number of plants in the rainforest, the number of microorganisms in the soil, or the microbiome in indigenous peoples around the world.

You brought up a couple of points I think that are really interesting. I think your analogy with the Chinese box story was really brought to my mind, kind of the fractal imagery of just repeating patterns. And, you know, here I am, a physician having a conversation with an ethnobotanist, and we're basically talking about exactly the same thing, that the balances, the checks and balances, and the homeostatic mechanisms that keep us alive are the same that are keeping the planet alive and require the diversity that we are losing. And, you know, interestingly enough, when we look at preserved evidence of the microbiome, that by doing genetic analysis of either fossilized fecal material called coprolites or even the dental calculus, we realize that the diversity and array of bacteria 8,000 years ago was actually— is actually very similar to what we're seeing in indigenous populations who are alive today. And the only people who are outside of the loop are really those of us living in a very cosmopolitan environment. So this isn't something genetically determined. It's something that we acquire and then maintain. And we're just beginning to understand how we can rebuild that. You know, my hope is that there will be recoverability in the work that you're doing. And I think, you know, basically it means getting out of the way.

Well, when I became an ethnobotanist in the '70s, I had people say to me, actually, and I quote, who gives a shit about the rainforest? We need worry about zero population growth. Now I have people say to me, well, who cares about the Amazon? We have to worry about climate change. Well, it's all the same thing, okay? Whether you're talking microbiomes in Naples, Florida, or whether you're talking hunter-gatherers in East Africa, it's all the same thing. I did a piece for the Skoll Foundation that's on YouTube where they said, talk about nuclear proliferation, talk about overpopulation, talk about new antibiotics and drug-resistant bacteria, And related to shamans in the rainforest. It's all interconnected. And that's why when I hear the stuff that you're doing, or I read your books, it's the same thing. It all connects. And a lot of people just don't get that. Very frustrating.

Well, we live in a very reductionist society, especially as it relates to health and medicine, that, you know, we have the cardiologists and the neurologists and gastroenterologists, and no one wants to communicate, recognizing that we are all intertwined. It reminds me of the Chief Seattle quote that man is merely a strand of the web of life, basically. And I think this interconnectedness is something that we just don't want to appreciate, even from a geopolitical standpoint, that we are all interconnected. And we darn well better get that message. And I think really soon, because, you know, I think certainly you're seeing the clock is ticking. And in my world, the manifestations are you know, this failure of immune regulation and the autoimmune conditions, the inflammatory disorders and the issues that relate to overactivity of the immune system. I think, you know, basically the Amazon is losing its adaptability, its resiliency, and we're feeling global impacts from that. You mentioned the butterfly analysis, that's so important. You brought along some images today. Can we take a look at those?

I did, sure.

Great.

The first picture is my friend and mentor, Amashina. He's the paramount He's the shaman of the Trio tribe in the northeast Amazon. We've been working together for 33 years, and he is the guy who treated my foot. So people who want more information about my work, and particularly focusing on isolated tribes, this is the guy who started it all in terms of treating my foot, and with a very successful result.

Now, Mark, on the bottom of that image, it— that shows a web address, amazonteam.org. That's how we find you, right?

Yeah, that's, uh, the Amazon Conservation Team, and there's lots of stories and elaboration on many of the things that I'm throwing out now in terms of ethnographic mapping, where we've trained over 30 tribes to map, manage, and improve protection of 70 million acres of ancestral rainforest, our Shaman's Apprentice work. The next picture, uh, with my wife and partner Liliana shows me talking to my head cartographer Wuta, again a guy I've been working for 30 years. So here's a guy who was born in the Stone Age but can use the GPS far better than I can and has not only taught his tribe how to map but has done it for tribes in Suriname and Brazil and is personally responsible for the mapping of 20 million acres of rainforest. The tribe after— the picture after that is one of my favorites. It's taken by Bruce Hoffman, a colleague of mine living in the northeast Amazon. I'm very jealous of that. And this is the Trio Indians building a new roundhouse. This is about 3 stories off the ground. There isn't a single nail there. They're using forest fibers to tie together forest sticks, forest saplings to make the superstructure on which will be woven palm leaves.

It almost looks like a spider web.

It does. Well, it is. It's a spider web of life in the forest. Next picture is a black and white image of me and my very good friend Kamanya taken in 1984. This is 2 years after we started working together. And I like this picture very much because it captures a very, uh, just a, a picture of us working together and bonding. And I contrast that with the next picture, which is the same picture, same guys, uh, same pose, 30 years later. And as, uh, somebody pointed out when I posted this on Facebook, well, the, the notebook you're holding in this image is much bigger than the notebook you were holding in the first image. And I said, well, as the brain grows smaller, the notebook has to grow bigger.

And the font size gets bigger.

That too. The next picture is a lot of fun because after I gave my TED Talk last year in Rio, I headed straight for the northeast Amazon and gave my TED Talk in the village of Kwamalasamutu, which is where the talk started. It's the story of my foot and the shaman. And I'm surrounded by shamans and apprentices. The one to my right, to the viewer's left, is Kamanya, the guy in the previous picture. And when I was going through that, I showed the picture of the magic frog. And he said, oh, we have that frog here. And I said, well, I've never seen it. And he said, well, that's because it lives in the canopy. And I said, how do you know this frog? He said, well, we use it for healing. And I said, well, I've been here for 30 years and you never told me you use this for medicine. And he said, well, you've been here for 30 years and you never asked me if we used it for medicine. That shows the value of persistence and building up a relationship over time. Then the last image is me with my first mentor there, who was the Jaguar Shaman of the Trio Tribe. When I went there, everybody was in a red breechcloth, but this is many years later, a few years before he died. I think you can see the expression on our face, the bonding and the relationship between us. You just don't see this with a lot of Western researchers. Again, I posit that it's the Sheer doggedness and determination and the long-term relationships, which gets people open up and teach you things that they wouldn't teach you if you were just there for your thesis for 9 months.

Well, it brings up an interesting idea, a question on my part, and that is, how did, how did you gain their acceptance and trust early on?

Well, you know, I just turned 60 and I grew up on Tarzan films, and my idea was you get to the village and you say, take me to your leader. And then you become their blood brothers and dance around the fire. Well, that's the Hollywood version. And let's face it, friendships don't happen in one meeting. It takes time. So it's not like you get there and they accept you as their brother and friend. It takes time. And I've been working with these people over 30 years, as you said in the introduction, and they're still showing me new plants and new frogs, which also means that they're still not showing me stuff. So this idea that it's one-stop shopping It's very reductionist, like you referred to earlier, and it just takes more time than most Americans who always want to cut to the chase. We're the original GST people, get stuff done. They don't want to sit around and drink hallucinogenic potions and take hallucinogenic stuff and dance around the fire for 3 days. But you know what? That's part of the job.

Is there any utilization that you have allowed or encouraged to happen here in America in terms of applying the knowledge that you've brought or that, that these individuals could bring? In other words, is there a way of transplanting that activity to other places?

That's a longer answer and a longer interview. The obvious one is plants, but the process is complicated and it has to be done ethically, which is not something that's really been done much of in the past. So that's not going to happen in time in the short term. Another one which I've been championing for some time are shamanic diagnostics. I think that shamans can sometimes teach you ways to analyze patients that we don't do using CAT scans and MRIs and X-rays. If you read Laurie Garrett's wonderful book, The Coming Plague, she talks about the fact that her great uncle, I think it was, was on Ellis Island and he could look people in the eye or listen to them cough and diagnose whether they should be admitted or not. That's not taught much in medical school, I'm willing to bet, these days. A little bit like that first Star Wars film where he turns to him to turn off the computer and trust the Force. You know, doctors need to re-inculcate that knowledge that they may have that they don't use because you rely on technology. Technology should be an aid, not a crutch, you know, speaking as a non-physician.

Well, you know, there does seem to be a resurgence, though, in interest in things like Ayurvedic pulse diagnosis. And, you know, it's the reason I ask you that question is, you know, I guess if it could be monetized, that would probably be a big impetus to bring that kind of knowledge.

For sure.

You know, is the way of the world. I want to just let our viewers know that after this interview, again, I'm going to give you information about Dr. Plotkin's work, where you can go on YouTube and look at his TED Talk. And also how we can be supportive of the Amazon Conservation Team. So when do you go back to the jungle?

Uh, I'm applying for permits in February to go to the northwest Amazon. There's a sacred mountain my mentor climbed in 1943, and it took me 4 years to find it. I was working from old photos. He passed on in 2001. Uh, Google Earth, I went to headquarters, Royal Geographic Society in London, I went into the basement, uh, library, uh, Library of Congress, It's a long and complicated story, but I found the mountain. Nobody's been there since 1943 when he climbed it, and I've got to get back up that mountain.

That in and of itself is a great story, really very empowering to think about how that must have been back in the 1940s to make a trip like that. But then again, I guess the rubber tree kind of spurred the real interest in that whole area, didn't it?

Well, it ties in because he was there in 1941, supposed to be there for 6 months investigating the arrow poisons, which were then becoming important in Western medicine. The war broke out and they said, we need rubber. Don't go to the US and enlist. Get your ass back to the jungle and find rubber. And, he found this sacred area where the Indians had already gone extinct and found several varieties of drug-resistant rubber. But nobody went back because it was so remote. They tried to set up research station in the '90s and they were chased out by the guerrilla. So it's been off limits. But with the diminution of the civil strife in Colombia, it's opening back up.

Great. Well, let me again thank you for your time and more so for the incredible contribution that you're making to the planet. We've really got to get our arms around this and take a step back and recognize that each and every one of us, we're not the center of the universe. We're interconnected in ways that we're just beginning to understand. So, Mark, kudos to you. Thanks for all the work that you're doing, and I look forward to seeing you soon.

Well, thanks, David. You know, your work on grains and my work in the jungle, like I said, it's all connected. So let's both hope for a better future for us, our families, and for all of us.

Okay, thanks, my friend. We'll talk soon.

Thanks again.

Well, I certainly learned a lot from Dr. Plotkin today, and it reinforces our need to look at all these influences in terms of planetary health from the perspective of how it affects our health, but also certainly how events in the Amazon are truly global in terms of their impact. So Again, one of the main reasons I wanted to present Dr. Plotkin's work is because it is so impactful, and I'm going to provide you a link to the Amazon Conservation Team. Again, this is a non-for-profit organization that can absolutely use our financial support. He's doing fantastic work, and I am sure grateful that he had the opportunity to To be with us today. I'm Dr. David Perlmutter. Thanks for joining us. Goodbye.