Thank you, Chair.
I'll direct my questions to Dr. Dyck and Dr. Heller.
Michael Pollan is an American author and journalist and a professor in the practice of non-fiction at Harvard University. In 2020, he co-founded the UC Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics.
If you look at some of the book reviews for his very famous book, How to Change your Mind, which talked about the use of psychedelics, they were glowing. “Gripping and surprising.... Makes losing your mind sound like the sanest thing a person could do”, said New York Times Book Review. “Astounding”, said New York Magazine.
It's been amusing to me.... Perhaps that's not the right word. It's been amusing and disappointing to watch the world all of a sudden say that psychedelics could be used for mental health work after Michael Pollan's book. I think this is a perfect example of some of the things you were speaking about, Dr. Williams.
Was there anything fundamentally transformational in Michael Pollan's book or is it just basically a collection of indigenous knowledge? Why does it still take a Michael Pollan to get indigenous traditional knowledge accepted as mainstream practice?