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But... the choice is theirs, not yours or mine. It's clear they know the outside world exists. They have chosen not to engage. (To put it mildly.) As an aside
by tnjm 13y ago
But... the choice is theirs, not yours or mine.
It's clear they know the outside world exists. They have chosen not to engage. (To put it mildly.)
As an aside, there are more than 100 'uncontacted' tribes in the world. All of them know of the outside world; all have chosen -- for now -- not to interact directly with mainstream society.
- derleth 13y ago> But... the choice is theirs, not yours or mine. How much do they really know, though? Do they know that some of their diseases could be cured, for example?
- tnjm 13y agoI've been fortunate enough to interview several tribal people who were only recently 'contacted'. The latest came out of the forest in 2009. What is striking is how many of their friends and relatives died of outsiders' disease after making contact, and how fondly they spoke of their life before. When I spoke to them, some were considering leaving the village where they now live and returning to a life in the forest. With regards to healthcare -- the health services offered to settled tribal and indigenous people in many places is poor to nonexistent. Amazonian tribal peoples have dozens to hundreds of medicinal plants, many of which have been proven to have active pharmacological properties. Some are now used in Western medicine.
- kaybe 13y agoBut then, some of the plants in the jungle seem to be amazing. I read some books about expeditions to find them for western medicine. One talked about a black paste you put on a tooth and it will simply fall out, no pain and no problem. A plant that makes women infertile for 7 years (they give it to their teenagers, apparently). Also, great plants against many sorts of other problems like abscesses. Sadly, the results simply got ignored. The woman in the book was sent by a US pharmy company and brought back many plants and samples which she had won from the tribes in hard work (they don't just tell anyone). They probably still have them in a freezer somewhere. An experienced person I talked to said that it probably was too much trouble and costs to clear it for drugs since there often are side effects, often psychological. He took one or two of the jungle things and said it was intense. Still, it's a great loss for our civilisation that it played out like this so far. So, we'd have much to give, but also much to gain. Our diseases could be cured too.
- ars 13y agoNone of those plants sound real. Sorry to burst your bubble.
- kaybe 13y agoI agree. The claim should still be checked, IMHO. You didn't reach my bubble yet..
- ekianjo 13y agoPlants are limited resources. Even if you wanted to make drugs out of it, it does not scale very well. That's why most of our drugs are synthetic. That's scalable chemistry. Analyzing active ingredients in plants is a lengthy and costly process. And even if they worked as advertised, you would need to go through clinical trials to have them accepted in other countries. You don't put drugs on the market just like that. Net, it's very costly and it's been tried before, as far as I know, on several plants from the Amazon area. I need to find the source again, but from what I remember most plants failed against placebo. There's probably a lot of placebo effect in the efficacy claimed by people living in these areas.
- ekianjo 13y agoI'm not sure you have much choice when you are born in such a society. You are probably very much expected/forced to stay and be useful to your tribe. Freedom is very relative...