Why-Still-The Sound of Silence?

Three healing professionals-Amza Ali, MD,Justin Grant, PhD, and Mary-Elizabeth Gifford-consider the high costs of not speaking up for palliative care with psychedelics.

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In our work in drug development, we seek psilocybin-based medical solutions for those who suffer from intractable anxiety or depression after receiving a difficult or life-limiting diagnosis. We’re guided by remarkable breakthroughs in psychedelic research that include data from trials at NYU, UCLA, and Johns Hopkins, which demonstrate immediate and lasting symptom relief.

We are also guided by patient experiences and patient voices. In Canada, for example, stage IV cancer patients are now active advocates for psychedelic access at end of life. One patient, Thomas Hartl, has joined a legal challenge expected to go before that nation’s highest court. In America, Erinn Baldeschwiler, a mother of two who suffers from end-stage metastatic breast cancer, joined the long tradition of peaceful civil disobedience in Washington, DC, by demonstrating at the headquarters of the Drug Enforcement Administration. On the Monday after Mother’s Day, she was arrested for asserting her legal right to medicinal psilocybin under the federal “Right to Try” law.

These brave patients are advocating for access to safe and legal medicinal psychedelics to secure their own well-being and to help others facing the despair of similar mental health challenges. In working to improve access for themselves and others, they are educating both the public and policy makers. As recently as March 2023, a bipartisan group in the U.S. Senate reintroduced legislation to ensure that investigational psychedelic medicine is available for palliative care.