FUNGIMANIA Continued from page 24.


representing years of research, and hopeful hype? And, by the way, it’s not just the Mushroom Hour—there’s also Fungi Town, Mycoverse the Mushroom Podcast, Mushroom Revival, Chaga Chat, Te Mushroom Cloud. I could go on but you get the picture. It’s not that these are bad; there’s a lot of good science mixed in out there; it’s the staggering overwhelmingness of it all —when did this start? Fifty or more years ago, researchers were actively looking


at psilocybin and other fungal derivatives for their beneficial effects. And then, as if a curtain was drawn, the government made them illegal and hundreds of trials and experiments stopped dead in their tracks. Why? Because Timothy Leary and friends were carrying out exactly the kinds of over- enthusiastic, free-wheeling, this will solve all your problems hype that we’re seeing revived today. Let’s hope for a more enlightened government response this time to the enthusiasm. Are those hapless little psychedelic mushrooms endangered


as corporations hire pickers? Will this be like the Cordyceps boom on the Nepalese plateau where erstwhile herders have abandoned their flocks and scrambled to forage increasingly picked over and barren territory? True to my curmudgeonly role, I think this will be a very short phase in the rise of psychedelics. May I remind you that when we have a heart condition, we don’t go out to the garden and pick foxglove leaves. We take a pill containing a measured dose of digitalis which has been produced in a laboratory. Chemists will fractionate mushrooms for the most active components, and corporations will transfer genes and teach a very different fungus or bacterium to manufacture this in culture. In fact, it’s already happened. Reading a recent article about Harvard’s new center for psychedelics, which is planning to study psilocybin, they’ve already sourced their initial supply—from Compass Pathways, which synthesizes the compound. I’m not even going to mention pricing. 3. It’s dangerous. It amazes me how our fellow citizens


can mistrust vaccination, which has been around for over a century and has saved literally millions of lives, while rushing to swallow every medico-nutritional fad that comes their way. Yes, there are hundreds of published accounts of fungal fruiting bodies curing (write in your chosen disease/condition here). And no, there are no FDA approved clinical trials showing that those fruiting bodies actually perform those cures. Most of those accounts are either personal stories unmarred by statistical analysis (N of 1) or in vitro (Petri plate) lab studies. Sometimes, the trial has gotten as far as lab animal testing. Please keep in mind that man is not a rat. (Actually, some men are rats.)


Te same argument that’s been made for all untested


remedies holds here. It’s dangerous to have patients with a good chance of being cured by the standard medical treatment, decide to forgo that treatment in favor of a trendy, untested “cure.” And this is where we run into a different type of danger. Let’s say those patients don’t turn down the standard treatment; they just add the new fungal extract or powder or whatever on top of it. Hoping that maybe it will ramp up their immune systems, or damp down the unpleasant side effects of the medical treatment. Maybe it will. But maybe it will interfere with that treatment. Because,


26 FUNGI Volume 14:4 Fall 2021


if these mushroom tinctures and extracts and powders are actually having some effect, there’s a reasonable probability that will affect not only the disease, but also the medicine being used to treat that disease. Even if the “medicine” is just innocent seeming nutritional supplements. It turns out that such self-administered apparently beneficial substances as turmeric, licorice, and ginger (I could go on here but I won’t) have potentially dangerous effects and drug interactions. Te most common are interference with blood clotting time, anesthesia, kidney function and blood sugar levels. Plus there are the home-brewed undefinable mixtures like kombucha (how to supply alcohol to recovering alcoholics, kids and pregnant women and feel good about it?). And “microbiome supplements?” Tose can supplement your natural microbiome inhabitants right out of their niches. Why should we think that fungal tinctures or extracts are any more benign? In fact, the more powerful they are, the less benign they may be. 4. Fungi aren’t going to just heal our minds and bodies,


they’re going to heal the planet and replace everything evil with benevolent (trademarked, patent protected) fungal technologies. And here I have to step aside a bit from curmudgeonliness, to say that some of these could be good. Te most interesting company has been Ecovative. Teir initial product, and the one that continues to be my favorite, is their mycelial replacement for polystyrene (or, as Dow Chemical cleverly named it, Styrofoam™. If Dow makes it, it’s evil, and polystyrene does not disappoint. Unfortunately, it’s also useful. It’s lightweight, it’s inexpensive, and it’s a great insulator. You’ve seen it in takeout dishes or as packing for your new computer; I’ve seen it as massive shipping containers for frozen or refrigerated food products. Usually with a plastic inner liner, since it can’t be sanitized, and a heavy duty cardboard outer later, since it’s brittle and easily cracks and crumbles, and much of it is designed for one-time use. I’ve seen huge industrial dumpsters full of broken Styrofoam containers, since those can’t be recycled or reused in any way, and there are bits and pieces of it in the ocean forever. It breaks, but it never breaks down. Ecovative has been growing mycelia into molds in the hope of replacing Styrofoam; their product is amazingly similar in functionality, although not in malignancy, and they’ve worked to price it competitively. Tey’re still only making small items (wine shippers, takeout dishes, etc.) but they’re setting up international partnerships with manufacturing companies and doing all the right things to get their product out there. And that’s why they will succeed, where few others will. Because all those great ideas that we read about, using the power of fungi to solve global problems, are just that: great ideas. Having a great idea and getting it patented doesn’t put it to work. Having a great idea and getting it manufactured and marketed, and purchased and used and then purchased again, because it worked—that’s when a great idea becomes a success. Ecovative is also working on mycelial “meat,” and I’m not


so sure about that. Te number of unconventional “meatoids” has reached the point where my local (ordinary, working class) supermarket has a special showcase for them and a special section in its weekly flyer. Whether mycelial meat will be competitive with Impossible ™ and soy-based, etc. faux meats (to say nothing of plain old meat-based meat), is beyond my ability to foretell. So it’s not just a ‘shroom (a term I despise) boom; it’s a


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