Re: The age of mushrooms is upon us in medicine. Author replies

Issue: BCMJ, vol. 62, No. 2, March 2020, Page 47 Letters
By: Mark Elliott, MD, FRCPC

I couldn’t agree more with your cautionary note. Paul Stamets seems to be an extraordinary mycologist with dozens of patents to his name, but with enough publicity people like him can easily become gurus, which is not good. I mentioned the Stoned Ape (Stone Age in his original article) hypothesis only because it is an interesting theory. Whether one day some experiment will come up with an observation to back it up is doubtful. This is a problem in many areas of science dealing with fundamental issues. But as Karl Popper said, “All observation is theory laden,” which means nature (theory) proposes and the environment (observation from experiment) disposes, which is just stealing another well-known saying from genetics. We will see where it leads.
—Mark Elliott, MD, FRCPC
Vancouver

This letter was submitted in response to “Re: The age of mushrooms is upon us in medicine.”

Mark Elliott, MD, FRCPC. Re: The age of mushrooms is upon us in medicine. Author replies. BCMJ, Vol. 62, No. 2, March, 2020, Page(s) 47 - Letters.


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