QUAD BREATH
Well-Known Member
Now how does the harvesting and consumption of bufotoxins impact the toad?
At this point in time (October 2018 the toads are classified as “least concern” on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species (Hammerson & Santos-Barrera, 2004). Although this may be true, these assessments are from 2004, and is therefore very likely to be outdated. A new assessment about the toad’s population size is highly warranted given the attention the toad has received and the consumption of the toads’ bufotoxins worldwide.
Nevertheless, it is not old news that the amphibian population worldwide is declining. Actually, their global decline was first recognized in the early 1990s (Wake 1991). As of 2010, 32% of the world’s nearly 6600 amphibian species are threatened with extinction, 43% are experiencing declines and for another 22%, there are insufficient data (Stuart, Chanson et al. 2004). This phenomenon represents the Earth’s sixth mass extinction (Wake and Vredenburg 2008. That being said, there is no single cause to the global amphibian decline, rather there may be several contributing factors (Hayes, Falso et al. 2010). As outlined in the paper by Hayes and colleagues, there are three levels of possible factors for the amphibian decline.
The first level involves 1) death (or removal) of individuals and 2) reduced recruitment within a population. (Editors note: recruitment occurs when juvenile organisms survive to be added to a population, by birth or immigration, usually a stage whereby the organisms are settled and able to be detected by an observer. Source – Wikipedia
The second level involves 1) increased disease rate, 2) decrease in nutrition, 3) predation, 4) human exploitation 5) “other mortality”, which represent everything from the death of older individuals, incidental death, to catastrophic events.
Finally, the third level involves 1) atmospheric change, 2) environmental pollutants, 3) habitat loss, 4) invasive species, and finally 5) pathogens. These levels are also suggested to interact with one another.
It is not rocket science that the above-mentioned factors also have an impact on the toad. The increasing demand for the bufotoxins for inhalation has made the toad susceptible to not only ecological disturbance through the invasion of habitat and excessive milking, but also amphibian-trafficking and black-market dynamics. Additionally, according to herpetologist Robert Anthony Villa, the largest toads are most likely to be spotted and collected over smaller toads, and if you remove the biggest toads, you remove the population’s ability to sustain itself as the bigger toads have a lot of eggs (PsychedelicToday 201
. Moreover, based on studies on snakes, we know that 80% of snakes die if you catch them, move them to a different territory and let them go. Similarly, toads have an inner-GPS that they rely on, and if a toad is taken out of their territory for milking, and then set free elsewhere, they are very likely to die because they are either simply lost, could get run over by a car, or eaten by predators. The latter is more likely to successfully happen when the toad has been deprived of their main defense mechanism.Along with that, Villa reports that the toad is very likely to be impacted negatively by pathogens, such as for example chytridiomycosis, which is exposed to them by people when they are collected for milking and can spread to the rest of the toad population. Additionally, as the surviving toads depend on the genetic variety of other populations to sustain themselves, the toads would inbreed themselves to extinction if there are no other populations to copulate with. Finally, keeping a toad as a pet, or many in large conservations for breeding, is a huge disservice to the toad as they do not do well in captivity, and due to the factors previously stated.
Given the circumstances, it seems to me that the harvesting and consumption of bufotoxins or so-called “toad medicine” is very much the case of the “double effect” principle; with a good act, comes a bad consequence. The aforementioned are all alarming factors that could very well lead toward population decline and so to extinction. This is all startling information that calls for action.
A discontinuation of “toad medicine” in favor of synthetic 5-MeO-DMT use can diminish the current unnecessary and excessive harassment of the Incilius Alvarius species. Switching from using toad bufotoxin to synthetic 5-MeO-DMT is better for many other reasons. First, synthetic 5-MeO-DMT does not contain a cocktail of other compounds and is therefore much safer to use. Likewise, it will be much easier for researchers to re-schedule and legalize a pure substance for medical use than a complex bufotoxin. Second, synthetic 5-MeO-DMT is not any different from “toad-medicine”. In fact, the argument that “toad-medicine” is better than synthetic is a claim that is drawn from personal experience and is not a good enough argument to extend to a generality.
Full Article: https://psychedelicstoday.com/2018/10/03/ethics-ecology-bufotoxins/
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. She is a psychology student, and would really like to get into these avenues of research. We both have struggled at different points with depression and anxiety and would much rather explore natural(ish) ways of personal growth to overcome these things. I won't even be that person taking piles of pills for the rest of my life.
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