Ep110 - Henri Sant Cassia: Can Capitalism and Consciousness Coexist?
A spirited discussion with the co-founder of The Conscious Fund, which invests in psychedelic research and therapies. My question: Can psychedelics and profits happily coexist?
A spirited discussion with the co-founder of The Conscious Fund, which invests in psychedelic research and therapies. My question: Can psychedelics and profits happily coexist?
My guest this week is Henri Sant-Cassia, co-founder of The Conscious Fund, a $60 million venture capital fund that has backed 14 companies in the fledgling psychedelic research and therapy space.
Every day there is more frothy media surrounding the possibilities of psychedelic therapy to successfully treat depression, PTSD, end of life despair -- problems that modern medicine and pharma companies have not yet conquered. There is early evidence that psychedelics can really change the game and optimists are hoping that legalization and increased funding can create better solutions and, at the same time, a more compassionate world.
But anyone who has watched cannabis legalization knows that it is difficult, if not impossible, to protect those who risked their lives, reputations, and often freedom advocating for these euphoria-inducing substances from the euphoria-inducing rush of large sums of investment capital.
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To wit: Some early stage psychedelic startups are following the pharma model of changing a few molecules in the natural plant structures and attempting to patent them. They're claiming to have “invented” entirely new substances. One such company, the UK/US-based Compass Pathways, which is backed by free market evangelists Peter Thiel and Rebekah Mercer (both Trump supporters) has been trying to patent psilocybin for years. While Compass's filings are unlikely to succeed, there are many other ways they can gum up the works for companies (both for-profit and nonprofit) that have been fighting for decades to liberate these substances from Schedule 1 restrictions and make them available to those in need. Henri and I discuss this and other thorny conflicts that inevitably arise in the tricky marriage of psychedelics and profits.
The more I look into this the more ethical, financial and therapeutic issues arise. For one: Can psychedelics be successfully delivered without therapy and if so, what role with pharmaceutical companies that only make medicines play. I’ll be delving into them over the next few months as the rush toward psychedelic medicines -- or what I’m blithely calling “The ShroomBoom” -- takes off. Watch this space!