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For those who have been following this series
about Kava, the sacred plant from the Pacific, from whose
roots a soporific and relaxing traditional ritual drink is
made, it might be of interest for you to go out and try and
buy medicinal kava extract or tablets. The latter have been
easily available in Health Food shops in England and the US
for nearly a decade and in medicinal form from pharmacies
in Germany, Switzerland and France for slightly longer than
that. Countless thousands of Europeans and Americans have
benefited from the medicinal properties of this most wondrous
(plant) root by purchasing medicinal kava extract or kava
tablets to alleviate those most common disorders of the modern
world - stress, tension and anxiety. But is seems those days
are over.
As we have seen in the previous articles,
recent medical reports and associated press articles have
lead people to believe that there may possibly be a connection
between kava and liver damage. At least that is what seems
to be the conclusion in Switzerland, Germany, France, the
UK, and now Australia, Canada and the US. In all of these
countries authorities have either introduced a ban or prohibition
or advised withdrawal of kava-based medicinal products because
of this all within the last few months. This situation really
started coming to a head in Germany at the end of last year
and most of the international press reports lead back to Germany.
Most of the countries cite reports from Germany as the source
or reason for the advice to withdraw kava extract products
from sale - the UK did this late last year and the US Food
and Drug Administration announced the same on 25th March 'citing
the other countries' actions'. So if you are in the UK or
the US you may go out to buy some medicinal kava extract and
not be able to get any. Blame Germany? Well, tear your hair
out, but Germany is the only place in Europe now where one
can still easily buy medicinal kava extract (for relieving
stress) across the counter in almost any pharmacy. Strange
world. No 'ban' has officially been announced yet by the relevant
German government authority, but meanwhile much of the rest
of the 'modern' world have already followed like brain-dead
sheep and turned a non-existent 'ban' into a de facto ban
that has halted the export of kava roots from the kava-producing
islands of the Pacific. This has, and will, severely affect
the lives of many Pacific Islanders, for whom kava growing
and export has become one of the few sources of income.
It seems 'our' side of the world is shouting
'Beware of kava!' The Pacific Island world is puzzled, and
rather angry. Pacific Islanders in the traditional kava-drinking
nations do not associate kava-drinking in any way with any
form of liver problems and they have drinking kava for longer
than England, France and Germany have even existed! Just to
rub the salt in a little bit, readers should note that the
world's oldest continuously ruling royal family or lineage
is also nowhere in Europe, but is the present day royal lineage
of the Pacific Island nation of Tonga. And certain Pacific
islands have actually been drinking kava from before anyone
even lived in Tonga! South Pacific Islanders are famously
polite and the Pacific nations have expressed concern - and
also disbelief - at European reports linking kava with liver
damage. I would agree with them and would, in fact, put a
proper reaction in slightly stronger terms by saying, in Vanuatu
Bislama (the Vanuatu variant of Pidgin English) that much
of these overseas press reports consist of a significant proportion
of "shitshit blong bullock". Do I need to translate
that last phrase? - I don't think so.
There is possibly or probably quite a difference
between the natural kava drunk traditionally in the Pacific
and the kava extracts sold in various forms overseas in medicinal
form. The extraction processes for the modern products try,
in general, to separate and concentrate what are thought to
be the relaxing, active, ingredients of the root, the so-called
'kavalactones'. But in the natural plant these kavalactones
form only part of the complex chemical ingredients in the
root and it is possible that the other ingredients are essential
for the full range of 'beneficial effects'. Some scientists
in Europe have said that cases of 'damage' to patients outlined
in the recent medical reports and the press often concerned
cases of individuals sometimes regularly taking 'more than
the recommended daily dose' of extracts containing kavalactones.
There is a slight problem with that approach, though. Very
often kava drinkers in Vanuatu will traditionally regularly
drink fresh kava containing much higher concentrations of
kavalactones (plus the other ingredients) than even the most
exaggerated Euro-American 'extract overdose'. They may sometimes
have a bit of a 'wild and exciting' couple of hours at times
(I know, it has happened to me too, and I have had some great
times!) but many have been doing it for years. If done in
the proper, controlled, traditional way, though, it is fine
and I know of respected indigenous men on the island of Tanna
in southern Vanuatu who have been drinking kava thus almost
every single evening of their adult lives over 30, 40 or even
50 years. As with everything one eats and drinks, 'everything
in moderation' should be the goal. But maybe 'the white man'
in Euro-America isn't healthy or strong enough? Or is there
something more complex, a bit like the existence or non-existence
of the infamous 'alcohol enzyme' necessary to enable one to
drink and digest alcohol without poisoning oneself? As we
have pointed out in an earlier article, neither Australian
Aborigines nor Amerindians possess this stomach enzyme, which
is why alcohol is so dangerous for them (the knowledge of
this has not prevented white people selling them nor them
from purchasing alcohol). Is there a necessary 'kava enzyme'
that lucky Pacific islanders possess that unlucky 'white people'
do not possess? I do not think so, as there are now enough
Pacific-island - based 'white people' who are regular kava
drinkers to allay that thought and the numbers of people around
the world who have taken kava extract or tablets over the
last decade or so is enormous. In the US alone, where kava
tablets etc really only kicked off in a big way from 1998,
there was more than $34 million spent on purchasing kava medicines
in the short period November 2000 - November 2001!
There is, however, possibly one medical
study that links in to this, but I have not yet been able
to track down the original version. It may be a French study,
as the only reference to it that I have seen surfaced at the
end of January in an interview with a hospital biopharmacist
and researcher in New Caledonia. According to this researcher,
approximately one in every 170,000 people has in his/her liver
a rare type of enzyme that, if combined with (?one of the)
kavalactones could possibly produce a toxic enzyme. This has
the possibility of provoking a kind of allergy that might
eventually damage the liver, it was said. There is an extremely
rare form of kava allergy that is known in Vanuatu, where
the face can slightly swell up - one of my very close ni-Vanuatu
(indigenous inhabitant of Vanuatu) friends had it in the early
1980s, but he is still alive, fit and active. There is traditional
medicine in Vanuatu for this uncommon condition, and as the
condition is so rare one may have to leave one's island to
go to the island with the knowledge of the medicine if one
thinks one needs to take it. But in general it is known -
in Vanuatu - that kava is a lot better for the liver than
alcohol. A white friend of mine in Vanuatu got a rather bad
dose of hepatitis in the early 1980s and went on to be given
a special type of kava medicinally as a liver cleanser. I
myself had a rather bad liver around that time after suffering
numerous malaria attacks (normal for anyone working in that
part of the world) and being given the wrong (and bad treatment)
for a particularly bad attack. Up to 1983 I had been a regular
drinker of wine, in rather large quantities, but living in
the tropics makes one's system work nearly twice as hard to
process the alcohol. By '1983, what with alcohol, malaria,
and one very bad medical treatment for malaria (I had been
drinking kava since 1973, but never on the same day as alcohol),
the liver really complained. Since then I have only drunken
kava (no alcohol), and there have been no complaints. It is
admittedly, rather difficult to drink kava on Ibiza, but I
drink fresh kava regularly every evening on my yearly visits
back to Vanuatu (I left Vanuatu in late 1989 to come to Ibiza)
where I am still pursuing anthropological work (and am Honorary
Curator of the Vanuatu Cultural Centre - the nation's National
Museum). I mention all this purely to indicate that when I
am talking about kava, I am not talking about it like most
of the Euro-American scientists, I actually do know a little
bit about it! And Vanuatu kava is the world's strongest and
the range of different types of kava grown there is vast -
over 82 different varieties of the plant, each with their
own types of effect. Most of the scientists overseas seem
to think there is really only one variety of the plant - and
this is not surprising, as eastwards from Vanuatu across the
Pacific there are really only between 5-10 subspecies of the
plant (and rather weak varieties at that - and they mix their
drink with a lot more water than is used in Vanuatu!). This
latter region is the area where most studies have been done
and where Europe and the US get most of their kava rootstock
from to make kava medicines and tablets. At a non-spiritual
level, it is rather like the difference between whisky and
beer, with the men in Vanuatu being the whisky drinkers (plus
one other area in Micronesia, the small island of Ponape)
and the rest of the Pacific being beer drinkers. What the
'white man' seems to be complaining about are supposed effects
from the Pacific 'beer', without knowing that a hardy nation
of whisky drinkers exists where life continues as normal!
The above-mentioned (?French) study hinting
at possible levels of one in every 170,000 people maybe being
more susceptible to kava is interesting, but if true, is not
grounds for the type of 'ban' that seems to be coming into
effect. Any statistician looking at that would say that the
percentage is statistically insignificant to the extent of
being almost non-existent. Excess coffee or alcohol, etc,
provide much higher statistical levels of danger to the liver
- as do some household chemicals, certain sprays and detergents,
and so on. But kava is 'the unknown' (at least to Euro-American
governments and medical associations) and therefore more likely
to be blamed for all sorts of things that one really doesn't
know too much about (a bit like 'the Communist threat' during
the Cold War).
This reminds me of a rather charming story
that was doing the rounds of the diplomatic 'cocktail circuit'
of the kava-drinking nations of the Pacific in the mid-1980s.
How accurate it is, I am not sure, but there is no smoke without
fire, and I heard it from a good contact. Relatively small
amounts of South Pacific kava root and kava powder were being
imported into the US from the 1970s for traditional consumption
by the small number of Samoans and Tongans living mainly in
California. Around 1986, the US government suddenly seemed
to put a ban on its import, in spite of the fact that some
rather successful experiments had been done with it in a California
prison for violent offenders in the early 1970s (these offenders
ended up becoming more relaxed and normal, but the experiments
were halted when kava stocks ran out - it was not too easy
to get regular supplies in those days). Of course, hardly
any 'white people' knew much about kava in the US in those
days, except for a small number of academics who had worked
in the Pacific, a handful of medical specialists - and a few
aging CIA operatives who some said had experimented with it
amongst the nearly 150 'chemical substances' used in the CIA's
'mind control' experiments of the 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s
(under the codenames projects MKULTRA, MKDELTA, Bluebird and
Artichoke). However, a persistent advertisement kept appearing
in the early 1980s in certain Californian magazines; 'Get
your Ounce of Legal South Pacific High', advising readers
they could purchase powdered kava by ordering from a PO Box
address in, I think, Santa Monica. A drawing with the advert
showed a rather cool-looking hippie with large hat and beard
smoking a giant joint. Of course no one in their right mind
would bother smoking kava, all one would probably get would
be an expensive case of sore lungs, but it seems the police
went into high alert anyway. Fiji was particularly affected
by the US ban on kava imports and the Fijian Prime Minister,
Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, went to Washington to see the Secretary
of State. This was during Reagan's presidency, and George
Shultz held that position - and he had recently been on an
official visit to Fiji. There he had, like all-important visitors,
been ritually welcomed with the important ceremonial drink,
Yanggona. "Why has your government banned South Pacific
Yanggona"? the Fijian Prime Minister politely asked.
"No, we have banned South Pacific kava, it's a pinko-commie
drug", Shultz was reported to have replied (indicating
therefore, I assume, that it might be a threat to democracy)."But
kava is Yanggona", Mara said "..and I thought I
would bring along as a gift to you these official Fijian press
photos of you drinking it during your recent visit".
However accurate this story is one may never know, but the
US kava 'ban' was lifted shortly after Mara's visit.
Regarding the extremely small numbers of
supposed cases of 'kava-induced liver damage' and the vast
amounts of kava medicines sold over the last decade in Germany
(see last week's article Weekly Edition 057 Saturday 30th
March 2002): I discussed this with a number of German pharmaceutical
people during the three weeks my wife and I spent there in
January. They agreed that the number of alleged cases was
infinitesimal. The doctors, though, were of course doing their
correct duty in reporting anything. My German brother-in-law,
a respected economist and statistician, did say that whoever
had done the reports and releases had little idea of statistics.
Other pharmacists told me the same, but not in such academic
terms. One wondered why there was so much fuss about medicinal
kava extract and the liver when, for example, it was known
that the aspirin-type painkiller Paracetemol could possibly
damage the liver and yet was still easily available. Another
said what about Viagra, that was already responsible for 70-80
deaths but whose registration had not been withdrawn (at which
point I said 'This just shows that sex and money are more
important than death', a comment that was met with a meaningful
silence). It was not until recently that I came across a report
indicating that by September 2001 a total of 616 people worldwide
had died from using Viagra (many, it is said, by using it
incorrectly). Remember that Viagra has really only been in
use for about five years, not 2000 or 3000 years, like kava
and there are more kava-users in the world than there are
Viagra-takers, I am pretty sure! Most of these things are
probably pretty good and safe, though, if used in the proper
way and with the proper supervision.
But if Euro-America (and Australia) want
to ban kava products on whatever basis, what about FAVISM?
'Favism'?, you say? Well, I had never heard of it either until
a Swiss friend and colleague - a respected botanist and environmentalist
who has been known to have a coconut shell or two of Vanuatu
kava - put me on to it recently. Favism is an inherited condition,
an hereditary (and sometimes fatal) intolerance to beans,
specifically to fava beans from the plant vicia faba. These
beans are a common element of Euro-American nutrition. Certain
Mediterranean populations, especially in southern Italy and
particularly Sardinia, possess an hereditary enzyme deficiency
that triggers a severe reaction to an intake of fava beans
- and sometimes even to fava pollen. Intake can result in
acute hemolytic anaemia and even death. Those affected by
favism can be up to as much as 4% of Mediterranean populations
that have a tendency to lack this enzyme. In Sardinia, though,
it can affect up to 35% of the population. For over a century,
schoolteachers in Sardinia had noted a strange annual occurrence,
mostly amongst their male students. With the arrival of spring
each February, a high percentage of students seemed drained
of energy and this situation lasted each year for three months.
Most just felt lethargic, others died, urinating blood. It
was the time when fava pollen was in the air. There are many
individuals of southern Italian descent in the United States.
Those suffering from favism should not only not eat (fava)
beans, but should not take aspirin, vitamin C, certain anti-malarial
tablets and certain anti-bacterials and certain heart drugs.
Sounds pretty scary. Have you ever heard any suggestion that
(fava) beans should be banned? No, of course not. It is part
of our 'accepted Euro-American lifestyle', like other potential
killers such as alcohol, tobacco and so much of the other
paraphernalia of our polluted side of the world.
But these things come from 'our' world and
'we' have become unconsciously inured to their potential dangers,
we look upon the level of risk as 'acceptable'. Kava - with
no real known risk in the Pacific over millennia (except for
possible temporary symptoms if overdone for long periods,
normal with almost anything) is not from 'our' world, it is
a gift to us from a more ancient corner of the globe, and
we seem to have messed it up. The traditional drink of kava
is associated with some of the world's oldest religions, with
the bridging of that gap between the material and spirit world.
That is why so many early (and even some today) missionaries
in the Pacific were/are so much against it. For Pacific islanders,
this recent Euro-American kava 'ban' is just a continuation
of those early bigoted views. It is almost as if this recent
ban is a confirmation of a certain type of 'Western' attitude
that was so succinctly put once by John Foster Dulles, one
of the most important planners of so much of US foreign policy
since World War II: "For us there are two sorts of people
in the world; there are those who are Christian and support
free enterprise and there are the others". Most Pacific
Islanders are now, though, devout Christians (which does not
mean, however, that the older, traditional, religions have
completely lost their relevance) and Christianity now plays
a larger part in their lives than in those of most of Western
Europe's inhabitants.
Why, then, should worries about kava medicinal
extract have created such press frenzy in Germany from the
end of last year? There are several factors involved, but
one of the major ones was accidental timing. In August 2001
the relevant German government authority officially withdrew
from use the anti-cholesterol drug Lipobay (I think it is
called Baycol in the US) produced by the German pharmaceutical
giant, Bayer. The 'scandal' still reverberates, with possible
court cases still pending in the US, and elsewhere. The Lipobay
affair had many tentacles, rather like the Enron octopus,
but not spreading into the political arena. Of course it had
nothing to do with kava, but in Germany it sort of set the
scene for any even minor thing happening after that. We are
beginning to get into the scary stuff, but that will have
to wait until my next column.
Kirk W Huffman
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