Holy Grail of Sex Drugs – Female Viagra

JUNIN, Peru — In a small storefront on a bleak, wind-swept Andean plateau, Timotea Cordova offers an oxygen-deprived visitor a traditional elixir to ward off the breathless effect of the high altitude.

For hundreds of years, Quechua Indians have grown maca, the frost-resistant root that thrives in these frigid Andean highlands, to boost stamina and sex drive. The root, they believe, is nature’s bounty and belongs to everyone and to no one in particular.

Maca growers and indigenous organizations were outraged when, in 2001, a New Jersey-based company, PureWorld Botanicals, received a US patent for exclusive commercial distribution of an extract of maca’s active libido-enhancing compounds that it branded as MacaPure.

Peruvian officials called the patent an "emblematic case" of biopiracy and are preparing to challenge it in US courts.

The maca dispute is just the latest collision between indigenous people and commercial interests over so-called biological prospecting, the growing practice of scouring the globe for exotic plants, microbes, and other living things ripe for commercial exploitation.

from the Boston Globe

Ah, the path not taken. For years this seemed to be the career path of the Dowbrigade, as he plied isolated Amazon tributaries and Andean valleys for shamen, curanderos, herbal medicines, psychotropic plants, substances and preparations. We (in this case the Dowbrigade and a small group of young grad students and researchers from Harvard and other schools working in South America in the 1970’s) called it Ethnobotany and generally fell into it while under the influence of samples of the substances which had found their way back to the campuses in question, or brilliant professors such as Richard Schultes, the father of modern ethnobotany, whose undergraduate course piqued our interest.

Of course, in those days no one was hip to bio-prospecting. Maybe, if we had figured out that many of these magical substances had commercial value it would have influenced our selection of a profession. But probably not. Financial security was the furthest thing from our busy mind in those days, and in some ways it still is, unfortunately.

Oh, the stories we could tell. Sure, we remember maca, but it never did much for us. Perhaps we didn’t notice, as we seem to remember spending our 20’s in a more or less permanent state of arousal. But we were enormously impressed by Chuchuwasi.

Chuchuwasi was mostly an extract of a creeping vine known only to a few small tribes on tributaries of the Ucayali River, mixed by local Shamen with traces of chacropanga and other top-end additives. It was reputed to be the most powerful libido booster known, as far as the female libido was concerned. Sort of like the holy grail of current sex pharma research – a female viagra.

We were impressed because we have seen this stuff work – twice. After a convoluted series of trades and bargains, which involved our parting with both a prized black hooded Moroccan camel-hair cape and an authentic plastic mood ring, we had gotten our hands on a full bottle of fresh Chuchuwasi. It was contained in scratched and dirty bottle which had once contained Ron Cartavio, stopped with a cork and tied with twine.

The first night we had it, we shared it with three Danish backpackers, whom, up to that point, we had assumed by their dress and demeanor were militant dykes. Given their short, butch haircuts, it was impossible to imagine them letting their hair down. Until they tried the Chuchuwasi. Within two hours, they were dancing fiendishly in their underwear around a fire in a clearing. The effects lasted about five memorable hours.

Now, aware of the danger of making assumptions and jumping to conclusions (after all, our first subjects were Scandinavians, scandalously infamous in all things sexual, so the next night we were decided to put what was left of the bottle to a real test. In a nearby village was a small school, the Centro Educativa Santa Teresa, staffed by four young nuns sent from a monastery near Cuzco. They had previously invited us for a visit, and we decided to take them up on it – with the Chuchusasi.

They invited us to try some herbal tea. We got them to try the Chuchuwasi, telling them it was a mild aperitif we had been given by the chief of a village upriver. We had a pleasant chat.

The joy juice started to kick in after about 45 minutes. It was evening, school was out, and the school was somewhat isolated from the rest of the village. This is not the time or place for details, but let us say we were taken to school, for sure. We learned some lessons that night we will never forget, including what lies behind the habits of confirmed Christianity.

The nuns finished off what was left of the Chuchusasi, and we never managed to get our hands on another. We were soon off on the trail of a legendary tree, the result of dozens of generations of genetic tinkering on the part of a family of Colombian shamen. Reputedly, this tree, the end product of a hundred-year project, was the lone example of its genus and smoking a preparation of its bark allowed repeatable and reliable human telepathy.

But we remember where the Chuchuwasi came from, and believe we could find it again. A natural, female equivalent of Viagra could be worth billions to the right company. Maybe its not too late to return to our roots. Any interested backers out there?