[Link] Philanthropy, psychedelics and effective altruism

Marc Gunther just put out a new piece (a) on philanthropy, psychedelics, and effective altruism.

The topics the article goes over:

The latest on psychedelics as therapy

The latest on psychedelics for everyone

An unusual array of donors

however...

With a budget of $1.8bn, the National Institute of Mental Health is the largest funder of research on mental illness in the world, but almost none of this money goes towards studies of psychedelics.

With a few exceptions, drug companies are disinterested as well.

there’s growing evidence that psychedelics can help and relatively few philanthropic dollars flow into the cause — well under $100m a year, by my estimate. By comparison, the American Cancer Society spent $838m and the American Heart Association spent $890m in their most recent fiscal years.

Psychedelics’ transformative potential

His conclusion at the end of the article:

"For philanthropists, there may be risk in getting behind psychedelic research and advocacy — but the potential upside is huge."