Word: amahuaja
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Dates: during 2007-2007
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Women the world over may find a miracle brewing in a place called Uruka Amahuaja, a cluster of huts in the Venezuelan rain forest, reachable only by dugout canoe. Biologist Ramiro Royero has set up a computerized field office there to collect data on a plant still unknown to the outside world: a shrub whose poinsettia-like leaves are steeped as a medicinal tea by the Piaroa tribe to relieve menstrual cramps--without the caffeine jitters and other side effects caused by most of today's commercial remedies...
What, if anything, the participants hash out in Geneva will be closely watched as far away as Aska Aja, another Piaroa village upriver from Uruka Amahuaja. There, Royero recently met with a shaman, Jacinto Martinez, 62, whose wife had died hours earlier from an operable eye tumor. The tribe had no access to a surgeon--nor money to pay one. For years, Martinez has helped scientists identify plants near Aska Aja that treat everything from skin rashes to diarrhea. What he would like in return, he says, waving away flies from his wife's wrapped corpse, is some...
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