Howard Lotsof
1962 observation, advocacy, Dora Weiner Foundation, and patent history.
Search records →Reference
People and institutions
A guide to key people and institutions that appear in Iboga and Ibogaine history, research, public media, policy, cultural scholarship, guidelines, and source records.
How to use this page
This page is a navigation layer, not an honor roll. Names are included because readers need to follow the history and source trail. Inclusion is not endorsement, clinical validation, cultural authority, or a statement that every claim associated with a person or institution is correct.
Search anchors
Deborah Mash
Human Ibogaine research, public interviews, and treatment-development history.
Search records →Kenneth Alper
Clinical literature, reviews, safety context, and history of Ibogaine research.
Search records →Stanley Glick
18-MC and related preclinical development history.
Search records →Giorgio Samorini
Public scholarship on Iboga cults, mythology, and early written records.
Search records →Dimitri Mugianis
Documentary, harm-reduction, and public conversation history.
Search records →ICEERS
Community engagement, conservation, policy, and stewardship context.
Search records →GITA
Global Iboga Therapy Alliance materials, guidelines, and public education history.
Search records →NIDA / FDA / ClinicalTrials.gov
Research, regulatory status, trial registration, and official public records.
Search records →Source-backed profiles
These profiles cover modern-history figures, researchers, advocates, policy figures, and organizations that recur across the evidence, safety, policy, media, and culture lanes. Each keeps advocacy, history, and clinical evidence in separate categories.
PersonConfidence: Moderate
Activism history
Dana Beal
Beal is a central figure in the U.S. ibogaine underground and its decades of public advocacy for ibogaine as an addiction-interruption tool.
- Dana Beal is a longtime political activist who, through the group Cures-not-Wars, helped organize and publicize ibogaine as a proposed treatment for opioid dependence from the 1980s onward.
- He is frequently described in journalism and reference sources as an ibogaine activist rather than a researcher or clinician.
- His advocacy is part of the movement history around ibogaine, separate from the peer-reviewed evidence and the safety literature.
What this does not prove: Activist advocacy is not clinical evidence; his role in ibogaine history says nothing about whether ibogaine is safe or effective.
Encyclopedic biography (secondary)
Search records →PersonConfidence: Moderate
Modern-history figure
Norma Lotsof
Norma Lotsof helped carry Howard Lotsof's ibogaine work forward, including through the Dora Weiner Foundation, and belongs in modern advocacy history.
- Norma Lotsof worked alongside Howard Lotsof and is associated with the Dora Weiner Foundation, the vehicle connected to Howard Lotsof's patents and advocacy.
- She is a figure in ibogaine advocacy history, not a clinical-research source.
What this does not prove: Stewardship of an advocate's legacy is not evidence about ibogaine's safety or effectiveness.
MAPS memorial context for Howard Lotsof (secondary)
Search records →PersonConfidence: Moderate
Clinical history
Claudio Naranjo
Naranjo is an early Western figure in ibogaine-assisted psychotherapy and is cited for mid-20th-century psychotherapeutic use.
- Claudio Naranjo, a Chilean-born psychiatrist, described using ibogaine in psychotherapy in the 1960s, work summarized in his book The Healing Journey (1973).
- His writing is part of the early ibogaine psychotherapy record in the Western literature and is read as history, not as controlled clinical evidence.
- Careful reading keeps this early ibogaine-era practice separate from modern trial data.
What this does not prove: Historical psychotherapeutic practice is not current medical evidence and establishes nothing about safety or efficacy today.
Alper KR, Ibogaine: a review (secondary review, PubMed)
Search records →PersonConfidence: Moderate
Research history
Robert Goutarel
Goutarel is a mid-century French chemist linked to early iboga and ibogaine pharmacology and to later reviews of therapeutic applications.
- Robert Goutarel was a French natural-products chemist whose name appears in mid-century iboga and ibogaine research and in a later review of the pharmacodynamics and therapeutic applications of iboga and ibogaine (Goutarel, Gollnhofer and Sillans, 1993).
- His work is part of the mid-century ibogaine research trail that predates modern trials.
- Goutarel ibogaine references are read as research history tied to publications, not as current evidence.
What this does not prove: Mid-century pharmacology reviews are historical context, not proof of modern clinical safety or effectiveness.
Alper KR, Ibogaine: a review (secondary review, PubMed)
Search records →PersonConfidence: Moderate
Safety advocacy
Juliana Mulligan
Mulligan is a prominent lived-experience ibogaine advocate and safety educator whose public work centers cardiac risk and screening.
- Juliana Mulligan is an ibogaine advocate and safety educator who writes and speaks publicly about ibogaine safety, drawing on her own near-fatal experience.
- Her public work is categorized as advocacy, media, and public education, not as clinical evidence.
- She is frequently cited in coverage of ibogaine safety and harm-reduction discussion.
What this does not prove: Advocacy and lived-experience education are public-education context, not clinical evidence, and do not establish outcomes.
DoubleBlind author profile (public writing)
Search records →PersonConfidence: Moderate
Policy advocacy
W. Bryan Hubbard
Hubbard is the policy figure behind Kentucky's opioid-settlement ibogaine proposal and later Texas-facing advocacy.
- As chair and executive director of the Kentucky Opioid Abatement Advisory Commission, W. Bryan Hubbard proposed dedicating roughly $42 million in opioid-settlement funds to ibogaine research in 2023.
- Hubbard was asked to resign in December 2023, and the Kentucky ibogaine proposal was rejected by the reconstituted commission on January 4, 2024.
- Bryan Hubbard subsequently continued ibogaine advocacy nationally, including attention to Texas ibogaine policy efforts.
What this does not prove: A policy proposal, whether adopted or withdrawn, is not clinical proof and does not create legal treatment access.
NPR: Kentucky backs away from ibogaine settlement plan · Kentucky Lantern: Texas funds trials after Kentucky demurred
Search records →PersonConfidence: Moderate
Veterans advocacy
Marcus and Amber Capone
The Capones are anchor figures in the veteran ibogaine and TBI story and founded the advocacy and philanthropy organization VETS.
- Marcus Capone, a former U.S. Navy SEAL, and Amber Capone founded Veterans Exploring Treatment Solutions (VETS), which funds and advocates for veterans seeking psychedelic-assisted care abroad.
- VETS is a repeatedly cited organization in the veteran-TBI ibogaine coverage stream and helped connect veterans to the studied treatment settings.
- Their advocacy, philanthropy, and media presence are tracked separately from the observational study evidence.
What this does not prove: Founder advocacy and philanthropy are not clinical evidence and do not establish that ibogaine treats TBI.
VETS organization site (org statement)
Search records →OrganizationConfidence: Moderate
Veterans organization
Veterans Exploring Treatment Solutions (VETS)
VETS drives veteran-focused advocacy, philanthropy, and media context around ibogaine and TBI.
- Veterans Exploring Treatment Solutions (VETS), also referred to as VETS, is a nonprofit founded by Marcus and Amber Capone.
- VETS supports veterans seeking psychedelic-assisted therapies and funds related research and travel, and it appears throughout the veteran ibogaine media record.
- IbogaBase treats VETS material as advocacy and organizational context, separate from clinical-study evidence.
What this does not prove: Organizational advocacy and funding are not study evidence and do not establish efficacy or safety.
VETS organization site (org statement)
Search records →PersonConfidence: Moderate
Research figure
Nolan Williams
Williams is the visible Stanford researcher associated with the veteran magnesium-ibogaine TBI study stream.
- Nolan Williams, a Stanford University psychiatrist, is the senior researcher associated with the 2024 Nature Medicine report on magnesium plus ibogaine in 30 special-operations veterans.
- Stanford ibogaine work in this stream is open-label observational research, which can generate hypotheses but cannot establish broad efficacy.
- His research profile is kept separate from endorsement or treatment access.
What this does not prove: Association with a small open-label study does not establish that ibogaine is an effective or safe TBI treatment.
Cherian et al., Nature Medicine 2024 (MISTIC)
Search records →OrganizationConfidence: Moderate
Guidelines and education
Global Ibogaine Therapy Alliance (GITA)
GITA is a widely cited source of ibogaine safety and clinical-guideline material that a safety-first reference should track.
- The Global Ibogaine Therapy Alliance (GITA) published Clinical Guidelines for Ibogaine-Assisted Treatment, a frequently cited document in ibogaine safety discussion.
- Those clinical guidelines emphasize cardiac screening, medical monitoring, exclusion criteria, and emergency readiness.
- IbogaBase describes GITA guidelines as source material, not as an IbogaBase-endorsed or IbogaBase-published protocol.
What this does not prove: Published guidelines are source material describing risk-management practice; they are not IbogaBase endorsement, not proof of efficacy, and not a protocol to follow.
GITA clinical guidelines (org statement)
Search records →PersonConfidence: Moderate
Analog research
David Olson
Olson's lab designed tabernanthalog, a non-hallucinogenic ibogaine-inspired analog widely discussed in the field.
- David Olson, a chemist and neuroscientist at the University of California, Davis, led work reported in Nature (2021) describing tabernanthalog (TBG), a non-hallucinogenic analog inspired by ibogaine.
- Tabernanthalog is a designed molecule with its own pharmacology; David Olson's findings are preclinical and are not evidence about ibogaine in humans.
- TBG is tracked in the analog lane, not treated as an ibogaine synonym.
What this does not prove: Preclinical analog findings in animals are not human clinical proof and do not transfer to ibogaine itself.
Cameron et al., Nature 2021 (tabernanthalog)
Search records →Reading rule
For each person or institution, ask what kind of source you are reading: peer-reviewed paper, patent, archive, guideline, interview, documentary, company claim, clinic claim, agency record, or cultural source. A person's importance in the field does not automatically make every statement evidence.