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The Make-Believe World of Modern Healthcare

A look at the hypocritical research interests of the staff at the MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

February 15, 2026



Imagine the bizarre pass to which drug-war "logic" has brought us in the year 2026. We are now fighting for the right of the depressed to assisted suicide, without even mentioning, let alone denouncing, the drug prohibition that keeps them depressed in the first place! How do you parody a situation that itself is the parody of all proper ways of thinking about life and the world!

Imagine, the psychiatric field has been ignoring all outlawed psychoactive medicines all these years, pretending that they do not exist -- or worse, that they are copouts. Yes, anything is a copout for which the psychiatric industry does not get a cut.


Line of people passing condemned building for 'Beneficial Drugs' -- continuing on to building for Assisted Suicide instead.
Modern drug attitudes are beyond parody. Depressed westerners demand that the state use drugs to kill them, but they don't demand their right to the drugs that could make them want to live.




Our "professionals" in the healthcare field live in a land of Christian Science make-believe, a psychologically naive world in which so-called "drugs" have no positive uses for anyone, anywhere, at any time, for any reason, in any dose, ever.

To illustrate what I mean, let's look at some of the "research interests" of the staff at MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics as listed on the website of the University of Chicago. I will be polite and not mention names, but the first on the list is a certain MD/PhD who focuses on "ethics education." Imagine that! Ethics education! The entire healthcare establishment owes its size and power to its totally unethical support and promotion of drug prohibition, which made them the only game in town for healthcare.

Then we have a combined MD and MA who focuses on "vulnerable patient populations." Hmm... Vulnerable populations? How about the depressed who are going to kill themselves because we have denied them medicines that could cheer them up in a trice?

Next, we have a PhD who claims to be interested in "patient autonomy." What a joke! If we had healthcare autonomy, most of us would not be patients in the first place! The healthcare establishment owes its power and size to the outlawing of just two drugs: namely, opium and coca.

Here's a PhD interested in "moral psychology." If only there were such a beast. The healthcare industry is blind to common-sense psychology because of its penchant for drug prohibition and behaviorism. Humph! Moral psychology in an age when we are working hard to keep laughing gas and coca from the depressed -- when we are working hard to keep brain-focusing drugs from those with dementia! If these are ethics, they surely are so only in the Machiavellian sense of that word.

Here is an MD who professes an interest in "Decision making capacity in Alzheimer’s and related dementias." Why is no MD interested in the fact that drug prohibition has outlawed all the medicines that can sharply focus the brain? Why? Because we have demonized them based on our hatred of the sorts of people that we think are using them.

The first thing you notice about the Medical Ethics Center is that it is obviously an extremely expensive high-rise. The money comes, of course, from the hundreds of millions of disempowered who have been turned into patients for life by drug prohibition. This is the Mount Olympus whence the gods of medical science purport to tell us what is ethical? Please!


Picture of the expensive MacLean Center of Clinical Medical Ethics.
Any real center for medical ethics should be all about ending drug prohibition, which denies us the right to take care of our own health.




My letter to Director Peter Angelos, MD, PhD

Good day, Dr. Angelos,

With respect, the most unethical thing about modern medicine for me is its refusal to push back against the drug prohibition which denies us the right to heal and which turns us into "patients" in the first place.

As a 67-year-old chronic depressive, I have spent a lifetime now on Big Pharma drugs that are far harder to kick than heroin 1, all because drug prohibition denied me the right to take care of my own health as I saw fit. So I have difficulty understanding why any group devoted to medical ethics is not screaming out for drug re-legalization, by pointing out that there are far more stakeholders in the drug debate than the white American young people whom we refuse to educate about safe use.

We have now reached the point where the depressed are demanding the right to assisted suicide!!! Surely they should instead be demanding their right to take care of their own health, to use the kinds of substances that could make them want to live!

Drug prohibition also outlaws drugs that can help people focus their minds. We would rather have dementia patients suffer than to use drugs. That's as unethical as it gets.

I consider drug prohibition to be nothing less than a crime against humanity for denying me the right to heal as a depressed person

If any of this means anything to you, I invite you to read more of my hard-earned thoughts on this subject: No one would need assisted suicide if we ended drug prohibition: what Claire Brosseau's case tells us about the warped mindset of the west when it comes to drugs

Best wishes,
Brian

PS I am trying to create a nonprofit called "Depressed Americans for Ending Drug Prohibition," to put politicians on notice that there are millions of silenced stakeholders in the drug debates.



Author's Follow-up:

February 16, 2026



This is not an attack on individuals, nor is the MacLean Center any different than hundreds of other medical behemoths which owe their very existence to drug prohibition. Yet I scorn to soften "my tone" insofar as I am pointing out a grave injustice. I am standing up for a vulnerable population: the hundreds of millions of human beings who go without godsend medicine (and hence their sacred right to heal) thanks to the drug prohibition whose downsides are completely ignored by the medical ethics industry. In other words, the medical ethics industry itself is fundamentally UN-ethical in the age of drug prohibition. That industry is part of the problem insofar as it is helping to normalize drug prohibition by pretending that it does not exist.

And why SHOULD they complain, after all? Drug prohibition is paying the bills.

And someone has to start screaming. Thanks to the absurd logic of drug prohibition, we have reached the point where psychiatrists are now defending assisted suicide for the depressed! Why? Because they refuse to even mention those substances that have been outlawed by xenophobic and racist politicians. We are, of course, meant to fear and hate those substances -- so much so, that we would now prefer that the depressed DIE rather than use them. So we have gone from "better dead than red," to "better dead than to use drugs."

This is the absurd pass to which the choplogic of drug prohibition has brought us, and yet we continue to follow the Pied Piper of Prohibition off the edge of the cliff.

One answer is to organize the many demographics that are overlooked stakeholders in drug prohibition -- the many who live diminished lives because we have decided to judge all psychoactive substances (with the usual hypocritical exceptions, of course) based on what we imagine to be their worst possible use -- as for instance the use of opium by the Chinese to ensnare our white females and so forth.

Drug Prohibition is really the triumph of stupidity. It is the abandonment of all principle in the name of prehistoric fearmongering. It amazes me that no one noticed, even back in 1914, with the effective outlawing of both cocaine and opium, that drug prohibition outlawed the basic right of human beings to take care of their own health as they saw fit. Were all Americans really too philosophically bamboozled to notice this fact and to tremble at the realization?











Notes for essay entitled The Make-Believe World of Modern Healthcare: A look at the hypocritical research interests of the staff at the MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics:

1: Heroin versus Antidepressants DWP (up)




read more essays here





Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US




The Drug War is a religion. The "addict" is a sinner who has to come home to the true faith of Christian Science. In reality, neither physical nor psychological addiction need be a problem if all drugs were legal and we used them creatively to counter problematic use.

Countless millions suffer needlessly in silence because of America's fearmongering about drugs.

Harm Reduction is not enough. We need Benefit Production as well. The autistic should be able to use compassion-enhancing drugs; dementia patients should be able to use drugs that speed up and sharpen mental processes.

"My faith votes and strives to outlaw religions that use substances of which politicians disapprove."

Yeah. That's why it's so pretentious and presumptuous of People magazine to "fight for justice" on behalf of Matthew Perry, as if Perry would have wanted that.

There are hundreds of things that we should outlaw before drugs (like horseback riding) if, as claimed, we are targeting dangerous activities. Besides, drugs are only dangerous BECAUSE of prohibition, which compromises product purity and refuses to teach safe use.

In "Psychedelic Refugee," Rosemary Leary writes: "Fueled by small doses of LSD, almost everything was amusing or weird." -- Rosemary Leary In a non-brainwashed world, such testimony would suggest obvious ways to help the depressed.

Democratic societies need to outlaw prohibition for many reasons, the first being the fact that prohibition removes millions of minorities from the voting rolls, thereby handing elections to fascists and insurrectionists.

The International Observer says the "core issues" causing Mexican drug violence are: "corruption, inequality, and the demand for narcotics in the U.S." Wrong, wrong, wrong. The core issue is DRUG PROHIBITION.

The Drug War is one big entrapment scheme for poor minorities. Prohibition creates an economy that hugely incentivizes drug dealing, and when the poor fall for the bait, the prohibitionists rush in to arrest them and remove them from the voting rolls.


Click here to see All Tweets against the hateful War on Us






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