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.
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!
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
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?
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.
There's a run of addiction movies out there, like "Craving!" wherein they actually personify addiction as a screaming skeleton. Funny, drug warriors never call for a Manhattan Project to end addiction. Addiction is their golden goose.
Imagine the Vedic people shortly after they have discovered soma. Everyone's ecstatic -- except for one oddball. "I'm not sure about these experiences," says he. "I think we need to start dissecting the brains of our departed adherents to see what's REALLY going on in there."
If there were no other problem with antidepressants, they would be wrong for the simple reason that they make a user dependent for life -- not as a bug (as in drugs like opium) but rather as a feature: that's how they "work," by being administered daily for a lifetime.
Champions of indigenous medicines claim that their medicines are not "drugs." But they miss the bigger point: that there are NO drugs in the sense that drug warriors use that term. There are no drugs that have no positive uses whatsoever.
Addiction was not a big thing until the drug war. It's now the boogie-man with which drug warriors scare us into giving up our freedoms. But getting obsessed on one single drug is natural in the age of choice-limiting prohibition.
Mad in America publishes stories of folks who are disillusioned with antidepressants, but they won't publish mine, because I find mushrooms useful. They only want stories about cold turkey and jogging, or nutrition, or meditation.
A lot of drug use represents an understandable attempt to fend off performance anxiety. Performers can lose their livelihood if they become too self-conscious. We only call such use "recreational" because we are oblivious to the common-sense psychology.
I'm looking for a United Healthcare doctor now that I'm 66 years old. When I searched my zip code and typed "alternative medicine," I got one single solitary return... for a chiropractor, no less. Some choice. Guess everyone else wants me to "keep taking my meds."
What prohibitionists forget is that every popular but dangerous activity, from horseback riding to drug use, will have its victims. You cannot save everybody, and when you try to do so by law, you kill far more than you save, meanwhile destroying democracy in the process.
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