The Make-Believe World of Modern Healthcare

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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?

Assisted Suicide for the Depressed

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

Drug prohibition is a caustic lye that destroys every democratic freedom that it comes in contact with.

Drug prohibition is a crime against humanity. It is the outlawing of our right to take care of our own health.

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.

Med-dependent patients of the world, unite -- to end drug prohibition, that is. You have nothing to lose but your prescription bottles and your status as a ward of the healthcare state.

We need a Controlled Prohibitionists Act, to get psychiatric help for those who think that prohibition makes sense despite its appalling record of causing civil wars overseas and devastating inner cities.

The main form of drug war propaganda is censorship. That's why most Americans cannot imagine any positive uses for psychoactive substances, because the media and the government won't allow that.

Thanks to the Drug War, folks are forced to become amateur chemists to profit from DMT, a drug that occurs naturally in most living things. This is the same Drug War that is killing American young people wholesale by refusing to teach safe use and regulate drug supply.

Now the US is bashing the Honduran president for working with "drug cartels." Why don't we just be honest and say why we're REALLY upset with the guy? Drugs is just the excuse, as always, now what's the real reason? Stop using the drug war to disguise American foreign policy.

Psychiatrists never acknowledge the biggest downside to modern antidepressants: the fact that they turn you into a patient for life. That's demoralizing, especially since the best drugs for depression are outlawed by the government.

Was looking for natural sleeping aids online. Everyone ignores the fact that all the stuff that REALLY works has been outlawed! We live in a pretend world wherein the outlawed stuff no longer even exists in our minds! We are blind to our lost legacy regarding plant medicines!

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

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Unless otherwise indicated, no AI is used in the creation of site content. These essays represent the original ideas of their author and not the ideas that the author SHOULD have based on an algorithmic parsing of existing data. For more on this subject, consider the AI-related viewpoints to which the author subscribes as delineated in the New York Times opinion piece entitled "What 370,000 College Essays Tell Us About A.I.’s Effects on Creativity" by Rebecca Winthrop of the Brookings Institution.

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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

Author's Follow-up:

February 16, 2026

Assisted Suicide for the Depressed

Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US

Break the ice with a sledgehammer: place this book on your coffee table.

Diary of a Drug Fiend