Brownstone Insights

On December 14, two ISIS-affiliated gunmen massacred 15 unarmed civilians at a Hanukkah festival at Bondi Beach, the icon of Australia’s breezy way of life. Just three police officers guarded the festival. One of the shooters, Naveed Akram, had come to the attention of the Australian security services in 2019, and yet in 2020, his father, an Indian-born non-citizen, was able to legally purchase multiple firearms. Just weeks before their murder spree, the father and son duo spent nearly a month in the Southern Philippines, a hot spot for Islamic terrorism.

Over the past two years, the centre-left Labor government downplayed a wave of never-before-seen anti-Semitism in the country that included the firebombing of Jewish businesses and a synagogue. Jews, however, sit outside the woke matrix of concern and so were excluded from the usual progressive hyper-policing of every perceived microaggression.

More recently, the government, whose primary role is security, decided its highest priority was micromanaging the Internet browsing habits of everyday people via its teen social media ban. In reality, these efforts amounted to a mass surveillance program that now forces adult users to ID themselves to access a huge swathe of the internet. If only the government had paid the same level of attention to real safety as it did to eSafety it might have stopped kids being shot and killed while playing at the beach.

We saw the depth of the government’s distraction towards micro-management in the Australian Twitter Files, where the “Social Cohesion Division” of the Department of Home Affairs (DHA) tasked itself with policing jokes about the government’s Covid response. The DHA is responsible for national security and oversees Australia’s intelligence agency, ASIO.

Staff at the “Extremism Insights and Communication” program couldn’t even spell, let alone keep their eyes on the ball. Are we surprised DHA’s sloppy work has led us to this tragedy?

Rather than focus on the kind of extremism that can get you shot, the “Social Cohesion Division” felt much of its time would be well-spent reporting jokes, like the one below, to Twitter:

As reported by the Australian, between 2017 and 2022, DHA made “13,636 referrals to digital platforms to review content against their own terms of service.” 9000 were terrorism-related, and 4,213 were listed as “Covid-19 related.” Meaning DHA spent fully one-third of its time monitoring jokes and criticism of the government’s Covid policies (including people who didn’t even live in or have any relationship to Australia), compared to tracking potential and actual terrorists.

I remarked multiple times in interviews, including on Sky News in May of 2023, that DHA’s hyper-monitoring of Covid dissent was off-mission and was in fact putting Australians at risk from real threats.

To cover for their incompetence, the government is now proposing a host of laws to restrict speech, protest, and gun ownership (Australia already has some of the world’s strictest gun laws). While there are some loopholes that I support (such as banning non-citizens from owning guns), the vast majority of these proposals are a distraction. The government spoke out of both sides of its mouth on anti-Semitism and refused to deal with the bad actors because they didn’t want to alienate their voter base. The kumbaya migration and multiculturalism policies of both parties have also proven a failure, and it seems our intelligence services can’t conduct basic police work.

Woke culture also has much to answer for. Journalist Mark Mordue put it well earlier this week: “We have lost sight of its dangers as aspirations for tolerance become a Trojan horse for parasitic and destructive ideologies. The ostensibly good and ideal is being used to advance the cancerous in our culture.”

The Albanese government is now in a deep crisis. The Prime Minister is reviled by the Jewish community and by increasingly larger sections of the Australian people. He speaks nervously and defensively, and avoids public appearances because of the hostile reaction. The public feeling towards Albanese is the exact opposite of what New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern was able to achieve after the 2019 Christchurch shootings, though that brought with it other problems.

The flailing response is apparently Australia’s “toughest laws on hate speech” that “lower the threshold” and give even more powers to a clearly incompetent government. What could go wrong? “Hatred starts with language” and is the “gateway to violence,” said the Prime Minister yesterday, while also emphasising the problem of “misinformation.” On the cards are banning certain slogans that are far from any direct incitement to violence, anything to distract. Words, not actions, are again the target.

This language policing is a well-worn strategy in the woke playbook. Even if it will now be predominantly directed towards Islamic radicalism, at some point, it will be turned on others. Progressives, too, are calling for action on misinformation to add to the technocratic obsession and distract from the bleeding obvious: the government has let in the wrong people, failed to authoritatively condemn anti-Semitism, and our migration rate is too high to allow for real integration.

Australia is an increasingly fragmented society where the obsession with diversity has actually led to division. Every day we have less in common with each other, less shared culture and values, and less capacity to self-regulate. As a result, the authoritarian State is called upon to keep the peace. But legislating harmony through force will not solve Australia’s identity crisis.

It must also be said that it is not only the centre-left government that is pushing for stricter speech and protest controls; many on the right are too, as are some sections of the Jewish community (of which I loosely form part). This is understandable, but it undermines the “Australian values” these communities want to protect.

The Christchurch massacre brought together the security state and civil society for the Christchurch Call, a boon for the former, who could now justify their overreach in the friendly language of progressivism, while the latter then failed to hold government overreach to account. We can’t allow this tragedy to be exploited in the same way. There was no free speech failure here – this was a government failure. A silver lining is that the Albanese government has none of the goodwill Ardern was able to muster from the crisis that confronted her.

Last week, the Albanese government made a spectacle of itself, claiming how safe it was going to make everything (everywhere, all the time) through the eSafety Commission’s draconian teen social media ban. Australia was seeking to position itself as a global leader, exporting our managerial-safetyist model to the world. In the week that followed, Australians had their bodies shattered, and blood spilled on the sands of Bondi. We don’t need eSafety, we need real safety.

A government that can’t do basic police work is in no position to be setting up a surveillance state, and we should not lose our rights because of their incompetence. Rather than punish the people, the Prime Minister, the Minister for Home Affairs, and the head of ASIO should all resign.

Republished from the author’s Substack

Fund the Problem, Fund the Solution

Brownstone Institute — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 09:12:44 GMT

BY BROWNSTONE INSTITUTE

Public culture has been rocked by an amazing revelation. The Southern Poverty Law Center is the designated cop on the beat against hate. As it turns out, they were funding a good portion of the hate against which they claimed to be fighting. It was all part of a fundraising scam. It worked: they have $832 million in the bank, some stashed in the Cayman Islands. Some nonprofit!

The implications of this revelation are profound. They force a revision of at least a decade of American political culture. For example, you know the Charlottesville, VA, protests of 2017 that Biden said had inspired him to seek the presidency? SPLC was paying a leading organizer who arranged transportation. Their fundraising soared from $51 million in a year to $133 million.

What corrupts nonprofits this way? Part of it comes down to IRS rules. They have to raise a third of their revenue from public sources in a five-year period. Otherwise they have to become a foundation and give rather than get money. That creates a perverse incentive, and explains why so many nonprofits have a huge division devoted to fundraising.

From its inception, Brownstone Institute rejected such schemes. We set out to be a real charity, doing things the old-fashioned way with a mission first. That’s why we have no “development” department. Our generous donors have stepped up anyway. We’ve been outspent by the bad guys by millions to one but that’s not diminished the influence of this little institution. On the contrary.

The public health establishment is terrified at what is happening. Pharma-owned politicians are losing elections. The flu shot mandate for military service has been summarily repealed. Moderna and Pfizer are having trouble even recruiting for drug trials. The new pick for the CDC is already under fire for not having resisted Covid-era totalitarianism.

Good things are happening, even if it is an uphill struggle. One suggestion to you concerning the above problem: stop giving to institutions that do not need your money except for compliance. Start giving to small organizations with ideals that have a proven record of effectiveness.

Brownstone truly needs your support right now if we are to step up and deal with these new pressures. We invite your support. The cause of freedom itself – deeply rooted in the culture as such – needs your commitment today.

The Brownstone Show is going well. Tune in to these episodes.Go to the Brownstone Show.

We have out now a template for all nations of the world to leave the World Health Organization. The Right to Health Sovereignty is now available at Amazon. See all our books.

These are the sorts of topics we talk about at Brownstone Supper Clubs, now coast to coast. Pick one and go!

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Here is some content since our last email.

The Mystery of Falling Fertility By Tomas Furst. Most of the pattern can be explained by a change in the behavior of women – despite official recommendation, pregnant women tried to avoid the experimental vaccines. We hypothesize that the mRNA-based experimental vaccines prevented some women from getting pregnant.

AI Deletes Routine White Collar Jobs By Peter St Onge. The Industrial Revolution took jobs from people who work with their hands — routine physical work. But AI is taking routine paperwork — people who forward emails, schedule meetings, and sit on diversity committees.

Government Cannot Make Us Healthy By Mollie Engelhart. Team D.C. has been stopped from pursuing dramatic change that is desperately needed. Courts have intervened. Pharma-owned politicians have blocked reform. Corporate kingpins have thrown their weight around and put up barriers, despite the voter mandate.

The WHO Is Building a Supranational Vaccine Authorization Mechanism By Yaffa Shir-Raz and David Shuldman. The materials point to something more consequential: the use of an international emergency authorization pathway to shape regulatory decisions inside a sovereign state, advanced through overlapping professional networks, without the organization assuming the legal responsibilities borne by national regulators.

The Government Failed at Bondi, Now It Punishes the People By Andrew Lowenthal. A government that can’t do basic police work is in no position to be setting up a surveillance state, and we should not lose our rights because of their incompetence.

Injected Vaccines, Mucosal Immunity, and Incoherent Estimates of Effectiveness By Eyal Shahar. It is time for the FDA to implement a major revision in the approval of the Covid vaccine and the flu vaccine. It is not enough to show effectiveness against symptomatic infection by the test-negative design or by rising antibody titers.

A Reckoning Is Underway at the FDA By Maryanne Demasi. STAT published an account describing a meeting in which Beth Høeg presented evidence of young people who had died after Covid vaccination. According to STAT, her findings triggered pushback from career FDA regulators who feared the implications of acknowledging fatal cases.

General Health Checks Are Harmful By Peter C Gotzsche. Mammography screening is harmful and general health checks are also harmful. Like breast screening, they detect many things that should not have been treated because they are either insignificant or will disappear again.

Health Freedom: The Smoking Gun By Adam Garrie. There are important parallels between the fight for health freedom and the success that advocates of the Second Amendment have achieved. By learning from the success of 2A advocates, supporters of health freedom can change the culture and legal precedent.

Marty Makary: The FDA’s Quiet Blockade on Safer Nicotine By Roger Bate. There are moments in public health when the path forward is unusually clear, when the evidence aligns with behavior, and when policy has a genuine opportunity to reduce harm at scale. This should be one of those moments.

What (and How) Should Our Students Be Taught Today? By Bert Olivier. There are many – too many – intellectual sources, contemporary as well as throughout the history of the world, from which I could draw to answer it in a very provisional manner, so I’ll have to be selective, but here goes.

Cocooning by Way of the Tdap Vaccine By Robert Malone. Current guidelines (e.g., CDC as of 2025) de-emphasize cocooning as a primary strategy due to implementation challenges and limited evidence supporting standalone effectiveness. Maternal Tdap vaccination during pregnancy is now prioritized for direct antibody transfer to the infant.

To Win at All Costs By Meryl Nass. I was not a close observer of the case, but the win seemed to hinge on documents obtained during discovery that revealed Monsanto knew a great deal about the injuries its product caused but deliberately hid those findings.

The WHO Is Building a Supranational Vaccine Authorization Mechanism

Brownstone Institute — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 09:08:13 GMT

BY YAFFA SHIR-RAZ AND DAVID SHULDMAN

“I need to ask someone else to take responsibility for the second part of the approvals process, so that I won’t have a conflict of interest. I’m also working with Bill Gates and the World Health Organization on the vaccine itself.”

This admission of a conflict of interest was made by Prof. Lester Schulman, secretary of the Ministry of Health’s polio committee, in March 2023, during an internal discussion about approving the importation into Israel of a new polio vaccine. The vaccine was developed and promoted by the World Health Organization in collaboration with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and its approval pathway relied on a new emergency authorization mechanism the WHO has developed in recent years: the EUL (Emergency Use Listing).

Although the remark was framed as a technical aside, it was an unusual confession of a conflict of interest by the committee’s secretary. Its seriousness is compounded by the fact that it was made only after the committee had already voted by an overwhelming majority to initiate the process of bringing the vaccine to Israel, and after it had already worked vigorously to persuade the Pharmaceutical Division to cooperate.

The quotation does not appear in the official minutes of the meeting that were provided to us. It is heard on an audio recording of the session, one of several recordings passed on to us by a whistleblower. The minutes were provided only following a Freedom of Information request and subsequent litigation.

The episode is serious in its own right. But it goes far beyond a local episode of personal conflict of interest or an administrative failure within Israel’s health system. The materials point to something more consequential: the use of an international emergency authorization pathway to shape regulatory decisions inside a sovereign state, advanced through overlapping professional networks, without the organization assuming the legal responsibilities borne by national regulators.

In the United States, recent political debates over withdrawal from the World Health Organization were widely framed as a clash between scientific consensus and institutional criticism. Yet the Israeli case, and the materials in our possession, point to a much larger picture.

This was the first implementation of the EUL mechanism within a country with a functioning Western regulatory system. Israel served here as a regulatory test case: an attempt to determine whether it is possible, in practice, to shape an approval pathway inside a sovereign state without holding formal regulatory authority and without being subject to the judicial and parliamentary oversight that applies to a national regulator. In doing so, it exposes how the organization has been operating in recent years: no longer merely an advisory and coordinating body, but an institution that creates operating frameworks that, in practice, shape approval processes inside sovereign states.

The EUL: An Emergency Mechanism or a De Facto Regulatory Infrastructure?

The World Health Organization was established in 1948 as an intergovernmental body tasked with providing professional assistance and technical guidance, promoting research, collecting knowledge, and developing recommendations for its member states. Article 22 of the WHO Constitution leaves states the right to opt out of its regulations, a clear indication that the organization was not granted regulatory powers such as authorizing drugs and vaccines or supervising their manufacture. These areas remained the exclusive responsibility of states themselves, which also bear legal and public responsibility for the decisions of their national health authorities.

In recent years, the WHO has developed mechanisms that expand its influence beyond recommendations and, in effect, enable it to directly influence regulatory authorization processes within states. The central mechanism is the EUL, an independent WHO emergency procedure that is not part of national authorization systems.

According to the organization’s documents, the EUL is defined as a temporary, risk-based authorization for the use of unapproved medical products in emergency situations where no approved product is available, and on the basis of partial data on quality, safety, and efficacy. These documents emphasize that the EUL is not licensure, and that it does not replace national regulatory authorization.

But what is defined as a temporary bridge measure that does not replace national regulation becomes, in practice, an operating framework. Once EUL is activated, it maps out the timetable, the milestones, and the starting point of the discussion. This restructuring of the decision-making process also generates pressures that extend beyond the initial authorization stage. As Dr. David Bell, a former WHO medical officer, notes: “Once a product has been granted emergency authorization and widely deployed, there is strong institutional pressure to overlook its limitations and proceed toward full approval, as reversing course may carry significant professional and reputational risks.”

Instead of a regulator initiating an independent process based on its own data and judgment, it operates within a workflow whose structure has already been defined in the international arena.

The institutionalization of the EUL reflects a broader shift in regulatory practice. During Covid-19, emergency authorization became the operative pathway for deploying novel vaccines at population scale within Western regulatory systems. That experience established the practical legitimacy of approving and distributing vaccines on the basis of interim data under declared emergency conditions. A regulatory model tested within sovereign systems had become normalized.

The EUL translates this logic to the international level. It creates a structured emergency pathway through which products can advance prior to conventional Western licensure. Once activated, the pathway structures expectations, timelines, and decision points for states considering adoption.

Under the International Health Regulations (2005), a Public Health Emergency of International Concern is defined primarily in relation to international spread and coordinated response, without a quantified severity threshold. During the 2009 H1N1 pandemic, controversy arose over the WHO’s pandemic phase definitions, which emphasized geographic spread rather than clinical severity. Where emergency criteria are flexible, the declaration carries procedural consequences: it opens access to accelerated authorization mechanisms. Over time, this flexibility has lowered the practical threshold for invoking emergency-based authorization mechanisms.

Rather than independently constructing a full evidentiary assessment from first principles, states deliberate within a predefined emergency framework. The activation of the pathway reorders the sequence of decision-making. Questions of timing, alignment, and external validation take precedence over the threshold question of whether the evidentiary basis would independently justify authorization under ordinary regulatory standards.

nOPV2: The First Implementation of the Mechanism

The nOPV2 polio vaccine discussed in Israel was the first product to receive EUL status from the WHO. The listing was granted on November 13, 2020, making the vaccine the first implementation of the new procedure. Beginning in March 2021, it was deployed in Nigeria and later in additional countries in Africa and Asia.

The vaccine is manufactured in Indonesia by a company called Bio Farma. Its development and clinical studies were funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which also committed $1.2 billion to “support efforts” to advance it, as part of the Polio Eradication Strategy 2022–2026.

On December 21, 2023, the vaccine also received WHO Prequalification (PQ) status. This procedure is not national licensure and is not equivalent to approval by a stringent Western regulator. It is a WHO assessment mechanism that enables UN agencies and countries to rely on it for procurement and use through international health mechanisms. Although PQ is not part of EUL, in practice it signals a shift from a temporary emergency framework to a broader and continuing distribution pathway that no longer depends on the declaration of a specific emergency.

The trajectory of nOPV2 illustrates more than the introduction of a new vaccine. It demonstrates the operationalization of an emergency-based authorization model beyond a single national regulator. A product listed under an international emergency mechanism progressed from provisional deployment to broader institutional endorsement, without passing through the conventional sequence of Western licensure. It is this pathway that was subsequently introduced into Israel’s regulatory deliberations.

How the International Pathway Was Embedded Inside the Ministry of Health

The discussions in the ERT committee make it possible to examine how the EUL pathway was integrated in practice into decision-making inside Israel’s Ministry of Health.

The ERT (Emergency Response Team) committee at Israel’s Ministry of Health was established in March 2022 as an advisory committee to manage the response to a polio outbreak detected in sewage testing in Israel. The committee’s mandate included receiving ongoing updates, formulating operational recommendations, adapting vaccination policy, and managing public information efforts. The committee is chaired by Prof. Manfred Green, head of the International Public Health Leadership Program at the University of Haifa’s School of Public Health, and its secretary is Prof. Lester Schulman, an epidemiologist who headed the Central Environmental Virology Laboratory at Sheba Medical Center (Tel Hashomer).

In its early deliberations, the committee dealt with poliovirus type 3, which, according to its documents, originated from the live-attenuated vaccine. Even in these discussions, there is already a clear sensitivity to the WHO’s position. The committee chair explicitly states that if Israel does not launch a vaccination campaign, it may be perceived by the WHO as a “rogue” state. This perception does not need to be imposed externally. It emerges within a shared professional environment in which deviation is experienced not merely as a policy disagreement, but as a departure from the norms of the group. These dynamics are consistent with observations from within international health institutions.

As Dr. David Bell, a former WHO medical officer, notes: “Delegates in international health forums are often not acting primarily as national representatives. They are part of a large professional network, trained in similar institutions, meeting regularly, and sharing a common worldview. These networks are supported by major private funders and institutional partners, which further reinforces alignment across countries.

Within these networks, dissenting positions are often perceived as unscientific or backward, creating strong pressure to align. Countries may be reluctant to deviate for fear of appearing outside the accepted consensus.”

Bell further characterizes this process as a form of soft power operating through institutional culture rather than formal authority: “This is how soft power operates: shared incentives, professional culture, and support from major funding bodies allow preferred approaches to spread across systems, often without the need for formal coercion.”

Accordingly, the team recommended a “Two Drops” campaign using the existing live-attenuated vaccine (OPV3). The campaign began in April 2022 and was halted two months later. Although uptake among the primary target population was minimal, the Ministry presented the campaign as a success and announced the elimination of the strain from sewage surveillance.

Shortly thereafter, the Ministry of Health announced that immediately upon eliminating type 3, type 2 was detected in sewage, which also derives from a live-attenuated vaccine. Although to date no paralysis cases from this strain have been found in Israel, the ERT committee began, already in mid-2022, to consider the option of using the new nOPV2 vaccine. At first it arose as a general reference, but it soon became the central axis of the discussion.

At this stage, the discussion already linked epidemiological assessment to procedural consequences. Even in the absence of clinical cases, escalation was considered in relation to the regulatory options it would make available.

From late summer 2022, the nOPV2 approval pathway was presented to committee members in several meetings, using presentations and background materials provided by the WHO. The minutes we received indicate that the discussion was based on WHO presentations and background materials. The minutes contain no record of a full manufacturer dossier, independent regulatory data, or an opinion from any Western regulatory authority.

On December 1, 2022 (Minutes ERT 21), the ERT committee voted by an overwhelming majority to initiate the process of bringing the new vaccine to Israel. According to the minutes, 14 of 15 committee members voted in favor of the recommendation, as did all six Ministry of Health representatives who participated in the vote. At that point, the principled decision had been made. The discussion shifted from whether to adopt the pathway to how to implement it.

Immediately following the vote, the regulatory question shifted to implementation and to the procedural steps required to activate the pathway. In a committee discussion held on February 28, 2023, Dr. Sharon Alroy-Preis suggested that a formal emergency declaration might be necessary in order to enable the relevant authorization track, remarking that “perhaps if there are two clinical cases we will be able to persuade the minister to declare an emergency.” The exchange indicates that the declaration of emergency was discussed in direct connection with the procedural track it would enable.

Conflicts of Interest on the Committee: Advisers to the WHO Leading the Recommendation to Bring the Vaccine to Israel

During the months in which the committee’s secretary, Prof. Schulman, presented the pathway for bringing nOPV2 to Israel, the committee members were not presented with information about his conflicts of interest with the WHO and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. In practice, during that period, Schulman served as a technical consultant on the vaccine through McKing Consulting Corporation, a professional contractor working on projects of the WHO and the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI), which is centrally supported by the Gates Foundation.

He also received a support grant from the WHO, likewise for consulting related to nOPV2. Moreover, he received travel funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to participate in dedicated nOPV2 working meetings in London in February 2023; that is, precisely during the period relevant to the ERT committee’s deliberations on the vaccine. Added to this is co-authorship on an international scientific publication from June 2023 that was conducted with the support of the WHO, GPEI, and the manufacturer Bio Farma.

In other words, this was not a general affiliation or a distant professional past. It was a direct, built-in conflict of interest related to the specific vaccine under discussion and to its unusual approval pathway under EUL. Schulman declared these ties in official scientific publications, but they were not brought to the committee’s attention in real time, even as he was the one presenting the approval pathway and leading the professional discussion. When the Ministry of Health was asked to address the issue, both in the Freedom of Information process and in a formal request to the spokesperson, it responded categorically that no conflicts of interest existed in the committee. This response contradicts Schulman’s own public declarations.

Only about three months after the vote, during a further discussion held on February 28, 2023, Schulman asked that “someone replace me” in the continuation of the approvals process, so that he “won’t have a conflict of interest,” as though it were a minor technical matter rather than a substantive failure, and without addressing the fact that the principled decision had already been made on the basis of materials and a regulatory framework that he himself had helped advance internationally. Moreover, after this admission, Schulman’s conflicts of interest were not documented in the meeting minutes that were provided to us following the FOI litigation.

Schulman was not the only senior committee member with a conflict of interest involving the WHO. The committee chair, Prof. Manfred Green, recently acknowledged in a Knesset Health Committee discussion that his partner, Prof. Dorit Nitzan-Kluski, also serves on the polio committee. Indeed, Prof. Nitzan-Kaluski is listed as a member already in the original appointment letter, in March 2022. Yet only a month before that appointment, in February 2022, she formally completed her senior role as the WHO Regional Emergencies Director for Europe. Moreover, a few weeks later, with the outbreak of the war between Russia and Ukraine, she returned to intensive professional activity on behalf of the WHO as an Incident Manager in Ukraine, a role she performed in parallel with her membership in the committee.

This becomes all the more problematic when the committee chair presents the WHO’s position to members as an “ultimatum” that must be adopted, without full disclosure that his partner, serving alongside him, is a senior operational figure within that same organization.

This is not merely a matter of personal ethics. The committee secretary, who drafted, promoted, and led the presentation of the vaccine and the EUL pathway to Israel, was simultaneously active internationally in advancing them, while the committee chair adopted the same framework. The result was that Israel’s decision-making unfolded within the same professional network that promoted the vaccine and its approval pathway in the international arena.

Under such circumstances, it is difficult to speak of independent national regulatory judgment when the same actors are involved in promoting the pathway both globally and within the Israeli deliberations.

“Who Will Blink First”

In stark contrast to the confidence with which the vaccine’s safety and manufacturing integrity were presented in the ERT committee, the minutes show that the Pharmaceutical Division, Israel’s competent regulatory authority for authorizing medicines and vaccines, expressed reservations, and even opposition, at an early stage.

This opposition was mentioned several times during the discussions, including the reasons raised by division staff: the absence of licensure by any Western country, the fact that the vaccine is manufactured in Indonesia, a country to which Israel’s Ministry of Health has no direct regulatory access, meaning it cannot independently examine manufacturing conditions at the plant, and reliance on an emergency mechanism that had not yet been completed.

In one discussion, Dr. Sharon Alroy-Preis describes the Pharmaceutical Division’s position unambiguously: “Our pharmacy division refuses at this stage to take a vaccine or to approve a vaccine coming from Indonesia with no Western regulatory process at all. That’s a very, very big obstacle…Right now our pharmacy division is saying: ‘We will not approve such a thing. It doesn’t look to us like it meets any standards that we can approve.’ “

Yet these reservations were not presented as a regulatory red line, but as a problem to be “solved” in order to continue advancing within the EUL pathway. The regulator’s opposition did not stop the process. It was framed as an operational obstacle.

This produced a reversal of roles: an advisory committee effectively shaped the regulatory pathway, while the body legally authorized to approve or reject vaccines was expected to adapt to a framework that had already been set, and at times to justify its own resistance.

Against this backdrop, the discussion focused on finding an external regulator that would provide legitimacy, first and foremost the UK regulator. The minutes repeatedly refer to Britain as the country that might approve the vaccine before Israel. For example, in one discussion (ERT 17), Prof. Ian Miskin, one of the committee members, states explicitly that “we probably shouldn’t be the first in the West to use nOPV2, ” and that while the United States likely would not use the vaccine, “the UK might.” In the February 28, 2023 discussion, Dr. Sharon Alroy-Preis framed the situation even more explicitly: “Maybe we’ll challenge them – every country that hears ‘Indonesia’ doesn’t want to be the first…so everyone is waiting to see who will blink first.”

This dynamic captures the position local decision-makers found themselves in within this mechanism. Although they did not have the basic data necessary for a proper regulatory authorization of a vaccine, they did not challenge the pathway itself. Instead, they searched for a Western country to provide the first stamp of approval. The international framework had already been accepted as the starting point. The remaining question was only which country would supply the legitimacy that would allow others to follow. In such a setting, the scope of criticism narrows. The focal point is no longer vaccine safety or manufacturing quality, but joining a pathway already defined, and the fear is not scientific error but deviating from the line.

This dynamic cannot be explained solely by institutional caution. Once the EUL framework was accepted as the operative reference point, deliberation shifted from independent evidentiary assessment to questions of timing and alignment. The regulatory threshold itself was no longer the central issue. What mattered was whether, and by whom, the pathway would first be validated in the West. The architecture of decision-making had already been set.

“We Got Nothing, Nothing, Nothing Except WHO Presentations”

About two months after the ERT committee had already voted and made a principled decision to advance the introduction of nOPV2 to Israel under the EUL mechanism, and after months of discussions in which the gap between the pathway mapped out in the committee and the regulator’s position only widened, Dr. Alroy-Preis asked to invite Dr. Ofra Axelrod, head of the Pharmaceutical Division, to explain her opposition.

In the subsequent discussion, when Dr. Axelrod did come to the committee and systematically presented the data and information available to the Pharmaceutical Division, it became clear that the gap was far larger than could be inferred from earlier discussions. What she laid out showed that this was not merely a discrete regulatory disagreement or a “difficulty” that could be bridged, but an absence of the basic regulatory data required to evaluate vaccine safety, manufacturing integrity, and the regulatory pathway itself.

At the outset, Axelrod clarified what constituted the division’s evidentiary base: “We, of course, got nothing, nothing, nothing except WHO presentations. On the basis of that, to approve something, that won’t pass.” In effect, she revealed that these presentations were the only materials presented to the committee and had served as the basis for the vote to begin the approval process for importing the vaccine into Israel.

Contrary to the impression created earlier, in which the vaccine was presented as being on an advanced pathway, Axelrod described a vaccine that was “still in a clinical trial…a vaccine at a very, very early stage…it doesn’t even have prequalification, which is really the most basic approval there is.” She also addressed the vaccine’s status under EUL and noted: “There was an initial recommendation in 2020, and since then no final decision has been made…”

Even the hope that a Western country would soon authorize the vaccine proved, according to her, unfounded. “Right now, because of the gaps and lack of information, the British do not intend to approve use of this vaccine in the UK. Even if it becomes truly essential, and maybe even a temporary approval, it’s very challenging. After that conversation we asked the British for materials. There was nothing; they did not pass anything on. In early February we approached the British again, and the answer was very evasive. The answer was: ‘We’ll try to create a direct connection for you with the company.’ Since then we haven’t heard anything, not from the British and not from the company. “

As for manufacturing itself, Axelrod described a plant not recognized by Western regulatory authorities, and a picture of inadequate regulatory oversight. “The plant is not recognized, it manufactures vaccines for the developing world, for WHO countries…the manufacturing company avoided direct contact with the MHRA, the UK regulator. They did not give them a dossier or any information they received directly from the company…eventually, the British managed to get the company’s agreement to conduct a GMP inspection. The British visited the company and found gaps. They did not specify what they were. And the company has not undergone any GMP inspection by an authority we recognize…”

Beyond the regulatory gaps, Axelrod’s comments also illuminate the lack of transparency in the committee’s work. She told the committee that a Freedom of Information request had already been filed with the Ministry concerning the vaccine discussions. “I have to share with you that we already received an FOI request about this vaccine. We haven’t approved anything yet, and already people are asking us: why and how and who and what.” The committee’s minutes were not published to the public in real time. They were provided only following an FOI request and prolonged litigation. The fact that the information was exposed only in this way makes clear that the discussion was not accompanied by proactive transparency from the Ministry.

A Test Case for a New Model

As serious as the Israeli case is, both in the conflicts of interest it exposes and in the attempt to promote authorization without basic regulatory data before the national regulator, the larger significance lies elsewhere. Israel was the first Western arena in which the EUL mechanism was put into practice. This is not merely a local event. It serves as a test case for a new model – a practical examination of the WHO’s ability to shape approval processes in a Western country without bearing direct regulatory responsibility.

Beyond the damage to sovereignty, the danger in this model is deeper. The WHO does not bear legal responsibility within states and is not subject to judicial or parliamentary oversight there. In a national regulatory system, a decision to authorize a vaccine is subject to a clear administrative law framework: documents can be demanded under freedom of information statutes, petitions can be filed in court, reasoning can be compelled, and decisions can be reviewed for reasonableness.

States that accept the EUL mechanism retain full legal and political responsibility for the decision, while key elements of its framework are shaped outside their systems. The national regulator will be required to defend in court a decision whose framework it did not set; the government will bear the public cost; and citizens will discover that the body that shaped the pathway is not subject to their courts and owes them no legal accountability.

A further concern is the lack of transparency and the state’s inability to independently assess the data presented to it. In recent years, the research literature has pointed to transparency gaps in the WHO’s decision-making mechanisms, especially in emergencies. Studies published, among others, in BMJ Global Health(2020), the Journal of Epidemiology and Global Health (2025), and Public Health Ethics described partial publication of minutes, difficulty reconstructing decision rationales, and the scope of influence not matched by parallel oversight mechanisms.

The Israeli case shows how such a gap translates at the national level: discussions not proactively published, near-exclusive reliance on materials originating from the organization itself, and progress along a regulatory pathway before the full data required for independent review had been provided.

In this case, the move was halted in Israel, but only after a principled decision had already been made and the pathway had already been mapped out, and only thanks to regulatory insistence on demanding data and holding to threshold standards, and civic insistence on exposing information that was not published.

Against this background, decisions by countries such as the United States to distance themselves from the World Health Organization can be understood in the context of broader debates over regulatory authority and accountability in global health governance. The Israeli case raises a more general question: to what extent can regulatory independence be maintained when key elements of the decision-making framework are shaped through external processes that precede national review?

The case exposes a widening gap between formal national authority and the external frameworks that increasingly determine regulatory outcomes in advance.

The Ministry of Health was asked to respond to these findings but chose not to comment.

To Win at All Costs

Brownstone Institute — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 09:12:13 GMT

BY MERYL NASS

Bayer bought Monsanto in 2018 for $63 billion —a few months before Monsanto lost its first liability case for causing non-Hodgkins lymphoma. I was not a close observer of the case, but the win seemed to hinge on documents obtained during discovery that revealed Monsanto knew a great deal about the injuries its product caused but deliberately hid those findings.

Once there was a win—and the jury awarded the plaintiff with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma hundreds of millions, later reduced—the bandwagon effect began, with other lawyers seeking plaintiffs to sue Monsanto. Eventually over 100,000 plaintiffs were suing Monsanto/Bayer for cancers related to glyphosate, the so-called active ingredient in Roundup. There are other ingredients that are probably toxic too, but they were not at issue. Most plaintiffs were homeowners. Bayer then removed glyphosate from Roundup, producing a new formulation for homeowners.

Still, there were more and more cases and more and more wins in state courts due to Monsanto/Bayer’s failure to warn of a cancer risk. Then Monsanto settled about 50,000 of the cases.

The settlements and the big losses have cost Bayer $10 billion so far.

Not only did Bayer pay out a King’s ransom, but its stock price tanked. Desperate times call for desperate measures. Bayer, a German company, hired a Texan, Bill Anderson, as CEO to come to its aid. CEO Anderson’s career hinged on stanching Bayer’s bleed. He initiated a very expensive series of legal and political strategies in the hopes that one would be successful. He also formed a new agricultural industry lobby group with a huge advertising budget.

CEO Anderson got the Bayer board to agree to setting aside around $17 billion for this problem. With $10 billion already spent (the same figure reported 5 months ago) that left him with about $7.6 billion to deal with the 67,000 pending cases and to end the litigation for good.

I discussed the six different tracks Anderson pursued to make this problem go away in this piece. One of those tracks was getting Congress to pass a bill rider that would provide a liability shield by forbidding the EPA from making label changes unless a tedious, years-long process had been undertaken.

The bill rider got a lot of pushback from my readers and many other constitutents during July-September 2025, when it passed the EPA’s Appropriations committee on a voice vote, thereby shielding individual members from having to own up to their vote. Apparently it was not going to go through the whole House easily (lots of political capital would have been expended by every member voting for it) and so far, the bill that included the pesticide rider has not been brought to a House vote. There was no companion bill in the Senate, another clue that Congressmembers did not want their fingerprints on this obvious giveaway to Big Pesticide and Bayer at the expense of citizens.

The five other tracks included:

This request to the Supreme Court to rule on the issue, which failed to gain a Supreme Court hearing in 2022, was filed again early last April.
Bills in about 20 state legislatures that would end state causes of action for pesticide injuries, which passed in GA and ND, failed in TN and many other states, and have not been decided in other states.
Threats by Bayer to take glyphosate off the market, which would allegedly harm the agriculture industry, even though there are generic versions of glyphosate available, and allegedly raise food prices drastically. This track was accompanied by a big publicity campaign.
Assertions by Bayer that it was developing 5 newer pesticides and would simply replace glyphosate with something better (and potentially more dangerous). If it kept swapping out pesticides as their harms became known, it could avoid having label warnings placed on them.
Bayer hinted it could spin off part of the company, leaving all the liability in an underfunded spinoff that would not be able to pay claims.

Remember, Bayer has a very fat bank account. Both Bayer and Monsanto are famous for sleazy corporate dealings and extremely serious product safety concerns. Bayer’s parent IG Farben even manufactured the Zyklon B gas used in concentration camps during World War II to kill millions, and used about 150,000 slave laborers. That’s how you make a real profit!

Bayer/Monsanto filed its request for a writ of certiorari (a request to take the case) with the Supreme Court on April 4, 2025.

The Supreme Court invited the US Solicitor General to file a brief “expressing the views” of the US government on June 30, 2025. Only 1-2% of requests that it receives are actually taken up by the Court for a ruling. But by asking for a comment from the Administration, the chance that the Court will take the case is considerably higher.

Five months went by before there was a response. Then, on December 1, the Trump Solicitor General filed an amicus in response, asking the Supreme Court to take up the case on glyphosate injury, and furthermore, to rule in favor of Bayer. It is relevant, I think, that Bayer has garnered 5 amicus briefs in its favor, while the injured party, Durnell, has only his own brief.

If the Supreme Court judges do what was asked of them by the US Solicitor General, all pesticides will receive a de facto liability shield–because the “failure to warn” of potential injuries on pesticide labels will no longer be an argument that can win a case. Labels (EPA-approved) will be assumed to be the final word on the subject of risk. This is the argument Bayer is making.

However, if the Court made a decision on this basis, it would seem to conform to the Chevron Doctrine, which the Supreme Court overturned 18 months ago. Chevron was a 40-year-old Supreme Court instruction to lower courts to not litigate questions that federal agencies had answered—instead, they should always give deference to the agency interpretation. Hopefully, the Court will recognize that it should NOT give agencies deference and instead allow controversies of science, medicine, or fact to be litigated in our courts.

So it is not clear what will happen, but there is a considerable chance the court will take the case, and if so, rule in Bayer’s favor.

Bayer’s share price rose 16% in the 10 days immediately after the Solicitor General’s amicus brief was filed.

If you would like to see Bayer gloating about the Solicitor General’s brief, read on. I just wonder what it cost them.

What can we do about it?

We need more amici briefs on the side of the plaintiff, Durnell, and against Bayer.
We need to put the Trump administration’s feet to the fire on this, get publicity, and make their choice very costly to them in terms of political capital, especially since Trump’s approval rating is around 42% now and the administration is trying to regain popularity.
The Court needs to learn how the Solicitor General’s brief “misspoke” about the IARC’s conclusion regarding possible vs probable danger of the carcinogenicity of glyphosate. I have asked associates to weigh in on this. It’s not exactly a fraud on the court, but it has a strong whiff of deceit, which the justices won’t like.
Please provide any other ideas that you have that can stop this travesty — we don’t need to add liability shields to other consumer products, now that we have seen what it did for vaccines.

Republished from the author’s Substack

Cocooning by Way of the Tdap Vaccine

Brownstone Institute — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 09:15:16 GMT

BY ROBERT MALONE

Leave the cocooning to the caterpillars.

“Cocooning” is a CDC-endorsed public health term used to describe the push to vaccinate grandparents (and other close family/caregivers) before visiting newborns. This promoted practice stems from public health efforts to protect vulnerable infants from serious infections, particularly whooping cough (pertussis), influenza, and, to a lesser extent, Covid-19 and RSV.

Current guidelines (e.g., CDC as of 2025) de-emphasize cocooning as a primary strategy due to implementation challenges (low uptake, incomplete “cocoons”) and limited evidence supporting standalone effectiveness. Maternal Tdap vaccination during pregnancy is now prioritized for direct antibody transfer to the infant. Cocooning is still suggested supplementally for close contacts but is “no longer widely recommended” as the main approach.

Many new parents enforce this privately, often requiring proof of vaccination for visits in the first 2-3 months. This has led to a promoted “#NoVaxNoVisit” trend on social media and parenting forums, where families delay or restrict access if relatives refuse. Compliance is high in supportive families, but resistance occurs (e.g., due to vaccine hesitancy or perceived overreach).

Although cocooning was the only strategy available to protect infants at the time it was recommended, there is now general agreement that the method is costly, is plagued with implementation challenges, and has uncertain effectiveness. Vaccination during pregnancy has been shown to be safe and effective at preventing infant disease in the early months of life and is being adopted by an increasing number of countries as the primary pertussis prevention strategy for young infants. Given the ongoing resurgence of pertussis in the United States, efforts should focus on increasing awareness and implementation of Tdap vaccination during pregnancy to prevent disease in infants too young to be vaccinated themselves.
An Assessment of the Cocooning Strategy for Preventing Infant Pertussis—United States, 2011
Clin Infect Dis. 2016 Dec 1;63(Suppl 4):S221–S226.

Core Recommendation regarding the “Cocooning” Strategy: Health authorities like the CDC, American Academy of Pediatrics, and similar organizations promote “cocooning,” where adults in regular contact with a newborn are recommended to get vaccinated to create a protective barrier. This began in the mid-2000s amid pertussis outbreaks, as infants under 2-6 months are too young for their own vaccines and face high risks of hospitalization or death from these diseases.

The promoted cocooning recommendations include the following:

Tdap vaccine (tetanus, diphtheria, acellular pertussis): Strongly recommended for grandparents and caregivers if not received in the last 5-10 years (protection wanes over time). Administer at least 2 weeks before contact to build immunity. Pertussis is the primary focus, as it can be fatal in newborns.
Influenza (flu) vaccine: Annual shot recommended for anyone around the baby, especially during flu season, as infants under 6 months can’t get it themselves.
Covid-19 vaccine/boosters: Advised to be up-to-date, though less universally mandated than Tdap/flu.
Other vaccines (e.g., MMR for measles, pneumococcal, shingles, RSV if eligible for older adults) are often suggested for broader protection.

Rationale and Evidence (The World According to GROK)

Newborns have underdeveloped immune systems, making them highly susceptible. Studies show parents/siblings are the most common infection sources, but grandparents and other visitors contribute significantly. Cocooning, combined with maternal vaccination during pregnancy, reduces infant pertussis risk substantially (e.g., one study estimated 64-77% effectiveness when both parents are vaccinated postpartum). Health sites (CDC, March of Dimes, Cleveland Clinic) and pediatricians routinely advise this, framing it as equivalent to basic precautions like handwashing.

Cocooning is defined as the strategy of vaccinating pregnant women immediately postpartum and all other close contacts of infants aged <12 months with Tdap to reduce the risk for transmission of pertussis to infants. Cocooning has been recommended by ACIP since 2005. Cocooning programs have achieved moderate postpartum coverage among mothers but have had limited success in vaccinating fathers or other family members (3) (CDC, unpublished data, 2011).
Programmatic challenges make implementation of cocooning programs complex and also impede program expansion and sustainability (2). The effectiveness of vaccinating postpartum mothers and close contacts to protect infants from pertussis is not yet known, but the delay in antibody response among those vaccinated with Tdap after an infant’s birth might result in insufficient protection to infants during the first weeks of life (21).
ACIP concluded that cocooning alone is an insufficient strategy to prevent pertussis morbidity and mortality in newborn infants. Regardless, ACIP concluded that cocooning likely provides indirect protection to infants and firmly supports vaccination with Tdap for unvaccinated persons who anticipate close contact with an infant.

In other words, there is no evidence that cocooning to prevent pertussis is effective, but historically (2011) the ACIP recommended it, because why not?

What could possibly go wrong?

Well, there is this minor complication.

The acellular pertussis vaccine does not prevent infection; it protects against disease. So if someone is infected, they become more likely to inadvertently spread the infection because they are unaware that they are infected! So cocooning to prevent pertussis by requiring that all in contact with the neonate be revaccinated with Tap is not only not effective, it may actually increase the risk to the child!

Abstract
Background: The recent increase in whooping cough incidence (primarily caused by Bordetella pertussis) presents a challenge to both public health practitioners and scientists trying to understand the mechanisms behind its resurgence. Three main hypotheses have been proposed to explain the resurgence: 1) waning of protective immunity from vaccination or natural infection over time, 2) evolution of B. pertussis to escape protective immunity, and 3) low vaccine coverage. Recent studies have suggested a fourth mechanism: asymptomatic transmission from individuals vaccinated with the currently used acellular B. pertussis vaccines.
Methods: Using wavelet analyses of B. pertussis incidence in the United States (US) and United Kingdom (UK) and a phylodynamic analysis of 36 clinical B. pertussis isolates from the US, we find evidence in support of asymptomatic transmission of B. pertussis. Next, we examine the clinical, public health, and epidemiological consequences of asymptomatic B. pertussis transmission using a mathematical model.
Results: We find that: 1) the timing of changes in age-specific attack rates observed in the US and UK are consistent with asymptomatic transmission; 2) the phylodynamic analysis of the US sequences indicates more genetic diversity in the overall bacterial population than would be suggested by the observed number of infections, a pattern expected with asymptomatic transmission; 3) asymptomatic infections can bias assessments of vaccine efficacy based on observations of B. pertussis-free weeks; 4) asymptomatic transmission can account for the observed increase in B. pertussis incidence; and 5) vaccinating individuals in close contact with infants too young to receive the vaccine (”cocooning” unvaccinated children) may be ineffective.
Conclusions: Although a clear role for the previously suggested mechanisms still exists, asymptomatic transmission is the most parsimonious explanation for many of the observations surrounding the resurgence of B. pertussis in the US and UK. These results have important implications for B. pertussis vaccination policy and present a complicated scenario for achieving herd immunity and B. pertussis eradication.

Which is a long way of saying that the vaccine does not work to prevent transmission; it only covers up symptoms, and this may paradoxically increase transmission risk.

Promotion

There is no documented evidence that vaccine manufacturers (such as GSK or Sanofi Pasteur, producers of Boostrix and Adacel Tdap vaccines) have actively promoted the cocooning strategy for pertussis prevention.

Public health authorities and Medical Guilds (AAP) primarily promoted cocooning (emphasizing – without supporting data – vaccinating close contacts like parents, grandparents, and caregivers with Tdap to protect newborns).

Organizations promoting this practice include:

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP): Originated and strongly promoted cocooning starting in 2006. Current guidelines (as of 2025) acknowledge its challenges (difficulty and cost in achieving full coverage) but continue to recommend Tdap for those with expected close contact with infants, ideally at least 2 weeks before exposure.
American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP): Promotes cocooning through resources like HealthyChildren.org and publications (e.g., Red Book and policy statements). Emphasizes surrounding newborns with immunized individuals to reduce transmission risk.
Global Pertussis Initiative (GPI): An international expert group that has reviewed and supported cocooning as a strategy to decrease pertussis transmission to infants, particularly when maternal vaccination is not feasible.
Other countries (e.g., Australia, Canada, UK, France): National health authorities have implemented or recommended cocooning in the past, often funded programs for new parents, though many now prioritize maternal Tdap in pregnancy due to better evidence of effectiveness.

The promotion of this practice emerged in the mid-2000s amid pertussis resurgence and was recommended starting around 2005–2008 in the US and elsewhere. Promotion came through official guidelines, healthcare provider recommendations, and public awareness campaigns from these entities, but not through manufacturer-led marketing. Cocooning was a public health-driven initiative. Any increased vaccine use from it is a byproduct of independent expert recommendations.

Controversy

Critics argue that cocooning has limited added benefit if the mother was vaccinated during pregnancy (which passes antibodies directly to the baby and is now the primary strategy).

These strict requirements are divisive, potentially causing family strain or isolation for new parents. Discussions on forums like Reddit highlight tensions, with some grandparents feeling sorrow at the loss of access and parents prioritizing infant safety and control. Ultimately, it’s a parental decision; no legal mandate exists, but it’s widely endorsed by “medical experts” as a low-risk way to prevent preventable harm. Yet, after two decades of endorsing this policy, the evidence still does not support cocooning. But cocooning does cause family rifts and tensions. It is not low-risk; there are very real psychological risks to both infant and mother.

There is limited scientific evidence documenting significant adverse social effects—such as family conflicts, rifts, or estrangement—specifically from the cocooning strategy to prevent infant pertussis. There are peer-reviewed papers on social and familial impacts when grandparents are not involved in an infant’s early life, but this aspect has not been studied systematically. Grandparent bonding with the infant is strengthened by immediate access. By denying grandparents and other family members a role in the birth process, nuclear family bonds are weakened.

Furthermore, postpartum depression is real. Encouraging young parents to deny grandparents the opportunity to interact with the young family can cause significant harm. Who better to help a young mother with the raising of an infant, than a grandmother?

Anecdotal reports of family tension (e.g., grandparents feeling excluded or parents enforcing “no vaccine, no visit” rules) exist in parenting forums, social media, and opinion pieces, but these are more prominently associated with Covid-19 vaccine mandates or general childhood vaccination disputes rather than pertussis cocooning specifically. Although the ACIP and CDC once explicitly recommended it, the CDC now downplays the idea. These pertussis cocooning recommendations are advisory (not mandated), and enforcement is private (parental decision). Still, it is a bad idea for parents to follow these edicts, and the more alternative media can get the word out to not follow the AAP’s “advice,” the better.

Cocooning is a trend among new parents, describing the act of bringing a newborn home from the hospital and living in isolation for the first weeks (and even months). Thus, their home is a cocoon, you see. It is impervious, particularly to well wishes. And grandparents. But while cocooning may sound like a blissful practice where parents can orient to their new life — and, I guess, reduce themselves to a cellular jelly which will eventually reform into a beautiful butterfly of a family — it’s not a great idea.
Help is good. Grandparents are good. And parenting is cripplingly lonely enough as it is.
The impulse makes sense in the abstract. There would appear to be a lot of good reasons to cocoon. For one thing, isolation protects the baby from any rogue pathogens that visitors could carry in. For another thing — bonding! Also, everyone is tired and you’re not going to get out of your sweatpants or comb your hair for a couple of weeks. Finally, some grandparents are just too much, you know?
And sure, all of those things may be true, but there are some other crucial considerations. For instance, there is a theory that grandparents literally allowed our species to evolve and thrive by providing care. You might not think your own mom could possibly help anyone evolve, but refusing her willingness to assist would be foolhardy. After all, it’s hard to bond when you also have to do dishes and laundry and probably clean the house so your baby doesn’t grow up in a cesspool of early family mess. These are all things grandparents can, and should, do.
Also, it’s important to foster a child’s relationship with their grandparents. A child that is close to their grandparents will develop a greater sense of social responsibility. Grandparents who are close and engaged help children recognize the importance of service to one’s family. Also, spending time with older adults makes children less ageist.
But all of that pales to the one reason that cocooning is ultimately ill-advised. Modern parenting is becoming increasingly insular. Families are becoming more isolated from each other and their own communities. This makes parenting more anxiety-ridden, costly, and lonely. That isolation, anxiety, and cost can contribute to struggles with mental health, which can ultimately weaken marriages. Cocooning creates isolation from the outset, rather than orienting a family towards their community.
Families should not be closing themselves off from friends and family in those first weeks. Rather, they should be building connections. They should be leveraging their relationships to secure help and create bonds with people that will make parenting easier in the future.
Does that mean that parents need to place bonding with a newborn on a backburner? No. It’s a matter of calling in reinforcements. If people want to see the baby, they can do a load of laundry or wash the dishes. If grandparents want to camp out, they can also cook dinners and take some diaper duty. That will free up parents to spend time doing the important work of loving their child. That’s how we’ve raised our children for the vast arc of human history. And in the end, that’s the best argument.
Families are made of people. Leave the cocooning to the caterpillars.

To repeat:

Families are made of people. Leave the cocooning to the caterpillars.

Republished from the author’s Substack

What (and How) Should Our Students Be Taught Today?

Brownstone Institute — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 09:12:50 GMT

BY BERT OLIVIER

In an age like the present, which is choking on the virtually exclusive valorisation of technology, what (and how) should students be taught, or putting it differently, what should they learn? Just consider the proliferating crises affecting the entire world population – the ongoing war in Ukraine, the fluctuating Iran war and its broadening ripple effect on energy prices (which is already affecting, not only availability of oil and petrol, but food supplies as well), and the social and political strife connected with ‘illegal immigrants’ in the US, Britain, and Europe, to mention only some – then it seems a daunting task to answer this question.

There are many – too many – intellectual sources, contemporary as well as throughout the history of the world, from which I could draw to answer it in a very provisional manner, so I’ll have to be selective, but here goes. My perspective is mainly Western.

From the ancient Greek thinker, Plato – who had assimilated the insights of his predecessors, from Thales through Empedocles, Anaxagoras, and others to Heraclitus and Parmenides, and, of course, his teacher, Socrates, who claimed that he had learned from a woman named Diotima – we learned that Being and Becoming are the two poles constituting the tension field in which things appear in the material world of the senses and of particular things, on the one hand, and the intelligible world of the universal Forms, on the other.

Aristotle, Plato’s Macedonian pupil (who taught Alexander, destined to become The Great), argued that the universal Forms are not outside of particular things, but their intelligible part instead. Together, they comprise what he called an entelechy. Moreover, Aristotle gave us an encompassing conceptualisation of causality as a sort of ‘fourfold’ (a concept that later returns in Martin Heidegger’s philosophy, denoting the touchstone for a truly human mode of living), which is far richer and more fecund in explanatory terms than its modern reduction to only one of these. The four Aristotelian causes are the material, formal, working, and final causes, respectively.

A tree, for instance, has a material embodiment, or matter (the trunk, branches, leaves, and so on). It also has an intelligible form – not its shape, but its comprehensible essence, and a working cause, which accounts for its change, or growth. Its final cause, or telos, is perhaps the most important, insofar as it explains why the tree develops in the way that it does.

Obviously, for a human being this schema is more complex, although easily comprehensible. We have bodies (material cause), a formal, intelligible essence which makes us what we are, as distinct from other things, a working cause which explains changes in the course of our growth, and a final cause or human telos, which instantiates that towards which we ‘grow’ or what we strive for, both as a species and as individuals. For every individual the telos or final cause is different; some work towards the ideal writer they want to become, others strive for excellence in cooking, or singing, and so on. In this sense, our future(s) is a crucial factor for understanding what we do at present.

From the above it is already apparent that learning in what Bernard Stiegler calls a ‘transindividual’ manner – where knowledge is transferred from one individual to another, or others – always involves an incremental complexification. In this way, Plato, for instance, synthesised the accumulated knowledge of his predecessors, and Aristotle took this process further, giving us a synthesis that was even more comprehensive than Plato’s.

Furthermore, while Plato was more mathematically oriented than Aristotle – as shown in his ‘creation myth’ (recounted in his dialogue, the Timaeus), where numbers, and not only Forms, are posited as essential mediators between God and individual things – Aristotle did justice to the empirical world of experience through observation.

He can be credited with laying the basis, more than 2,000 years ago, for the empirical sciences. This pattern of the progression of knowledge should tell us something important about teaching and learning – particularly at present, when Artificial Intelligence (AI) is becoming a substitute for people’s (including students’) memory, against which Stiegler has warned.

In modern times (around the 17^th century), this complex schema was reduced to only one, namely what was understood as the ‘mechanical cause,’ which, in the present era, has been replaced by causality articulated in terms of genetics (something going back to the 19^th century), electronics, and digitality. Needless to emphasise, this does not come anywhere near accounting for the complexity of human beings; Aristotle’s causal quartet is a far richer schema for that purpose. I’ll return to this.

I mentioned the ancient Greek thinker, Empedocles, earlier. He explained the world by means of four elements – air, water, fire, and earth – which are combined and separated by love (philia) and hatred (neikos), respectively. In the 19^th century Sigmund Freud drew on this when he argued that civilisation is continually pulled in opposite directions between what he called Eros (love) and Thanatos (the death drive), respectively. With regard to love, we should not forget the profound civilisational role of Jesus of Nazareth, the crucial figure in Christianity, however, whose teachings on love are today more significant than ever. Love plays an important role in other religions, too, of course, and this constitutes a possible point of convergence and conciliation between different religious beliefs.

The Christian Middle Ages can be grasped through the teachings of Saint Augustine(who interpreted Christianity through Plato’s philosophy, although he also displayed a keen insight into the human psyche, on which even Freud drew), and of Saint Thomas Aquinas, who did the same thing via the thought of Aristotle, when the latter – after centuries of being inaccessible to Western thinkers – was rediscovered through contact between Eastern (Muslim) and Western (Christian) cultures.

Ironically, the Crusades played an important role in this. Here an opportunity presents itself to teach students that, and how, learning never occurs in an historical vacuum – there is a very real connection between the hallowed halls of academia and concrete historical events (something that the 19^th-century German thinker, Georg W.F. Hegel emphasised in his dialectical philosophy; he was writing his magnum opus when Napoleon’s conquering armies were entering the city where he lived).

Rather than elaborate on the above thinkers, I want to point to the paradigmatic significance of the educational schema employed in medieval times, namely the so-called Trivium and Quadrivium, comprising the seven ‘liberal arts.’ The former consisted of the three disciplines – grammar, logic (or dialectic), and rhetoric – which prepared students for the four that made up the Quadrivium, namely arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy, considered the mathematical arts.

Consider that all of these four disciplines are based on numerical and geometric relations; even astronomy was understood in terms of musical proportions. Shakespeare reveals his knowledge of this where, in The Merchant of Venice, Act 5, Scene 1, the ‘music of the spheres’ is referenced, when Lorenzo remarks to Jessica – a propos of the celestial harmony created by the motion of the stars and planets, that: ‘There’s not the smallest orb which thou behold’st / But in his motion like an angel sings…’ Here one witnesses the synthesis of ancient Greek thinking and its Christian appropriation – another chance to enlighten students about the way that learning unfolds in successive eras.

Taken together, the seven liberal arts of the Trivium and Quadrivium formed the core undergraduate curriculum in medieval universities during the 12th and 13th centuries, serving as prerequisites for the study of philosophy and theology at a higher level.

Considering that the Trivium was regarded as teaching students to master language and thought through the study of grammar, logic, and rhetoric – the ‘three ways’ of literary education – it may be seen as a powerful reminder to us today that unless one knows how to employ language at these three levels, it would be futile to proceed to a different, and higher, level of study, because an inadequate grasp of linguistic meaning, logical relations of validity, and the rhetorical nuances of speech would invalidate understanding at all further levels – even in computer science, where linguistic communication is as essential as in the humanities.

In our predominantly technological era, this insight is often lacking, resulting in the underestimation of the importance of language – even for computer scientists, as David Gelernter, until recently Professor of Computer Science at Yale University, has demonstrated in his book, The Tides of Mind – Uncovering the Spectrum of Consciousness (2016), where he argues against ‘computationalism,’ which reduces the human mind (as model for AI) to mere logical functions, neglecting its many other capabilities, witnessed in the creative arts. Gelernter is the right person to impart this insight to especially computer science students, because he is also a poet and an artist.

I must single out the significance of rhetoric, among the three disciplines comprising the Trivium, for today, when one is incessantly bombarded with misinformation and disinformation – especially from government sources – in an attempt to wield power over one’s actions. Rhetoric is the linguistic art of using language precisely to gain power over one’s audience or interlocutors; by employing various figures of speech – such as metaphor and metonymy – one is able to distract someone with the purpose of subtly getting them to identify with what these tropes represent.

The contemporary equivalent of rhetoric, which similarly employs figural tropes, is discourse. Discourse is language, but not in an innocuous, descriptive, or constative form. Rather, it is language, where meaning and power converge, and where meaning actually serves power. Put differently, discourse is the linguistic guise of ideology, which is unavoidably inscribed in language. Such discourses are usually inscribed in the underlying assumptions and contexts which operate tacitly in one’s teaching and learning, and unless teachers are aware of this, they may remain unwitting agents for these discursive interpellations.

One can easily test this, by asking which the most influential discourses of the present are. Traditionally it was patriarchy, but today, obvious candidates include neoliberal capitalism, so-called ‘stakeholder capitalism’ and ‘transhumanism’ (of the globalist organisation, the WEF), AI-centred discourse, and iatrocracy (discursive medical tyranny, which was evident during the time of Covid, as Giorgio Agambendisclosed in Where are We Now?). Students should be able to discern discursive attempts to colonise their thinking and actions, and therefore it is imperative that universities design courses which offer introductions to these linguistic strategies. Failing this, students are defenceless against discourses that manipulate their actions willy-nilly.

The Quadrivium, in turn, followed the Trivium and included arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy, or collectively, the mathematical arts. Strikingly, both components were regarded as essential for a thorough education. Today, the equivalent would be a combination of (at least some of) the disciplines considered humanities and social sciences, on the one hand, and (some of) those under the rubric of the natural sciences. The advantage of this would be that, instead of students ‘specialising’ in one of these overarching scientific fields, they would be able to see more of the proverbial forest than before, and not only some of the trees.

Admittedly, this was easier done in previous eras (such as the Middle Ages), when the reigning worldview was accessible even to the illiterate, through the stained-glass art of Romanesque and especially Gothic cathedrals (with their scrupulous use of light), for example, which made their worldview visible to worshippers. Today the sheer intertwined complexity of the world – particularly considering the character of the so-called ‘network society’ – is almost prohibitive of any kind of coherent grasp, and yet, with an intellectually nuanced approach to teaching and learning it can be done.

As an example of a minimal application of the idea of integrating humanities and natural (as well as juridical) sciences (in the process gaining a measure of intellectual coherence), I used to teach a course in the philosophy of science to second-year university students (sophomores) from a variety of faculties – all assembled together in a large lecture hall. It was aimed at providing them with the philosophical rudiments for grasping the difference between everyday ‘lifeworld’ knowledge and science, the epistemic and ontological status of hypotheses and theories in the diverse sciences that they study, and how these are rooted in the lifeworld.

Generally, students provided positive feedback on whether the course helped them to understand their own scientific orientation better. Some were actually persuaded to register for courses in philosophy afterwards. The point is that such a philosophically mediating approach serves the much-needed purpose of bringing some coherence to what is often a highly confusing mismatch between what students study and the rapidly changing world in which they live.

The world of today is probably – at least potentially – the most confusing world imaginable, partly because we are witnessing the birth of an unprecedented change of paradigm at the level of a Weltanschauung, or what Michel Foucault called a novel epistemé. If modernity was still characterised by a belief in the scientific and philosophical ability to find coherence in the multitude of perspectives available to humankind, postmodernity shattered that conviction.

The 19^th-century poet and thinker, Charles Baudelaire, made a distinction between two tasks facing the modern poet: on the one hand, he said, she or he had to capture the incessant change (becoming) in which people lived around the middle of the century, while, on the other, they should foreground what is stable, essential, or lasting (being) within this sea of becoming.

Applying this to modernity and postmodernity, one could put it more or less in this way: the modern corresponds to finding the lasting (being) within change (becoming), while the postmodern corresponds with the acceptance of incessant change at the cost of stability. Taking my cue from poststructuralist thinkers, a major educational challenge facing us today is to demonstrate that we should learn to think change (becoming) and stability (being) together, because this is the only way to do justice to the unmitigated complexity of reality – by demonstrating the validity of a ‘both/and logic’ in the place of the erstwhile Aristotelian logic of ‘either/or.’ This way we can give our students a handle, as it were, on the reality we face – and experience – today.

This can be done in many ways, educationally speaking. In philosophy, critical cinema studies, literature, architectural and psychoanalytic theory, to mention only some disciplines, this poststructuralist insight can readily be demonstrated. In literature, for example, one could employ the lens of Barbara Kingsolver’s novel, Flight Behaviour (2012), to cast light on the complexity of nature.

Here it is a matter of a fictional narrative exposing the interconnectedness of all natural eco-subsystems, which together make up the encompassing Earth ecosystem, of which human society is a supremely important part – given the principle underpinning the geological era of the ‘Anthropocene,’ which affirms the ability of humans to change the very conditions on the planet. Specifically, Kingsolver’s riveting story is set against the backdrop of an entomological eco(sub)system, to give readers insight into the manner in which human activity affects biotic reality (causing disruption of the annual migration of one of the most iconic butterfly species in the world).

This is employed to drive the point home of the intimate interconnectedness of all complex eco-subsystems in the world – much as it may ‘boggle the mind,’ all of us are literally (inter-)connected with everything else in the world, albeit through many millions of intermediaries. Paradoxically, therefore, we carry the ‘trace’ (as Derrida would say) of everything that we are not, in ourselves: we are, and we are not, ourselves.

The point of this literary demonstration of the character and implications of complex interconnectedness is to provide a powerful incentive for the transmutation of curricula in schools and universities across the world in the direction of a design that recognises and presupposes such complexity. In this manner, no item in a curriculum will blindly suggest its isolation from everything around it, but, on the contrary, acknowledge its unavoidable interconnectedness.

The work of development theorist Urie Bronfenbrenner testifies to this. Bronfenbrenner’s account (called ‘develecology’) of complex social conditions indicates that every individual action in a social situation has an effect on the actions of others which, in turn, change the social context, and the latter, once again, influences future actions of the people involved.

This unadulterated complexity of social and natural reality can be demonstrated in multiple ways (such as through literature, as shown above), one of the most telling of which concerns the complexity of one’s identity – which most people naively regard as being fixed, monolithically unitary, such as the claim that ‘I am an excellent driver.’ Notwithstanding the driving skills that one has mastered, one small lapse in concentration on the road could cause one to swerve inadvertently, and collide with an approaching vehicle or a tree next to the road.

The problem lies with the word ‘am’ in the sentence above. As Jean-Paul Sartre has argued, it is a matter of ‘bad faith’ (mauvaise foi) to assert anything in this fashion, because human beings ‘ex-ist’ – the ‘ex-’ indicating that we continually ‘stand out of ourselves’ towards the future, and at any moment what the ‘am’ so confidently asserts could be turned upside down. As he put it, we are ‘condemned to be free.’ Hence, one’s identity is never accomplished, once and for all, but is always subject to modification through unpredictable future events and the fact that having to choose is inescapable.

In Lacanian psychoanalytic terms, one’s supposedly ‘stable’ self (or imaginary ego), which is the locus of what we believe to be our immutable identity, is constantly destabilised by the symbolic register (language, which always allows for revision of one’s utterances) and by the unsymbolisable ‘real,’ which surpasses language and images. In other words, our vaunted ‘identity’ is a complex, constantly shifting amalgam of precariously interacting registers of subjectivity. This, too (together with discourse theory), has to be conveyed to students in our teaching, so that they can resist ideologising attempts to impose a straitjacket on their ostensible ‘identity.’

An educational angle of incidence that, in my experience, is didactically effective in disabusing students of the naïve idea that the world we live in is simple, and easily comprehended, is to introduce them to the thought of 18^th-century thinker Immanuel Kant, who described his own philosophy as having brought about a ‘Copernican revolution’ in thinking. He was not exaggerating. Just as Copernicus demonstrated that Earth is not the centre of the universe, but that it, together with the other planets of our solar system, orbited the Sun, so Kant argued that we must change our conception of the foundation of our knowledge.

Instead of thinking that the world impresses itself on our minds, producing knowledge in the process, Kant demonstrated that our knowing faculties (comprising our ‘reason’ or Vernunft) – namely, the (sensory) forms of intuition, namely space and time, the concepts of our understanding, and ‘pure reason,’ which addresses its limits – provide the ‘formal’ conditions for knowledge, while the ‘manifold of experience’ (of what we call the ‘empirical world’) supply the ‘material content’ which are comprehended through the concepts (categories) of the understanding, such as causality, modality, quality, quantity, and substance.

Put succinctly, Kant showed that human reason was the transcendental prerequisite – or condition of possibility – of knowing anything at all. Without it, we would not know a ‘world’ as a rationally structured whole. In doing this, Kant mediated between the rationalists, who claimed that reason alone could know the world, and the empiricists, who argued that experience alone was sufficient to gain knowledge.

In the process of articulating his philosophy of ‘transcendental’ reason (nottranscendent; there is a big difference), he anticipated the quantum mechanics of Werner Heisenberg and Niels Bohr, which rests on the principle that the mere act of observing something changes it. Reflecting on the paradoxical logic underpinning this insight exacerbates the complexity of our world, almost unbearably. The counter-Bildungsroman novel by John Fowles, titled The Magus, provides ample opportunity for teaching the connections between Kant’s revolutionary epistemology, Lacan’s psychoanalytic theory, and quantum mechanics.

Having pointed to a literary work of art for optimising learning on the part of students creates the opportunity to draw attention to the validity of German philosopher and writer Friedrich Schiller’s claim, – in his book, Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Humankind (1795) – that art in all its variety constitutes the appropriate avenue for approaching education, because art, in which beauty is disinterestedly perceived, is the essential vehicle for achieving political freedom and moral harmony.

To illustrate: anyone who has ever listened to Beethoven’s 9^th Symphony (1824; based on Schiller’s poem, ‘Ode to Joy’), especially the choral (including solos) movement – with the beautiful and moving lyrical assurance, that ‘Alle Menschen werden Brüder, wo dein sanfter Flügel weilt’ (‘All people become brothers, where your gentle wing abides’) – would be able to testify to the transformative aesthetic (and educational) power of art. If people worldwide would act according to the powerful aesthetic experience afforded by listening to this poignantly moving musical creation, the world might be less plagued by wars.

This is also evident in Peter Weir’s magnificent film Dead Poets Society (1990), where one encounters the tension between a combination of Romanticism and Enlightenment, on the one hand, and a narrow, militaristic positivism on the other. Weir employs Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream to stage the ostensible opposition between imagination (Oberon and Titania’s forest) and reason (Athens), which is resolved when it transpires that the full exercise of mature reason (on the part of the lovers) presupposes having gone through the beguiling forest of imagination, where Puck works his mischief.

Incidentally, Shakespeare’s prodigious genius is on full display in this comedy where, 150 years before Kant, he demonstrates that imagination is not antithetical to reason(as philosophers and theologians had believed until then), but essentially part of it – what Kant called productive and reproductive imagination, without which there would not be a world to subject to understanding.

A cinematic masterpiece like this film by Weir, which is nothing less than a Gesamtkunstwerk (total work of art), insofar as it incorporates literature, theatre, music, and cinema into one totality, opens up ample opportunities for teaching and learning, in the course of which students are given the opportunity to forge new conceptions for comprehending the world in which we live. In his writings – particularly on art and architecture – the American philosopher, Karsten Harries, affords one similar didactic and hermeneutic opportunities.

In particular, his monumental The Ethical Function of Architecture (1997) – which, although being a work of philosophy, can almost be characterised as a Gesamtkunstwerk too (given its abundant use of illustrations which interact with the text) – functions as a lens on the world we inhabit. Harries is adept at uncovering ways in which different spatial modulations in architecture impart – or fail to impart – a sense of ethos, of belonging, with the result that this multi-faceted book constitutes a model for orienting oneself in the world in ethical terms. From a teaching perspective it is highly commendable, to serve as a conduit for students’ insight into the contours of the often-confusing world we inhabit.

Today, no educational approach to equipping students with the essential conceptual bearings for navigating our confounding, increasingly complex world would be adequate unless it addresses the (potentially) civilisationally disrupting phenomenon of Artificial Intelligence (AI). This is not merely of ‘posthuman’ significance, but more importantly, has ‘transhuman’ implications. Posthumanism – particularly its ‘critical’ variety, promoted by Rosi Braidotti and others – entails a fundamental revision of the place of humans among all other living and non-living beings (such as AI).

Instead of reaffirming the (traditionally) vaunted superiority of humans over all others, it places them on a spectrum from unicellular organisms (if not more evolutionally primordial entities than these) through all plant and animal species to AI, acknowledging, in other words, the ontological equivalence of all such beings. Not in the sense of sameness (which they are not), but in the sense of acknowledging their distinctive biological (or artificial) place in the vast panoply of life which has developed since the appearance of the first signs of life millions of years ago.

Again, this is not to say that ontological equivalence means axiological equivalence (in terms of value) from a human perspective; certain deadly bacteria and viruses, for example, should certainly not be cherished. When it comes to AI, however, we face a dilemma, which has been spectacularly explored in the literary and cinematic genre of (particularly neo-noir) science fiction, of which the work of Ronald D. Moore (Battlestar Galactica) and James Cameron (the Terminator films) are paradigmatic, but which goes back to Fritz Lang’s pioneering 1927 film, Metropolis.

What dilemma? In a nutshell, and as thematised in the films mentioned above, these beings of human creation not only mimic our human intelligence – and according to some, surpass it, which I believe rests on a false premise, namely, comparing pears and watermelons – but are believed by some to threaten our very existence as a species.

In contrast, ‘transhumanism’ is predicated on the belief that our true goal as a species is to ‘merge with the machine’ at every possible level. This belief assumes the contours of a virtually evangelical calling, embodied in the expectation that AI will soon attain a level of development where the so-called ‘singularity’ will occur, and humanity will progress to a new, super-, and transhuman level.

Needless to emphasise, this represents a deeply anti-humanist position, which may be readily comprehended by students through the teaching of a blend of fictional, philosophical (particularly phenomenological), and scientific material, such as that encountered in the science fiction film Transcendence, which explores the consequences of implementing a transhumanist agenda.

The point is that there are certain, demonstrably irreducible ontological differences between humans and AI entities (which several individuals, including myself [see here, for example], have explored at length elsewhere). Therefore, I would argue that it is at least premature, if not unfounded, to believe AI holds an unadulterated threat for human beings. However, it requires a lengthy consideration of various aspects concerning AI to substantiate this claim persuasively.

Nevertheless, a responsible educational approach cannot omit a thoroughgoing exploration of the relationship between AI, its further development, and human beings. Neither a doomsday scenario, nor a transhumanist embrace of the opportunities it supposedly offers to ‘transcend’ our bodily limitations (as transhumanists assure us) by merging with AI, would do. In the process of scrutinising AI in all the contexts where it is encountered, educators cannot afford to neglect any informative source for teaching purposes, including science fiction, keeping in mind Schiller’s counsel regarding the aesthetic education of humanity.

A suitable schematic guide for organising themes and issues like those briefly listed above is found in the (still thought-provoking) four fundamental questionsformulated by Immanuel Kant in his Critique of Pure Reason (1781), to wit:

‘What can I know?, What ought I to do?, What may I hope?, and What is the human being?’

According to Kant, the first three questions correspond to the domains of metaphysics (or epistemology, considering Kant’s critique of traditional metaphysics), morals (or ethics), and (the philosophy of) religion, respectively, while the fourth question, ‘What is the human being?’, serves as the overarching inquiry that unifies all of philosophy. Kant argued that metaphysics (as epistemology) addresses what we can know, morality dictates what we ought to do, and religion relates to what we may hope for. Ultimately, these questions lead to the central concern of philosophical anthropology, which seeks to understand the nature of humanity itself.

They may be adapted to serve as a framework for the present, and the very process of adapting them, through thinking and classroom debate, would already serve a profound educational purpose. A conceptual compass, as it were, is all the more essential for navigating the current world, which is characterised by extreme turbulence, describable as a clash between a waning ‘unipolar’ world, and an incipient ‘multipolar’ social and political reality. The wars being waged at present are symptomatic of this.

The Trouble with the CDC Pick

Brownstone Institute — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 09:04:28 GMT

BY BROWNSTONE INSTITUTE

Most people had heard little from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention until six years ago, when it suddenly emerged as the leading voice to facilitate the near-destruction of the country.

Does it matter who heads it now? Certainly it does, even if only symbolically. It matters for the future of freedom itself.

The Trump administration has had real frustrations finding a director. There was a good choice early on, Dr. Dave Weldon, but he could not make it through a pharma-captured Senate for confirmation so he wasn’t even put to a vote. Next up was an internal promotion who was confirmed and then promptly fired for insubordination. Now there is a temporary head with a second job as head of NIH.

Now we have a new candidate in the person of Dr. Erica Schwartz, who has a long and well-documented record of not only carrying out Covid orders as part of the military but even pushing jab mandates where they do not make sense. She is also a well-practiced user of the revolving door between agencies and private providers who depend on pharmaceutical profits.

She might be the nicest person ever, and a better choice than most, but it seems inconceivable that a medical freedom movement would ever rise to her defense. It seems too much like a changing of the guard, same uniform, same mission.

At some point, there needs to be a principled stand against what was done to the nation, some actual truth telling that results in genuine change. That doesn’t seem to be happening yet.

That said, the public demand for health and medical rights against the government-industrial hegemon has never been higher. The Brownstone/HFDC poll – with actual fair questions – documents supermajorities in full revolt, a fact which has been since confirmed by polls structured to show the opposite.

The establishment is hanging on for dear life but the public is not having it. Something is going to give at some point in this tug-of-war. We’ll know more next month as several crucial primaries pit pharma tools against genuine dissidents. It’s not looking good for hangers-on. It will be fascinating to watch unfold.

This makes our work more important than ever. Brownstone truly needs your support right now if we are to step up and deal with these new pressures. We invite your support. The cause of freedom itself – deeply rooted in the culture as such – needs your commitment today.

The Brownstone Show is going well. Tune in to these episodes, including the latest one this week with Brian Blase, who talks through the major reforms in medical insurance that we desperately need right now. Go to the Brownstone Show.

These are the sorts of topics we talk about at Brownstone Supper Clubs, now coast to coast. Pick one and go!

Puget Sound: On Tuesday, April 21st, the Puget Sound Supper Club welcomes Corey DeAngelis. Get tickets.
Pittsboro, NC: On Tuesday, April 21st, the Pittsboro, NC Supper Club welcomes Drs. Patricia Robitaille and Coleen Rickabaugh. Get tickets.
Charlotte, NC: On Tuesday, April 21st, the Charlotte, NC Supper Club welcomes Andrew Byrd. Get tickets.
West Hartford, CT: On Wednesday, April 22nd, the West Hartford, CT Supper Club welcomes Walter Kirn. Get tickets.
Austin, TX: On Wednesday, April 22nd, the Austin Supper Club welcomes Jenna McCarthy. Get tickets.
Pittsburgh, PA: On Wednesday, April 22nd, the Pittsburgh Supper Club welcomes Mike Costarell. Get tickets.
Chattanooga, TN: On Tuesday, May 5th, the Chattanooga Supper Club welcomes Michele Reneau. Get tickets.
Greater Boston, MA: On Tuesday, May 5th, the Greater Boston Supper Club welcomes Professor Thomas Seyfried. Get tickets.
Chicago, IL: On Thursday, May 7th, the Chicago Supper Club welcomes Tom Sosnoff. Get tickets.
Manhattan, NY: On Monday, May 11th, the Manhattan Supper Club welcomes Mary Holland. Get tickets.
Pittsboro, NC: On Tuesday, May 19th, the Pittsboro Supper Club welcomes Dianna Lightfoot. Get tickets.
Charlotte, NC: On Tuesday, May 26th, the Charlotte Supper Club welcomes Tracy Hollister. Get tickets.
Polyface Farm: On Friday and Saturday, August 28th and 29th, Brownstone will host our annual Polyface Retreat at Polyface Farm in Swoope, Virginia. REGISTER NOW. NOTE: Tickets for the VIP dinner August 28 are now available. TICKETS.
Chattanooga: On Friday and Saturday, November 6th and 7th, Brownstone will host our 6th Annual Conference and Gala. Save the dates.

If you are interested in being a supper club host in your area, please visit our Supper Club information page here.

Here is some content since our last email.

The Hardships That People Mask By Ann Bauer. You never let go. You never abandon your child, no matter what. You keep trying and loving them and that is what I see in the story we’re reading in the news about Nick Reiner’s parents. True love.

What If the FDA Were Eliminated? By Jeffrey Tucker. Reform efforts have been met with frustration. The entire machinery is set up to resist the influence of a politically hostile takeover. For example, Moderna has been given the green light to further develop the technology for a flu shot.

Jury Trials Are Vital to the Constitutional Order By David Thunder. The Labour-led British government is attempting to hollow out an ancient pillar of English constitutionalism, trial by jury. Under their reforms, trial by jury would survive in England and Wales for certain types of crimes, but its use would be curtailed.

When War Teaches Medicine By Joseph Varon. War is likely to persist. Medicine, however, must remain steadfast, anchored in principles that transcend conflict, ideology, and time. It should not become a weapon but must remain a profession dedicated to the care of each individual, regardless of circumstance.

Medicalization of Our Spiritual Life By Elisabeth Bennink. Human cultures across time have recognized that certain plants can facilitate contact with the spiritual world—serving as a kind of spiritual nourishment. And yet, more than what we eat, it is our spiritual life that shapes who we truly are.

Don’t Use Antidepressants During Pregnancy or for Children By Peter C. Gotzsche. Official statements that antidepressants are safe to take during pregnancy should be distrusted. No drug is safe. If drugs were safe, they would not be the leading cause of death, ahead of cardiovascular diseases and cancer.

The Story of the Victorian-Era Anti-Mandate Movement By Jeffrey Tucker. All rhetoric and seeming extremism aside, all these movements have ever wanted – from the 1790s to today – is for this product to be subject to normal market discipline of supply and demand, without any interventions designed to back the industry.

Marty Makary: The FDA’s Quiet Blockade on Safer Nicotine

Brownstone Institute — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 09:07:46 GMT

BY ROGER BATE

There are moments in public health when the path forward is unusually clear, when the evidence aligns with behavior, when risks are well understood, and when policy has a genuine opportunity to reduce harm at scale. This should be one of those moments.

Non-combustible nicotine products—vapes, heated tobacco, and especially nicotine pouches—are widely understood to be far less harmful than smoking, a point I and many others have covered repeatedly, and one that no longer sits at the frontier of scientific debate. At the same time, the political panic that once drove restrictive policy has subsided, with youth vaping falling sharply from its peak.

The most recent data show that around 5.2 percent of youth report e-cigarette use in the past 30 days, down dramatically from prior highs, and importantly only a subset of that group are frequent users, those using on 20 or more days in a month, the category most closely associated with dependence.

Nicotine pouch use among youth is lower still, at roughly 1.7 percent. Much of what remains appears to be occasional or experimental rather than habitual. These are not crisis numbers, and they matter because they directly undercut the primary justification for continued regulatory paralysis.

One might expect regulators to respond accordingly, adjusting policy to reflect both the risk gradient and the changed behavioral landscape, but that has not happened. Instead, the system has stalled, quietly but decisively, with approvals for new products slowing to a near standstill.

At the center of that paralysis sits Marty Makary, head of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and increasingly the explanation for inaction appears not to lie in scientific uncertainty or bureaucratic complexity, but in his simple unwillingness to move.

According to several informed sources, there is now a clear split within the administration, with parts of the FDA Center for Tobacco Products and broader White House advisers recognizing that harm reduction is both scientifically grounded and politically manageable.

Notably, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is described as supportive of this shift, particularly in relation to nicotine pouches. Kennedy is reported to use nicotine pouches himself and to view them as a practical, low-risk alternative for adults, which in policy terms should make them the least controversial category, given that they involve no combustion, no smoke, and no tobacco leaf. In almost any rational regulatory framework, these products would be the easiest to authorize.

Yet they are not being authorized, and the reason, according to sources, is that Makary has become the effective blockade, with approvals held up despite falling youth use and despite data generated within his own government pointing in a consistent direction. This is less a disagreement over interpretation than a refusal to act on available evidence, and the explanation offered by those familiar with the situation is not primarily scientific, but personal, tied to concerns about legacy.

Makary is said to be focused on avoiding reputational risk, particularly given uncertainty about the length of his tenure, with the concern that authorizing new nicotine products could, if later criticized, define his time at the FDA. Blocking approvals, by contrast, carries no immediate cost, and in that calculation inaction becomes the safer choice for the individual making the decision, even if it is the costlier choice for public health.

The consequences are neither subtle nor hypothetical, because when regulators refuse to authorize products that consumers want, markets do not disappear. They adapt. The United States already has a large illicit vape market, with unauthorized products widely available through informal channels, often without quality control or oversight. By refusing to authorize legal alternatives, policymakers are not preventing access, they are shifting it into less regulated spaces.

This dynamic extends beyond illicit trade, because when adult smokers are denied access to appealing lower-risk alternatives, many continue to smoke, while others turn to whatever substitutes they can find, and in both cases the opportunity to reduce harm is lost.

Smoking remains one of the leading causes of preventable death in the United States, and delaying the transition away from combustible tobacco prolongs that burden. The cost of inaction is therefore cumulative, and it is borne by those who continue to use the most dangerous products because better options are not being made available.

There is speculation in Washington suggesting that leadership changes at the FDA could quickly unlock movement on product approvals. But that is not a stable solution, because public health policy should not depend on whether a single official chooses to act or chooses to leave. The deeper issue is structural, rooted in a regulatory framework that continues to treat nicotine products as if they are broadly equivalent in risk, despite clear evidence to the contrary.

For now, at a moment when evidence, behavior, and parts of the political system are aligned in favor of harm reduction, progress has been stalled, not because the science is unclear, but because the decision to act has not been taken. In public health, delays do not remain abstract, they accumulate over time, and eventually they are measured in lives.

Medicalization of Our Spiritual Life

Brownstone Institute — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 09:12:49 GMT

BY ELISABETH BENNINK

Recently, like millions of others around the world, I listened to a conversation on The Joe Rogan Experience between Joe Rogan and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., aired on February 27, 2026 (1). In the discussion, HHS Secretary Kennedy spoke at length about promoting healthy nutrition and tackling health insurance fraud. While nutrition is undoubtedly an important subject, my attention was drawn instead to another topic—one that lies close to my heart: the use of psychedelics in medical and therapeutic settings, and what I perceive as the implicit threat this poses to our freedom.

I keep being pointed to Ivan Illich. I thought it time to pay attention to his work…

About halfway through the conversation, the discussion turns to the promise of psychedelics—particularly in treating veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder, but also in addressing severe opioid addiction and depression (2). Both Joe Rogan and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. express optimism, describing psychedelics as powerful tools that could help individuals lead happier and more productive lives.

Kennedy states that these substances have the potential “to rewire your brain,” referring to the well-documented neuroplasticity observed in the days following psychedelic use, which may underlie their capacity to catalyse behavioural change. Rogan then poses a rhetorical question: “Who could possibly be against this?”

Both men agree that such treatments should be offered within a clinical setting, with Kennedy emphasizing the need for further trials and the development of rigorous therapeutic guidelines before broader access is granted—an effort, as he frames it, to avoid a “Wild West” scenario.

And while I share their enthusiasm for psychedelics, I, both as a physician and an ayahuasqueira, see a profound threat to our (religious) freedom when authority over these substances is placed exclusively in the hands of what might be called the “church of medicine.” The medical-therapeutic framework is founded on a materialist, reductionist view of what it means to be human, one that leaves no room for spirituality and fails to take seriously the subjective experience of those who engage with these substances.

Just as physical nourishment forms the foundation of bodily health, human cultures across time have recognized that certain plants can facilitate contact with the spiritual world—serving, in a sense, as a kind of spiritual nourishment. And yet, more than what we eat, it is our spiritual life that shapes who we truly are.

To draw psychedelics further into the medical domain—to medicalize them—while the spiritual use of ancient plant medicines in the West remains criminalized (3), risks undermining religious freedom (4).

My firm impression is that the broader implications of the current Western approach to psychedelics are often overlooked—even by those who consider themselves advocates of medical freedom. With the medical-therapeutic establishment at the helm, a vital dimension of human experience is once again at risk of being medicalized (5).

The growing push for clinical trials, conducted in partnership with the pharmaceutical industry and commercial investors, is shaping a model in which patients—under strict supervision, in controlled clinical environments, and under the care of medical or psychiatric professionals—are permitted to consume psychedelics.

Within this framework, access becomes mediated by institutional authority.

At the same time, many of the physicians and scientists leading what is often described as the “third psychedelic wave” are thrilled about the emergence of a significant new market (6). Interest from the pharmaceutical sector, alongside investment from Silicon Valley, reflects growing attention to the commercial potential of combining psychedelics with therapeutic models (7). A glance at the trade shows and conferences where “cutting-edge” psychedelic science is presented suggests that this field is widely regarded (to put it lightly) as a space of substantial economic opportunity or a new market opportunity to be capitalised on (8).

We must reckon with the fact that many of the substances now classified as so-called psychedelics have been part of human life for millennia. Across cultures worldwide, rich shamanic knowledge and spiritual traditions have developed around the use of plant teachers—including ayahuasca, psilocybin mushrooms, peyote, iboga, and many others—for healing, guidance, and divination (9). This living tradition forms part of our shared human heritage (10).

These are, without question, extraordinarily powerful substances—ones that call for deep respect and reverence. To encounter them within a context that is loving, spiritually grounded, and fundamentally egalitarian—shared with others as equals—would be a profound gift for anyone.

And yet, even the language we use to describe these substances deserves closer examination. What we commonly refer to as “psychedelics” is a relatively recent framing, one that sits within a narrow medical paradigm. In many indigenous traditions, what are often called “plant teachers” are not viewed simply as biochemical agents, but as living sources of knowledge, revered spirit guides—capable of offering insight, guidance, and healing within a relational, spiritual context, through visions and dream states.

The narrow medical framework carries an inherent inequality between the physician or therapist and the person labeled as patient (11). The prospect of having to share one’s innermost stirrings with a sceptic who—at the very moment one is most open and vulnerable, in the days or weeks following the use of a substance capable of inducing profound psychological and emotional openness, and healing—proceeds to evaluate that experience against predetermined stringent therapeutic guidelines is, to me, deeply troubling.

Within the Western clinical model, the psychiatrist or physician is present only as a “sitter,” abstaining from the substance so as to preserve an objective lens. This stands in marked contrast to many shamanic traditions, in which those who guide others are precisely those with deep personal experience of the plant teacher—and who are therefore able to hold a spiritually grounded and safe space within which people can find genuine, lasting healing.

These sacred plants belong to all of humanity and form part of humanity’s shared inheritance. To place them exclusively under the authority of what can be termed the “church of medicine” risks severing them from that broader human and spiritual context.

We must also remain mindful of recent years, when medical “experts” were entrusted with determining what was best for public health, and how, under the guise of safety, this led to widespread social isolation and restrictions on movement and association that raised serious questions about the protection of fundamental human rights (12,13).

What grounds, then, do we have for trusting that same establishment to define the conditions under which people may safely engage with these so-called psychedelics?

And speaking of these broader concerns, I would like to express my appreciation to both Joe Rogan and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. for their role in bringing questions of public health and institutional trust into wider public awareness. The first time I truly engaged with Kennedy’s perspective was during his appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience in June 2023, in a wide-ranging conversation (14). That moment marked a turning point for me.

During a long drive from northern Minas Gerais toward Rio de Janeiro, my husband and I listened to the entire three-hour conversation without pause. Even as a physician already deeply skeptical of pharmaceutical industry influence—more so, I think, than most of my colleagues—I found his account both moving and thought-provoking. It led me to explore his work more deeply and to begin examining the history of vaccines through a broader range of sources.

Central among these was Dissolving Illusions: Disease, Vaccines and the Forgotten History by Suzanne Humphries and Roman Bystrianyk—a meticulously referenced work that remains largely unknown within mainstream medical circles, and that I found impossible to ignore (15). This broader inquiry made me increasingly aware of the complex relationships between public health institutions and the pharmaceutical industry—and of the powerful economic incentives that shape this landscape, ones that don’t necessarily make our health the number one priority.

In the Western world, many of these spiritual traditions remain unfamiliar. Across both Europe and the United States, much of this shamanic knowledge has been lost over the centuries. At the same time, forms of traditional plant knowledge—including herbalism and homeopathy—were marginalized or suppressed and in some cases criminalized in the early 20th century, particularly as modern pharmaceutical systems became more dominant (16).

As a result, our thinking and discourse are deeply shaped by a materialist conception of what it means to be human. In the words of Terence McKenna: “The rational, mechanistic, antispiritual bias of our own culture has made it impossible for us to appreciate the mind-set of the shaman. We are culturally and linguistically blind to the world of forces and interconnections clearly visible to those who have retained the Archaic relationship to nature.” (10)

Within this framework, we tend to speak of becoming happier and more productive, rather than of seeking connection with deeper or higher aspects of ourselves. Plant extracts are treated as substances or products—divorced from the contexts in which they were traditionally used, and separated from the knowledge and traditions that gave them meaning. They are approached as if they follow a simple dose–response relationship, in which context plays no role.

This, I would suggest, reflects a profound misunderstanding.

And yet, I recognize that enthusiasm for psychedelics. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Joe Rogan are right to point to their transformative potential.

When I first took ‘magic mushrooms’ in the Netherlands—where they have been legally available in so-called smartshops since the mid-1990s (17)—I found myself thinking: everyone should experience this, at least once. The visual effects I encountered were magical, and the experience itself was imbued with a sense of clarity, openness, and love.

Years later, when I gathered the courage to take a tab of LSD at a music festival, I was met with an overwhelming sense of unity with all that exists—a profound connection to the beauty and abundance of the universe. It is an experience that has stayed with me, and one I would wish for others to encounter.

After such experiences, I began to see how far removed many of the fear-based narratives I had encountered in the media were from my own lived reality.

That same trust guided me years later when ayahuasca came into my life. I did not feel the need to search the internet for others’ accounts; instead, I followed my intuition, prepared myself physically and mentally, and ensured that I had the time and space to fully receive whatever might unfold.

I took a week away from my work as a physician, set out on a long bicycle journey, and spent several days immersed in nature. My first encounter with this ancient medicine of the Amazon rainforest took place in the forests of Veluwe, in the Netherlands, among a group of experienced practitioners for whom this was a deeply spiritual practice. There was dedication, support, and a sense of freedom.

It was the summer of 2020.

I was searching for answers to deeper existential questions. For years, I had questioned the meaning and direction of my work as a physician—wondering whether meaningful change from within the system was truly possible. My work in elderly care had revealed to me how closely intertwined the pharmaceutical industry is with modern medicine, and through independent study I began to recognize recurring patterns of fraud, corruption, and influence in the promotion of prescription drugs.

I eventually specialized in deprescribing—the careful tapering and, where appropriate, cessation of medications. I have written previously on Brownstone about my professional experiences with discontinuing psychiatric drugs (18), in part inspired by the profoundly moving book Unshrunk by Laura Delano (19).

As a young physician in the Netherlands, I witnessed many elderly patients improve dramatically when I was able to substantially reduce or discontinue their long-term use of psychiatric drugs, pain medications, and cardiovascular agents such as antihypertensives and statins. That work was deeply gratifying—recognized by colleagues and appreciated by families.

Yet in the years leading up to 2020, I increasingly found myself questioning the limits of what I could offer. While I was helping people by critically reviewing their often-extensive medication regimens, I began to ask: what did I truly have to offer in terms of healing? My medical training and the contents of my physician’s bag felt woefully inadequate in the face of deeper human needs.

During the lockdown period, I watched many of my elderly patients experience profound social isolation, with visible and lasting effects on their well-being. For a physician who had spent nearly a decade devoted to her patients’ quality of life, this was deeply painful—and, to my mind, a sign that the measures being implemented had lost sight of what public health is fundamentally about. This was also a time of deep personal reflection. I found myself increasingly uncomfortable with the climate surrounding the Covid-19 measures—one in which legitimate scientific questions, particularly about the long-term effects of newly developed vaccines, were met with institutional pressure rather than open inquiry, and in which the space for genuine informed consent had quietly disappeared. Unable to serve my patients in the way my integrity required, I ultimately stepped back, temporarily, from clinical practice (20).

Drawing on my knowledge of the harms associated with long-term psychiatric drug use, I initially followed with great interest the growing body of national and international research into the use of psychedelics within medical settings. The early results were promising, and my own experiences had made me deeply optimistic.

How remarkable it would be if we could help free people from years of severe depression through such approaches. Who, indeed, could be against that?

Years later, I came across an article by a group of psychiatrists from Groningen—the city where I was born and where I completed my medical training. Writing in 2022, they warned of the societal dangers of “conspiracy theory” thinking, and proposed that certain people might appropriately be classified within a psychotic spectrum—a framing that, in a psychiatric context, is never without consequence (21).

From that same department, incidentally, “groundbreaking” research into psychedelics is being conducted—often involving patients labeled as “treatment-resistant,” a term that, as Laura Delano has repeatedly argued, deserves critical scrutiny. The underlying logic is difficult to ignore: when individuals do not respond to years of medication and therapy, the failure is not attributed to the limitations of the model or the drugs prescribed—but to the patient. It is the individual who is “resistant;” the treatment cannot be at fault.

In such cases, more invasive interventions are reached for, among them electroconvulsive therapy, a practice whose risks and long-term effects remain deeply contested. Now also psychedelics are being offered within a tightly controlled clinical framework, under the supervision of the same psychiatric system.

For me, this raises deeply troubling questions about power, interpretation, and consent. It is not a model of care I would wish for anyone to be subjected to (22).

But what, exactly, are “psychedelics?” The term—literally meaning “mind-manifesting”—was proposed in the late 1950s in the United States as a neutral label for a broad group of these substances being studied with great enthusiasm by Western scientists (23).

Shortly before that, not coincidentally preceding the turbulent 1960s, LSD had been accidently synthesized in the laboratory, and the psychoactive properties of DMT—a naturally occurring compound also found endogenously in the human body—were identified. Dimethyltryptamine is structurally similar to serotonin and is present in both plants and mammals. In time, these substances came to be classified under the most restrictive legal categories (Schedule I) in many countries (24).

Many of the classic psychedelics (LSD, DMT, psilocybin, mescaline) are, in fact, synthetic derivatives of naturally occurring consciousness-expanding substances found in plants, but there are also non-classical psychedelics, including ketamine and MDMA, and many other laboratory-synthesized compounds (25).

In his bestselling book How to Change Your Mind (2018), Michael Pollan offers a compelling account of the modern history of psychedelics (23). His work has undoubtedly contributed to a renewed public interest in—and growing acceptance of—these substances. Notably, he also reflects on his own cautious personal experiences, presenting them in the form of a kind of travelogue, and in doing so seeks to move beyond the studied detachment that has often characterized contemporary psychedelic research.

Pollan also recounts the early involvement of organizations such as the Central Intelligence Agency and its predecessor, the Office of Strategic Services, including their use of LSD in experiments aimed at exploring mind control—sometimes involving both military personnel and unwitting civilians—as well as their extensive influence on public narratives (26).

While these substances were taken up by elements of the counterculture, they were also rapidly stigmatized through sensationalized reporting. Over time, public perception became strongly shaped by narratives of psychological danger and lasting harm—impressions that persist today. As a result, many people still carry a learned fear or unease when confronted with the idea of psychedelics.

Medical and scientific research into psychedelics was also curtailed from the mid-1960s onward and eventually brought to a halt—despite promising results observed in individuals suffering from severe addiction and depression (27). That first generation of researchers expressed enthusiasm not only for the remarkable therapeutic potential of these substances, but also for the profound, often mystical experiences reported by participants—and, in some cases, by the researchers themselves. The so-called “Good Friday Experiment,” conducted by Walter Pahnke in 1963, remains a well-known example (28).

From the mid-1990s onward, cautious efforts emerged to revive this line of research (29), with contemporary investigators keenly aware of the need to distance themselves from earlier controversies and cultural associations (30). This new generation of researchers has sought to emphasize objectivity—long regarded as a central ideal of the scientific method—and it is not uncommon to hear scientists underscore, sometimes with a sense of professional pride, that they have no personal experience with the substances they study.

Since early 2021, Brazil has been our home—we came for both personal and spiritual reasons, drawn above all by the desire to study ayahuasca within its living spiritual context, and we have stayed for the depth of practice and healing that followed. These ceremonial contexts brought me into deeper contact with my own ancestry and opened a direct path into lived spirituality.

In Brazil, a remarkable legal framework has emerged: the use of ayahuasca was officially permitted within spiritual and religious contexts at the end of the 1980s (31). At the same time, and at the insistence of those for whom it is a sacred sacrament, its commercialization was explicitly prohibited (32).

Traditions such as Santo Daime eventually made their way to the Netherlands. In the mid-1990s, the Amsterdam church “Céu de Santa Maria” was established and later obtained legal recognition. For years, it functioned openly and without major interference—until the use of ayahuasca was once again criminalized in 2018 (33).

In this shift, considerations of medical safety appeared to take precedence over the protection of religious freedom.

What distinguishes the Brazilian ayahuasca tradition—and Santo Daime in particular—from most other shamanic contexts is its fundamentally communal and egalitarian character. The medicine is not administered by a healer to a participant; it is consagrated together, as a group, in shared song and prayer. Participation is accessible to all: contributions, where asked, are modest and intended only to cover costs, and those who cannot pay are welcomed regardless. This is a sharp contrast with the commercialized settings and traveling shamans increasingly common across the United States and Europe—and it is not incidental. The communal, non-commercial structure is itself part of the healing.

Many of the most compelling testimonies come from individuals who have encountered these substances—whether described as psychedelics or plant medicines—within intentional, spiritually grounded contexts.

The increasing medicalization of psychedelics, however, raises serious concerns. In the interest of protecting both religious freedom and cognitive liberty, safeguards should be established to ensure that access is not limited solely to those designated as patients or defined within psychiatric frameworks but guaranteed for all people.

Commercialization must likewise be resisted, and Big Pharma kept at the door—not only given the safety concerns and delicate questions surrounding neuroplasticity, but because what is at stake is far greater: cognitive liberty, the right to one’s own inner life, and the preservation of a sacred practice that medicalization threatens to hollow out. The church of medicine—of which psychiatry is a part—must not be allowed to determine, from within its reductionist, materialist framework, what constitutes a ‘safe’ setting.

Plant medicines are sacred. They carry a rich shamanic tradition and are, at their core, part of what it means to be human. Psychedelics within a medical-therapeutic context push us further into the hands of the same system that incentivizes profit over health, and symptom regulation over healing. Plant medicines within a ceremonial, non-commercialized context—not reduced to extracted compounds and calibrated doses—are powerful instruments for bringing us back into contact with ourselves and with nature.

“It cannot be said too often: the psychedelic issue is a civil rights and civil liberties issue. It is an issue concerned with the most basic of human freedoms: religious practice and the privacy of the individual mind.”
— T. McKenna, Food of the Gods (1992/ed. 2021, p. 298)

References

1. Rogan, J. The Joe Rogan Experience, Episode #2461 (with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., segment on psychedelics at 1:35–1:47h). February 27, 2026. https://www.jrepodcast.com/guest/robert-kennedy-jr/

2. Williams, S. “Psychoactive drug ibogaine effectively treats traumatic brain injury in special ops military vets.” Stanford Medicine News. January 5, 2024. https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2024/01/ibogaine-ptsd.html

3. Labate, B., Cavnar, C. Prohibition, Religious Freedom and Human Rights: Regulating Traditional Drug Use. Springer, 2014. https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-642-40957-8 | Aviles, C.S., Langlois, A. “On the Frontlines: Legal Advocacy, Drug Policy and Psychoactive Plants.” In: Infinite Perception. ICEERS, 2024. https://www.iceers.org/en/studies/legal-advocacy-drug-policy-psychoactive-plants/

4. Walsh, C. “Psychedelics and Cognitive Liberty: Reimagining Drug Policy Through the Prism of Human Rights.” International Journal of Drug Policy. 2016. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26838469/

5. “Medical Nemesis by Ivan Illich — Unbekoming book summary.” Lies are Unbekoming (Substack). July 5, 2024.

Lies are Unbekoming

Medical Nemesis

2 years ago · 67 likes · 37 comments · Unbekoming

6. Aday, J. et al. “Psychedelic Commercialization: A Wide-Spanning Overview of the Emerging Psychedelic Industry.” Psychedelic Medicine. September 13, 2023. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11661494/ |

7. Psychedelic Medicine Market Size. Business Research Insights. https://www.businessresearchinsights.com/market-reports/psychedelic-medicine-market-123148

8. Psychedelic Therapeutics Market Size, Share and Trends 2025–2034. Precedence Research. https://www.precedenceresearch.com/psychedelic-therapeutics-market

9. Schultes, R., Hofmann, A., Rätsch, C. Plants of the Gods: Their Sacred, Healing and Hallucinogenic Powers. Healing Arts Press, 2001. https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Plants-of-the-Gods/Richard-Evans-Schultes/9780892819799

10. McKenna, T. Food of the Gods: A Radical History of Plants, Psychedelics and Human Evolution. First published 1992; this ed. Rider, 2021. https://www.penguin.com.au/books/food-of-the-gods-9780712670388

11. “Confessions of a Medical Heretic (1979) by Dr. Robert Mendelsohn — 50 Q&As — Unbekoming book summary.” Lies are Unbekoming (Substack). January 1, 2025.

Lies are Unbekoming

Confessions of a Medical Heretic (1979)

I’d like to start the year with Mendelsohn…

a year ago · 96 likes · 38 comments · Unbekoming

12. Baker, C.J. “The Four Pillars of Medical Ethics Were Destroyed in the Covid Response.” Brownstone Institute. May 12, 2023. https://brownstone.org/articles/medical-ethics-destroyed-in-covid-response/

13. Stylman, J. “Echoes of Tyranny: The Forgotten Lessons from History.” Brownstone Institute. October 11, 2024. https://brownstone.org/articles/echoes-of-tyranny-the-forgotten-lessons-from-history/

14. Rogan, J. The Joe Rogan Experience, Episode #1999 (with Robert F. Kennedy Jr.). June 15, 2023. https://www.jrepodcast.com/guest/robert-kennedy-jr/

15. Humphries, S., Bystrianyk, R. Dissolving Illusions. 10th anniversary ed., 2024. https://www.amazon.com/Dissolving-Illusions-Suzanne-Humphries-ebook/dp/B00E7FOA0U

16. Ullman, D. “Rockefeller, the Flexner Report, and the American Medical Association: The Contentious Relationship Between Conventional Medicine and Homeopathy in America.” Cureus 17(7): e87291. July 4, 2025. doi:10.7759/cureus.87291. https://www.cureus.com/articles/370572

17. Regan, H. “Inside a Dutch Smartshop’s Harm Reduction Approach.” Filter Magazine. September 5, 2023. https://filtermag.org/dutch-smartshop-harm-reduction/

18. Bennink, E. “Laura Delano’s Unshrunk: A Story of Psychiatric Treatment Resistance.” Brownstone Institute. July 10, 2025. https://brownstone.org/articles/laura-delanos-unshrunk-a-story-of-psychiatric-treatment-resistance/

19. Delano, L. Unshrunk: A Story of Psychiatric Treatment Resistance. 2025.

https://unshrunkthebook.com/

20. Bennink, L. “Why I Left the Healthcare System.” Strelitzia (Substack). March 5, 2026.

Strelitzia

Why I Left the Healthcare System

This article was originally written in Dutch and published on Lisa Bennink's LinkedIn in November 2021, and later on OverNu.nl in 2022…

2 months ago · Strelitzia

21.Veling, W. et al. “Are Conspiracy Theorists Psychotic? A Comparison Between Conspiracy Theories and Paranoid Delusions.” European Psychiatry. 2022. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9568148/

22. “1950s Mind Control Experiments Prompt Warning About Psychedelic Research Today.” Digital Journal. December 12, 2023. https://www.digitaljournal.com/pr/news/ampwire/1950s-mind-control-experiments-prompt-warning-about-psychedelic-research-today

23. Pollan, M. How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression and Transcendence. Penguin Press, 2018. https://michaelpollan.com/books/how-to-change-your-mind/

24.“Legal Status of DMT and Ayahuasca Under the 1971 UN Convention.” October 28, 2025. https://ark.yaogara.org/policy/dmt-un-report-1971

25. Abrahms, Z. et al. “Pathway Engineering for the Biosynthesis of Psychedelics.” Current Opinion in Biotechnology. August 2025. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0958166925000588

26. Kinzer, S. Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control. Henry Holt & Co., 2019. https://www.amazon.com/Poisoner-Chief-Sidney-Gottlieb-Control/dp/1250140439

27. Carhart-Harris, R., Goodwin, G. “The Therapeutic Potential of Psychedelic Drugs: Past, Present and Future.” Neuropsychopharmacology. May 17, 2017. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5603818/

28. Pahnke, W.N. Drugs and Mysticism: An Analysis of the Relationship Between Psychedelic Drugs and the Mystical Consciousness. Doctoral dissertation, Harvard University, 1963.

29. Strassman, R.J. et al. “Dose-Response Study of N,N-Dimethyltryptamine in Humans. I. Neuroendocrine, Autonomic, and Cardiovascular Effects.” Archives of General Psychiatry. February 1994. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8297216/

30. Dyck, E. “What Is at Stake in the Psychedelic Renaissance.” Open Access Government. 2023. https://www.openaccessgovernment.org/article/what-is-at-stake-in-the-psychedelic-renaissance/166435/

31. Labate, B. A reinvenção do uso da ayahuasca nos centros urbanos (pp. 84–87). Mercado de Letras, 2016. https://mercado-de-letras.com.br/e-books-serie-drogas-politica-e-cultura/

32. Labate, B., Feeney, K. “Ayahuasca and the Process of Regulation in Brazil and Internationally: Implications and Challenges.” International Journal of Drug Policy. 2012. https://static1.squarespace.com/static/667377aecd9d7965ef16050f/t/675332b3e855524851b8f21e/1733505715597/Ayahuasca_and_the_process_of_regulation.pdf | Resolução CONAD nº 1 de 25/01/2010. https://www.normasbrasil.com.br/norma/resolucao-1-2010_113527.html

33.Van der Plas, A. “Legal Paper on the Status of Ayahuasca Under the Dutch Legal System.” ICEERS. October 2023. https://www.iceers.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/ICEERS-Dutch-Legal-Report.pdf

When War Teaches Medicine

Brownstone Institute — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 09:10:14 GMT

BY JOSEPH VARON

War is the most unrestrained expression of humanity’s destructive capacity, a setting where order disintegrates, moral boundaries are tested, and life is reduced to its most vulnerable state. Medicine, by contrast, stands as a deliberate act of resistance against that collapse, a disciplined and unwavering commitment to preserve life even when surrounded by death. Despite these opposing identities, war and medicine have remained deeply intertwined across history, not by design, but by inevitability.

Again and again, the battlefield has served as medicine’s most unforgiving classroom, stripping away theory and exposing only what truly works under pressure. In that environment, progress is not driven by curiosity or careful planning but by urgency, necessity, and the relentless demand to save lives hanging by a thread. It is in these moments of chaos and human suffering that medicine evolves most rapidly, forced forward not because it is prepared, but because failure is measured in lives lost and there is no option but to improve.

From the fields of Waterloo to the trenches of World War I, and from the mechanized devastation of World War II to the asymmetric conflicts of the modern era, war has shaped the trajectory of medical progress in both extraordinary and deeply troubling ways. Notably, some of the most significant advances in medicine have arisen during periods marked by profound human failure. However, war not only drives medical advancement but also exposes how easily medicine can lose its ethical direction. This narrative examines both the lessons gained and the critical principles that must be preserved.

The Good: Innovation Forged in Crisis

Modern medicine owes much of its development to wartime innovation. The concept of organized trauma care, now standard in emergency departments worldwide, originated amid the chaos of conflict. During the Napoleonic Wars, Dominique Jean Larrey, surgeon to Napoleon Bonaparte, introduced the revolutionary principle that wounded soldiers should be treated according to the severity of their injuries rather than their rank or status.¹

This concept, now universally recognized as triage, represented a radical departure from the hierarchical norms of the time. It was not only a logistical innovation; it was a moral one. Larrey’s approach emphasized the intrinsic value of human life over social or military position, laying the foundation for modern emergency medicine.²

Larrey’s contributions extended beyond triage. His early implementation of rapid evacuation systems, known as “flying ambulances,” and his observations on environmental exposure and resuscitative physiology anticipated concepts that would only be fully recognized centuries later.³ Subsequent analyses, including recent scholarship, have demonstrated how Larrey’s insights align with principles now seen in therapeutic hypothermia and prehospital care systems.⁴

The 19th and early 20th centuries saw further transformation. During World War I, physicians faced injuries that had no precedent: massive blast trauma, chemical burns, and overwhelming infection in an era before antibiotics. The scale of suffering forced rapid advances in surgical technique, wound management, and infection control.⁵

The development of blood transfusion systems during this period, particularly the introduction of blood typing and storage, represented a turning point in the management of hemorrhagic shock.⁶ For the first time, physicians could meaningfully intervene in one of the leading causes of battlefield death.

World War II accelerated this progress dramatically. The widespread use of penicillin, the refinement of surgical debridement techniques, and the development of forward surgical units significantly improved survival rates.⁷ The concept of rapid evacuation—getting the wounded away from the battlefield and into definitive care as quickly as possible became a central principle of military medicine.

By the time of the Korean and Vietnam Wars, these ideas had evolved into fully integrated systems of care. Helicopter evacuation, mobile army surgical hospitals (MASH units), and coordinated trauma care. These advances extended beyond the battlefield, forming the foundation of civilian trauma care and influencing the development of emergency medical services and intensive care unit design. War compelled medicine to address a fundamental question: how to sustain life in cases previously deemed unsalvageable. Repeatedly, medical innovation provided solutions. Who should be dead? And, time and again, medicine found an answer.

The Bad: Progress at a Moral Cost

However, the history of medicine in war is not solely characterized by progress. Alongside innovation exists a darker narrative in which physicians, rather than opposing the brutality of war, became complicit in its execution. The most infamous example remains the medical atrocities committed during World War II under the Nazi regime. Physicians participated in inhumane experiments on prisoners, often without anesthesia, consent, or any scientific justification.⁹ These acts were not aberrations committed by a few individuals. They were systematic, organized, and sanctioned by the state. The aftermath of these crimes led to the Nuremberg Trials and the establishment of the Nuremberg Code, which articulated fundamental principles of medical ethics, including the requirement for voluntary informed consent.¹⁰

Yet it would be a mistake to view these failures as confined to a single regime or moment in history. In the United States, for example, the Tuskegee Syphilis Study conducted between 1932 and 1972 revealed a similarly disturbing willingness to sacrifice ethical principles in the name of research.¹¹ African-American men with syphilis were deliberately left untreated, even after effective therapy became available, in order to study the natural progression of the disease.

These examples underscore that ethical failures in medicine are not confined to wartime or to foreign contexts. Such failures occur whenever physicians permit external pressures—political, ideological, or institutional—to supersede their primary duty to patients. War does not generate these failures; rather, it reveals them.

The Ugly: When Medicine Becomes a Tool of Power

While the ‘bad’ in wartime medicine reflects ethical failure, the ‘ugly’ represents the transformation of medicine into an instrument of power. Historically, physicians have often been expected to serve state objectives rather than patient welfare. This has included direct participation in acts of harm, withholding care, prioritizing certain populations, or redefining eligibility for treatment. At this point, medicine loses its essential character.

The physician’s duty is not conditional. It does not depend on nationality, ideology, or allegiance. The wounded soldier on one side of the battlefield is no less deserving of care than the wounded soldier on the other. This principle is reflected in the foundational documents of humanitarian medicine, including the Geneva Conventions, which emphasize the impartial treatment of the wounded and sick.¹² It is embodied in the work of organizations such as the International Committee of the Red Cross, which operates under the principle of neutrality. And it is deeply rooted in the ethical traditions of medicine itself.

Maimonides, the medieval Jewish physician and philosopher, wrote: “The physician should not treat the disease but the patient who is suffering from it.” This perspective transcends time, culture, and circumstance. It reminds us that medicine is, at its core, a human endeavor, one that must remain grounded in compassion, even in the face of conflict.

The Forgotten Lesson

A central paradox exists within wartime medicine. War compels the development of life-saving techniques under extreme conditions, driving innovation, refining clinical judgment, and necessitating systems capable of addressing overwhelming needs. However, it also poses the risk of imparting misguided lessons.

During the chaos of war, there is a tendency to categorize patients as members of groups rather than as individuals, viewing them as assets, liabilities, or adversaries rather than as human beings. This shift is perilous, as adopting the logic of war causes medicine to lose its foundational identity.

Physicians are not soldiers, hospitals are not battlefields, and patients are not adversaries. These distinctions must remain clear, particularly during periods of societal division.

Modern Parallels: When the Battlefield Comes Home

Although the context of war may appear remote to many contemporary physicians, similar dynamics persist. In recent years, medicine has become increasingly politicized, mirroring pressures observed in wartime settings. Physicians have been encouraged, both explicitly and implicitly, to conform to prevailing narratives, suppress dissenting perspectives, and prioritize institutional or political objectives over individualized patient care. While this is not traditional warfare, it shares a critical characteristic: the erosion of medical neutrality.

For example, during the Covid-19 pandemic, healthcare providers worldwide reported pressure to follow government directives or institutional messaging that sometimes conflicted with evolving clinical evidence or patient-centered care. Similarly, in ongoing conflict zones such as Ukraine and Syria, attacks on medical facilities and personnel have highlighted the vulnerability of medical neutrality, as physicians have been targeted or coerced based on political alignment. When physicians take sides based on external pressures rather than clinical evidence, they risk repeating historical errors.

Holding the Line

War is likely to persist, reflecting humanity’s enduring tragedy. Medicine, however, must remain steadfast, anchored in principles that transcend conflict, ideology, and time. It should not become a weapon, a tool of power, or an instrument of politics, but must remain a profession dedicated to the care of each individual, regardless of circumstance. The wounded do not choose the side on which they fall, and neither should those who provide care.

References

Larrey DJ. Mémoires de chirurgie militaire et campagnes. Paris: Smith; 1812.
Richardson RG. Larrey: surgeon to Napoleon’s Imperial Guard. J Med Biogr. 2004;12(4):204–208.
Soto-Ruiz KM, Varon J. George W. Crile: a visionary mind in resuscitation. Resuscitation. 2009;80(1):6–8.
Jasqui-Remba S, Rivera A, Varon J, Sternbach GL. Dominique Jean Larrey: the effects of therapeutic hypothermia and the first ambulance. Resuscitation. 2010;81:268–271.
Wangensteen OH, Wangensteen SD. Military surgeons and surgery, old and new. Bull N Y Acad Med. 1971;47(10):1265–1290.
Starr D. Blood: an epic history of medicine and commerce. New York: Knopf; 1998.
Hardaway RM. Wound shock: a history of its study and treatment. Am Surg. 2000;66(8):720–728.
Bellamy RF. The evolution of battlefield trauma care. Mil Med. 1987;152(12):617–620.
Lifton RJ. The Nazi doctors: medical killing and the psychology of genocide. New York: Basic Books; 1986.
Shuster E. Fifty years later: the significance of the Nuremberg Code. N Engl J Med. 1997;337(20):1436–1440.
Brandt AM. Racism and research: the case of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. Hastings Cent Rep. 1978;8(6):21–29.
Geneva Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded and Sick in Armed Forces in the Field. 1949.
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Jury Trials Are Vital to the Constitutional Order

Brownstone Institute — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 09:14:43 GMT

BY DAVID THUNDER

The Labour-led British government is currently attempting to hollow out an ancient pillar of English constitutionalism, trial by jury. Under their planned reforms, trial by jury would survive in England and Wales for certain types of crimes, but its use would be significantly curtailed. For example, according to a government press release issued earlier this month, new “Swift Courts” will assign cases “with a likely sentence of three years or less” to be heard by “a Judge alone.”

The campaign against jury trials, one of the most free-spirited and universally lauded institutions bequeathed to us by the common law tradition, would be baffling in a healthy constitutional regime. But sadly, it is predictable enough in a regime whose political leaders have developed the habit of tinkering with civil liberties as though they were trimming their lawn.

Being an ancient institution that evolved gradually over a millennium, a significant restriction of jury trials would have unpredictable effects on the justice system. We simply do not know with any confidence how, in the long run, such a move would alter the incentives of prosecutors, change the pattern of convictions for different crimes, or alter public perceptions of the justice system.

What we do know is that it would constitute a dangerous and completely unnecessary constitutional experiment, eroding one of the most time-honoured bulwarks of civil liberty. Furthermore, it is worth noting that according to an analysis published by the Free Speech Union, drawing on Ministry of Justice data, overall acquittal rates are much higher with juries than with magistrates’ courts (21.6% vs. 11.4%), and this difference also holds specifically for speech-related offences (27.6% vs. 15.9%). Assuming these figures are accurate, citizens will likely be much more vulnerable to prosecution and conviction if the use of jury trials is thrown out or significantly eroded.

Trial by jury has been lauded by generations of learned and respected scholars of law and democracy as a cornerstone of a free society. Alexis de Tocqueville, whose 1835-40 volume Democracy in America offers one of the most incisive of reflections on the pros and cons of modern democracy, opined that “the jury…is the most energetic means of making the people rule, [and] is also the most effective means of teaching it how to rule well.”

An eminent 17^th-century English jurist, Sir Edward Coke, insisted that no Englishman could be lawfully condemned “but by the lawful judgment of his peers.” The esteemed 18^th-century legal commentator, Sir William Blackstone, likewise described trial by jury as “the glory of the English law” and “the most transcendent privilege which any subject can enjoy,” emphasising its role as a shield between the individual and arbitrary power.

Budding constitutional reformers would do well to pay heed to Lord Patrick Devlin’s warning that “the first object of any tyrant… would be to make Parliament utterly subservient to his will; and the next to overthrow or diminish trial by jury, for it is the lamp that shows that freedom lives.”

If marginal gains in the duration of trials are deemed an adequate justification for tinkering with this bastion of the legal order, then we might as well just go ahead and subject the whole constitutional order to an “efficiency” test: if we can shave a few days or weeks off this or that legal procedure, then why not engage in a bit of constitutional engineering?

But this is a cheap and shallow argument. To begin with, we should not be so sure of our own understanding of the mechanics of such a complex and evolved order, nor should we be so confident that we can predict the short- and long-term impact of our well-intentioned meddling.

Equally importantly, those who bring a revolutionary pick-axe to the constitutional edifice destabilise public expectations about the basic “rules of the game.” In doing so, they open the door to political opportunists who would happily overturn the rules and conventions that keep citizens free in order to advance their own careers or curry favour with party bosses or the fickle tides of public opinion.

These Constitution-wreckers have bought into a reckless form of positivism that views the legal system as the handiwork of each new generation of human lawgivers rather than as a hallowed constitutional inheritance, and conceives the legislator as an ambitious constitutional reformer, ever poised to introduce “enlightened” reforms in the longstanding customs of liberty, whether in the name of “efficiency” “progress,” “social justice,” or some other ostensibly noble end. While the seeds of positivism and its contempt for the common law have been in place for centuries, its bitter fruits are now on full display.

The outcome of happy-go-lucky Constitutional engineering is that citizens are perpetually vulnerable to political fanaticism. And not just any old fanaticism, but the sort that dismantles or radically alters fundamental Constitutional rights such as privacy, freedom of speech, or the right to be tried before one’s peers.

Sadly, the move against jury trials is not an anomaly. Rather, it reflects a growing trend among modern governments and legislators – not only in the United Kingdom, but in many other places – to assert their own authority over the constitutional order in exaggerated and destructive ways.

Instead of recognising that they are standing on the shoulders of giants and acting as humble stewards of an ancient tradition of ordered liberty, whose inner workings have evolved gradually over countless generations, legislators and government ministers have gotten it into their heads that they are can stand majestically above the constitutional order and remake it at will, as one might rearrange one’s bedroom.

Unfortunately, the citizenry of Western societies, or at least a large portion of it, is in a state of moral stupor and has become complacent about the risks of governmental tyranny. Many are no longer well equipped to distinguish between the arbitrary utterances of a legislator and the longstanding rules of humanity and decency.

The idolisation of positive law and the downgrading of the customary liberties of Western societies came to a head during the pandemic: people were happy to go along with laws that made life hell for their unvaccinated neighbours, just because they were unvaccinated; large segments of the public acquiesced in, or actively supported, these measures, looking on approvingly while police suppressed public protests in the name of “public health;” and people reported their neighbours for the “offense” of having social gatherings in their homes.

Legal systems are meant to set us free, by providing a framework of public order and reaonable expectations within which we can get on with our lives. But they can only do this if they are beholden to a higher law, of the sort that is discovered rather than made by human fiat. This is the sort of law that binds the King and cannot be unmade by the King, as the Magna Carta famously recognises.

Only if citizens believe passionately in a moral code superior to the say-so of legislators and politicians can they find a firm foothold for resisting egregiously unjust and tyrannical laws. But belief in a morality that transcends the will of the legislator is not easy in a culture saturated with moral relativism. We need to recover our confidence in a higher moral law, if we are to reverse the current drift toward legal and political authoritarianism.

Republished from the author’s Substack

The Secret History of the FDA

Brownstone Institute — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 09:16:49 GMT

BY BROWNSTONE INSTITUTE

Our lead story this week reveals the origin of the Food and Drug Administration. From the outset, it was an industry-controlled agency designed to shore up public confidence in two failing industries: biologics and meatpacking. Its mandate only expanded from there.

This is why reform has been so difficult. It is tasked with rooting out the very products it was built to protect from market forces.

This story is part of a larger problem, which is much larger than people suppose. The whole of government-led public health is captured to the point that we don’t know what is real and what is fake, what is safe and what is harmful, what is a legitimate product and what is a racket. The FDA gets in the way of market forces that would otherwise reveal all.

The point is not that improvements are impossible, only that they cannot get to the root of the issue.

Last week, a major scientist at an Ivy League university was tossed out of his position as head of a cancer research institute. The apparent reason: he coauthored a paper drawing an association between cancer and the Covid shots. The website was hit with a month of DDOS attacks and taken down. Brownstone Institute stepped in and distributed it. Then the professional attacks began.

You see what is happening here? The purge is ongoing. This makes our work more important than ever. Brownstone truly needs your support right now if we are to step up and deal with these new pressures. We invite your support. The cause of freedom needs your commitment today.

The Brownstone Show is going well. Tune in to these episodes, including the latest one this week with Stephan Kinsella. BROWNSTONE SHOW.

These are the sorts of topics we talk about at Brownstone Supper Clubs, now coast to coast. Pick one and go!

Midwest: On Monday, April 13th, the Midwest Supper Club welcomes Dave Rollo. Get tickets.
Manhattan: On Tuesday, April 14th, the Manhattan Supper Club welcomes John Gilmore. Get tickets.
Puget Sound: On Tuesday, April 21st, the Puget Sound Supper Club welcomes Corey DeAngelis. Get tickets.
Pittsboro, NC: On Tuesday, April 21st, the Pittsboro, NC Supper Club welcomes Drs. Patricia Robitaille and Coleen Rickabaugh. Get tickets.
Charlotte, NC: On Tuesday, April 21st, the Charlotte, NC Supper Club welcomes Andrew Byrd. Get tickets.
West Hartford, CT: On Wednesday, April 22nd, the West Hartford, CT Supper Club welcomes Walter Kirn. Get tickets.
Austin, TX: On Wednesday, April 22nd, the Austin Supper Club welcomes Jenna McCarthy. Get tickets.
Pittsburgh, PA: On Wednesday, April 22nd, the Pittsburgh Supper Club welcomes Mike Costarell. Get tickets.
Chattanooga, TN: On Tuesday, May 5th, the Chattanooga Supper Club welcomes Michele Reneau. Get tickets.
Greater Boston, MA: On Tuesday, May 5th, the Greater Boston Supper Club welcomes Professor Thomas Seyfried. Get tickets.
Chicago, IL: On Thursday, May 7th, the Chicago Supper Club welcomes Tom Sosnoff. Get tickets.
Polyface Farm: On Friday and Saturday, August 28th and 29th, Brownstone will host our annual Polyface Retreat at Polyface Farm in Swoope, Virginia. REGISTER NOW. NOTE: Tickets for the VIP dinner August 28 are now available. TICKETS.
Chattanooga: On Friday and Saturday, November 6th and 7th, Brownstone will host our 6th Annual Conference and Gala. Save the dates.

If you are interested in being a supper club host in your area, please visit our Supper Club information page here.

Here is some content since our last email.

What Would Robert Louis Stevenson Say about Ozempic? By Ann Bauer. Today, we have a drug made of “salt forms of a glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) receptor agonist,” being pushed by physicians and television campaigns and sports heroes and celebrities nationwide that allows people to silence the addict within.

The Lost Art of Medicine: What Maimonides Knew That We Forgot By Joseph Varon. Contemporary medicine is not failing for lack of knowledge. It is failing under the weight of complexity. Nearly every aspect of patient care can now be measured. Yet despite these advances, a fundamental element has been eroded. This erosion is philosophical.

Not Your Grandfather’s Stagflation By David Stockman. We are going to get a globe-shaking economic conflagration erupting from the void that was the Persian Gulf commodity fountain. That includes between 20% and 50% of all the basic commodities that drive global GDP.

What the IHRP Report Means for America, WHO, and the Future of Global Health By David Bell, Ramesh Thakur, and Roger Bate. The choice ahead is straightforward. Governments can treat the pandemic as an anomaly and return to familiar habits—or they can use the hard lessons of Covid-19 to demand institutions that are narrower, more transparent, and genuinely accountable.

The Behemoth of Global Corruption Is an Extension of Ourselves By David Bell. Once we cut the behemoth down to human size, we can see that nothing is new, and defeating it is not impossible. It will take perseverance, hope, and a reckoning with ourselves.

Ketanji Brown Jackson Remains “Puzzled” by Medical Freedom By Brownstone Institute. While Tuesday’s opinion was a victory for free speech and medical freedom, Justice Jackson’s opinion is not merely the ramblings of a radical ideologue. She is the mouthpiece for a powerful cohort that seeks to strip Americans of their autonomy.

Crunch Time for the WHO By David Bell and Ramesh Thakur. The polarised debate on the World Health Organization (WHO) has been based more on mud-slinging and all-or-nothing dogma than scientific evidence and empirical data. However, with trust plummeting in public health, change is needed.

What If the FDA Were Eliminated?

Brownstone Institute — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 09:11:42 GMT

BY JEFFREY TUCKER

The second Trump administration arrived in the wake of the brutal Covid experience, with the hope of gutting the deep state. A public demand for dramatic reform of oppressive government agencies – and the industries that influence them – was on the docket.

Reform efforts, however, have been met with frustration. The entire machinery is set up to resist the influence of a politically hostile takeover. For example, Moderna, the company tasked with the development of mRNA shots for Covid, has been given the green light to further develop the technology for a flu shot, among other grave disappointments.

The operations of the FDA have been pulled in two different directions. On the one hand, the efforts are directed toward better efficacy and safety testing, obviously in light of the disastrous experiment with mRNA shots rolled out to inoculate the population. The resulting injury and death is a scandal for the ages. On the other hand, pharmaceutical companies hoped for speedier approvals and less red tape, consistent with Republican demands for decades.

It’s the same with food. The HHS has prioritized healthier real food instead of decades of subsidies for highly processed, nutrient-barren junk food designed to use up surplus grains that have been subsidized since the early 1970s. Americans meanwhile assume – thanks to the FDA and the Department of Agriculture – that anything for sale for people or animals has surely passed some kind of safety and health standards, which is far from true.

A worthy thought experiment: how would drug approvals and food safety be managed in the absence of such government agencies? The thesis: the free and competitive marketplace would likely be far more strict and exacting than these government agencies. Private solutions would emerge as the standard bearers of approvals, in a way similar to how the private Underwriters Laboratory (founded 1894) codifies the safety of appliances, the Better Business Bureau (founded 1912) polices fraud in business, and actuaries in many sectors assess and price risk.

Anyone in a free market can sell anything. Doing so profitably over the long term and earning consumer trust is an entirely different matter. Markets have their own way of regulating safety, efficacy, and quality, often in ways that are more strict than government agencies have traditionally permissioned.

Let’s look at the history.

Vaccines and drugs were the first two consumer products in American history to be regulated by government agencies. The Biologics Control Act of 1902 regulated the production and sale of biological products, specifically vaccines, serums, antitoxins, and similar items. It required annual licensing of manufacturers, facility inspections, supervision by a scientist, and proper labeling (including expiration dates).

This Congressional action came directly in response to the wave of vaccine injuries and death in 1901. A diphtheria antitoxin in St. Louis killed 13 children, while a contaminated smallpox vaccine in Camden, New Jersey, killed 9 more. Crucially, these tragedies gained public attention through media amplification whereas most vaccine injury remains a private and unpublicized matter. The public was outraged in part because it confirmed widespread suspicion of these products born of long experience.

The industry was clearly in deep trouble. It lobbied for the 1902 law to shore up confidence in a manner consistent with its efforts before and since.

As historian Terry S. Coleman points out, “the 1902 Act was an initiative of the large biologics manufacturers,” with the help of the American Medical Association and led by Parke-Davis, which was acquired in 1970 by Warner-Lambert and again by Pfizer In 2000. “It is impossible to disentangle the desire for strict regulations to boost public confidence in biologics,” he writes, “from the desire for such regulations to eliminate competitors.”

Thus did the creation of the agency formed by the Congressional action (the Hygienic Laboratory, part of the Public Health and Marine Hospital Service, under the Treasury Department, and later to become the National Institutes of Health) served to create a private cartel of drug and vaccine manufacturers, crowding out private solutions and disabling the normal market-based rule of caveat emptor or buyer beware.

This is exactly what the biggest players in the industry intended. It was a brilliant strategy. Pretend to be deeply vexed by a government crackdown while pulling the strings behind the scenes of a new agency that the public trusts more than the industry. This was not only the birth of a new path toward public management of this one industry; it was the origin of the regulatory state itself insofar as it intervenes directly in the consumer marketplace.

Four years later, the meatpacking industry was in big trouble from the popular book The Jungle by Upton Sinclair (1906). The expose caused a collapse in the sales of the processing and canning industry as the public reverted back to trusting only local food and onsite processing from farmers. A powerful industry needed to do something.

The meatpacking industry took a cue from the vaccine industry and pushed for regulation. The result was the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. It targeted adulterated or misbranded foods and drugs in interstate commerce. All evidence suggests that meatpacking became less safe as a result. The industry faced higher compliance costs that squeezed out smaller competitors and less stringent safety standards, while gaining public confidence.

These two acts of Congress became the foundation of what became the Food and Drug Administration, which is tasked with investigating and approving products for their safety and effectiveness. Crucially, industry has been the controlling force from the beginning, the very reason the agency exists. The point was not to protect the public but to protect the largest firms within their respective industries.

The route by which this happened is rather circuitous. The industries went to government and pleaded to be regulated, thus shoring up market position in two directions: increasing costs for upstart firms and disabling public incredulity toward the safety and efficacy of their products.

Today, people talk about industry capture of agencies but this is probably not the right term. The agencies were formed out of the pleas of industry. This is not just true for food and drugs but also for banking, transportation, industry structure, and communications technology, as Gabriel Kolko has demonstrated in his sweeping study of the Progressive Era.

It’s true that these historical facts are hardly understood at all, even by economic historians. This is why we need the entire history of the modern regulatory state rewritten and reconceptualized without romantic delusions about good government actors seeking the well-being of the public.

This historical and present reality poses a serious dilemma for reformers like Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who have pledged to eliminate the corrupt relationship between industry and government and rid the agencies of conflicts of interest. The agencies themselves were founded in conflicts of interest. An attempt to gut them would turn them into something they have never been.

Now to the original question: what would regulate these industries if the FDA were not around at all? In electronics and business quality, we find the answer. These two industries face strict control emerging organically from consumer demand alone.

Institutions like Underwriters Laboratory and the Better Business Bureau are titans in these sectors with no assistance from government. User ratings emerging in the digital era have a vast impact on sales success, as any Amazon seller can tell you. And in industries like sports, household construction, and driving skill, private insurers exercise a dominant influence through financial carrots and sticks, as directed by actuaries assessing risks.

The very existence of the FDA has crowded out such elaborate and complex systems in the case of food and drugs, which is precisely why their safety and efficacy is the subject of such huge public controversy.

In fact, if you look at the Covid shots alone, consider that no company operating within a market framework could ever have gotten away with such widespread distribution of such ineffective, unsafe, and largely unnecessary products, which were mislabeled as vaccines from the beginning. Not only would a private rating agency decline to approve them, the imposition of normal liability standards would have made insuring the manufacturers and distributors completely unaffordable.

The vaccine industry even from its inception has relied on disabling market forces via a range of interventions: zero-priced distribution, wartime inoculation of soldiers, legalized and court-imposed mandates, exclusions of refuseniks from education and professional life, subsidies, patent sharing with agencies, liability indemnifications, and finally invoking emergency needs to bypass normal standards of safety.

Given all of this, we have no idea what the status of these products would be in a normal market environment. Maybe the industry would not even be financially viable, which is precisely why the industry has built such a powerful lobbying machine. Indeed this was the industry claim when it won its liability shield in 1986: it said it would otherwise face complete bankruptcy.

It’s the same with food. What began with the meatpackers has extended to every other food source. The New Deal imposed a central-planning apparatus to keep prices high via output controls and even mandates to plow up crops to take them off the market. Wartime price controls and rationing redirected production energies away from whole foods toward industrialized substitutes. And the huge push of the 1970s for maximum output started the trend away from local and small farmers toward land consolidation and overproduction of grains. This is also the period when mass use of chemical herbicides and fertilizers came into common use.

All the while, the public was blindsided because government agencies continually assured us that all was well. These products are safe and nutritious. Absent such impositions, regulations, subsidies, and indemnifications, the sectors of food and drugs generally would operate very differently.

Today there are many efforts on the part of nonprofits working to educate the public on many topics related to individual and public health. They work at cross purposes with these agencies that have worked to foist onto the markets what the market would have otherwise been inclined to either filter out, deprecate, or reject entirely.

Could we do without the FDA? We would likely be far better off.

For more on the ways that government intervention reduces market-based incredulity while subsidizing fraud, ill health, dangerous products, and lies, see my interview with Stephan Kinsella.

The Brownstone Show - Episode 17 - Stephan Kinsella

Brownstone Institute — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 14:42:52 GMT

Jeffrey Tucker sits down with Stephan Kinsella...libertarian attorney, author of the seminal 2001 essay “Against Intellectual Property”, and the massive treatise “Legal Foundations of a Free Society”...for a provocative discussion on why defamation (libel and slander) law should be rejected as just another form of intellectual property right. Kinsella argues that reputation is not ownable property. What others think of you cannot be controlled or turned into a legal entitlement. Defamation law, like patents, copyrights, and trademarks, rests on the flawed idea that the state should protect intangible “rights” through force. He explains how these laws create chilling effects, perverse incentives, and actually amplify the harm of false speech rather than reduce it. Topics covered include:

Why intellectual property (including trademarks and defamation) is incompatible with true property rights and free markets
The historical and common-law roots of defamation and how it morphed into reputation-as-property
How the existence of defamation lawsuits gives lies more credibility (”If it weren’t true, he would have sued”)
Free speech, threats, and the limits of state power
Private alternatives: reputation markets, certification agencies, dueling culture, caveat emptor for information, and why a truly free society would be more (not less) regulated by voluntary rules
Connections to patents destroying innovation (especially in pharma and software), NDAs, cancel culture, and the illusion of safety created by regulatory bodies like the FDA
Why “buyer beware” should apply to both products and information in a free society

This is a challenging, nuanced conversation that questions deeply held assumptions about law, harm, honor, and reputation. Even if you initially disagree, Kinsella’s razor-sharp property-rights analysis will make you rethink how we handle speech, lies, and “harm” in the digital age. Guest: Stephan Kinsella Attorney, author of Against Intellectual Property (2001) and Legal Foundations of a Free Society (2023). Founder of the Center for the Study of Innovative Freedom (C4SIF). Links:

Stephan Kinsella: https://stephankinsella.com

Brownstone Institute: https://brownstone.org

If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe for more unfiltered discussions on liberty, law, technology, and the future of a free society. Drop your thoughts—do you think defamation should be treated as a property right, or is Kinsella right that it’s just another IP-style monopoly on ideas and opinions?

Suicide Should Not Be a Government Service

Brownstone Institute — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 09:12:40 GMT

BY WENDY MCELROY

On February 5, 2026, in the Canadian Parliament, Conservative MP Garnett Genuis tabled Bill C-260, which prohibits civil servants or others with authority from recommending assisted-suicide to anyone who has not asked about it.

Genuis cited “examples such as Canadian Armed Forces veteran David Baltzer…who was offered MAiD by Veterans Affairs Canada, as well as Nicholas Bergeron, a 46-year-old man from Quebec who was not interested in a medically facilitated death, but was ‘repeatedly’ pushed towards the option by a social worker.”

I can verify this government policy personally since a family member was encouraged without prompting to attend a seminar on how and why to kill himself.

Introduced in 2016, Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) is a federal program that can differ slightly from province to province. The core and constant concept: at the request of an eligible individual, the government administers death either by euthanasia through a lethal injection delivered by a clinician or by assisted suicide through self-administered medication that is facilitated by a clinician. An estimated 99% of MAiD cases involve euthanasia, not assisted suicide.

For one thing, the populous province of Quebec prohibits self-administration; in other provinces, health regions and care facilities perform only euthanasia or lean strongly in this direction. Perhaps government chose the acronym MAiD because Medical Euthanasia sounds jarring.

MAiD sets the extremely dangerous precedent of granting government the authority to kill an innocent person. The standard rebuttal to this argument is that the innocent person must request the “service” of suicide.

MAiD is not a uniquely Canadian issue. State-assisted suicide has spread quickly across the Western world. Currently (February 2026), over a dozen American states have legalized it in some form. In the UK, the Terminally Ill Adults Bill is at the Committee Stage in Parliament where it reportedly has 1,227 proposedamendments.

Some regions in Australia are also drawing up programs. The list of nations offering State-assisted suicide or euthanasia scrolls on and on, including Switzerland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Portugal, Luxembourg, Austria, New Zealand…The same concerns and debates surrounding MAiD bear directly on these other programs, especially as MAiD is often referenced as a model or as a cautionary tale.

I view MAiD as a cautionary tale.

Medical personnel may have religious or other ethical objections to administering MAiD. Perhaps they view euthanasia as a violation of the Hippocratic Oath, which states, “First, Do No Harm.” For many, these 4 words form the backbone of medical ethics. Canada does not force doctors or nurse practitioners to administer MAiD, but the Canadian Association of MAiD Assessors and Providers (CAMAP) explains that “holding a conscientious objection to MAiD does not negate these obligations.

Rather, it activates alternative duties to discuss the objection with the patient and to refer or transfer the care of the patient to a non-objecting clinician or other effective information-providing and access-facilitating resource.” This forces the practitioners to participate in the MAiD system to which they may strenuously object. Equally, some taxpayers may consider MAiD to be a form of murder that is covered by tax-funded health care. They may be as repulsed by having to pay for MAiD as much as many pro-life advocates detest having to finance abortions.

All assisted-suicide nations will confront certain practical questions; for example, all programs need to answer “what constitutes consent, and how is it documented?”

A sketch of how these general practical problems surfaced in Canada gives insight.

The original 2016 legislation (Bill C-14) provided safeguards to ensure applicants were eligible for MAiD. An amendment in 2021 (Bill C-7) established a two-track system of qualifications: Track 1 and Track 2. What is now called Track 1 is for people with an advanced condition whose natural death is deemed to be “reasonably foreseeable.” To be accepted in MAiD, the applicant requires the approval of 2 clinicians; it used to require a mandatory waiting period but this was lifted by Bill-C7 in 2021.

Increasingly, the media and public have been asking whether the safeguards are being applied or are inadequate. A recent MAiD case has drawn particular attention to the question. A woman in her eighties, identified as Mrs. B. was handled as a Track 1 patient for whom 2 assessments are required. Mrs. B. received 3 because the first assessor reported that the elderly woman preferred palliative care which had been essentially denied. Mrs. B. also expressed religious objections to suicide.

The clinician believed this disqualified her as a candidate. Nevertheless, her husband complained of having “caregiver burnout” and secured additional assessments by 2 more obliging clinicians. MAiD was approved for Mrs. B. When the first assessor asked to re-interview Mrs. B, she was refused access. Mrs. B’s death was processed.

The case raises questions. The husband seemed to be present at all 3 assessments even though no one but the applicant can make a request or should influence the process. Did his presence silence her or otherwise alter the results? Were the husband’s hardships given priority over Mrs. B.’s? Why was she denied the palliative care she preferred? Was she given a chance to revoke her initial consent? And, if MAiD prioritized safeguards, why would it deny the 1^st clinician’s request to re-interview?

An article entitled “Canadian Medical Assistance in Dying: Provider Concentration, Policy Capture, and Need for Reform” recently appeared in The American Journal of Bioethics (Volume 25, 2025 – Issue 5). The authors—Christopher Lyon of the University of York, Trudo Lemmens of the University of Toronto, and Scott Y.H. Kim M.D. of the National Institutes of Health—state, “there have been, and continue to be, a significant number of troubling cases of MAiD, including cases reported in the media where the requestor did not want to die but found MAiD far more accessible than basic, standard resources (their first choice) that would have offered treatment or made their suffering bearable.”

Canada’s allegedly ‘universal’ health care was unable or unwilling to render the standard services that Mrs. B. would have chosen life over death. The system may have been “unable” to do so because public health care tightly rations its scarce services, which means many people are turned away or left to die on a long waiting list. Private care is not always possible; if it is available, it can be very expensive, prohibitively far away and selective in the patients accepted. The system may have been “unwilling” to provide basic standard service because patients with serious chronic conditions are expensive in terms of treatment, time and money.

And, so, the medical professional decided she was not worth the trouble. Instead of easing and extending life—as the Hippocratic Oath instructs—the system offered death. Other nations with a degree of tax-funded health care—and this is most Western nations—suffer from similar problems. On January 25, 2026, Spiked Online(UK) ran an article entitled “The assisted-suicide bill is class warfare at its ugliest.”The author, Dan Hitchens inserted two unusually candid quotes:

In 2024, Matthew Parris cheerfully wrote in the Times that, ‘Our culture is changing its mind about the worth of old age.’ He rejoiced that while, ‘Your time is up,’ might ‘never be an order,’ he conceded that ‘the objectors are right,’ it ‘may one day be the kind of unspoken hint that everybody understands.’ We can’t afford to do anything else, Parris believes. Similarly, the New Statesman’s Oli Dugmore enthused last year that assisted suicide would bring down ‘the pensions bill, the NHS bill and the care bill,’ and would relieve us of the old folk who sit in care homes ‘unvisited by relatives who are preoccupied by the rhythm of their lives, or perhaps unable to summon the courage to witness the degeneration of the once totemic figures of their lives, their mum and dad. Let them die.’

Track 2 of MAiD is a further step toward freeing the Canadian health system and economy by extending MAiD to broader categories of people. Track 2 applies to individuals whose natural death is not reasonably foreseeable but who have a grievous and irremediable medical condition, including disabilities. This is a considerable expansion of governmental authority.

It may soon expand more. Today, mental illness alone does not make a person eligible for MAiD, although such eligibility is legally slated to be available in March 2027. It may come sooner, however, due largely to the successful and high-profile actress Claire Brosseau, 48, being part of a lawsuit against MAiD. The Plaintiffs accuse MAiD of discriminating against the mentally ill because they are currently excluded. As of February 2026, Brosseau’s suit is still pending.

This is an alarming ‘mission drift’ that introduces people who may be unable to make informed decisions—that is, the mentally ill—into MAiD. The aforementioned essay “Canadian Medical Assistance in Dying” states, “In more recent years…there have been well documented cases of people using MAiD as a way to end a life of poverty, a disability, social isolation, or mental illness.” These are problems that health care and social networks used to address through healing, education, drugs, therapy, or community involvement.

Inevitably, some people protest, “Trust government! Trust the health care system!” Why? Government officials are revealed repeatedly to be egregious liars, and the medical ‘science’ of Covid lockdowns revealed as dogma. Trust now seems to be clueless and self-destructive, especially when the topic at hand is literally a matter of life and death.

So far, a main obstacle to MAiD’s acquisition of credibility comes from the program itself. How can you judge if and to what extent MAiD has been abused when the data it releases is sparse and not informative? It is not as though there is a means of independent verification. In part, the non-transparency is due to the anonymity and privacy laws applying to medical records, which can prevent coming to an informed conclusion.

Consider just one small category of MAiD data to which the government has total access: federal inmates. In a December 29, 2025 article, The Post Millennial reportsthat at least 15 federal inmates had died by MAiD since 2018. The article comments on an Order Paper response—that is, an official, written government reply to a question submitted by a Member of Parliament or a Senator.

An Order Paper response confirmed by the Correctional Service of Canada shows the inmates died before completing their prison sentences. The records indicate two inmate deaths by MAiD in 2018, followed by one each in 2019, 2020, and 2021. The number rose to four in 2022, dropped to one in 2023, increased again to four in 2024, and one additional death has been recorded so far in 2025.
The data does not identify where the deaths occurred, the sex of the inmates, or the specific reasons for the requests. It also does not indicate whether the deaths fell under Track 1…or Track 2 cases…

It becomes impossible to know if these MAiD cases followed federal requirements or were a way to rid the prison system of expensive inmates.

The expansion of MAiD shows no signs of waning. In 2022, for example, the Quebec College of Physicians (CMQ) suggested including gravely ill or extremely deformed babies into people eligible for MAiD. This would sidestep the much-touted requirement of patient’s informed consent, of course, since newborns cannot understand or communicate. And, yet, the CMQ reaffirmed its position in 2025. Canada now permits only the withdrawal of life-support for critically ill infants, not the act of killing them. The CMQ assures the public that euthanasia of newborns would be rare, of course. But would it be? MAiD has grown so dramatically in the past decade that 1 in every 20 deaths in Canada are attributed to the aggressive program.

Quebec has also led the way in using advance requests for MAiD. This request is from a person who has an incurable illness that will lead to some form of incapacity; Alzheimer’s is often given as an example. The advance request is made when the person is still mentally competent; MAiD is administered when he becomes mentally incompetent. Again, this raises questions about consent; what if the person changes his mind? Will the clinician disregard an Alzheimer’s patient who resists at the final moment? Will a family member with medical guardianship be able to override MAiD?

Most of the concerns raised have been practical ones, which leaves open the door for reforming the system to prevent the abuses, errors, and overreach. I don’t think reform is possible. The economic incentives in a tax-funded health system are strongly in favor of MAiD; the system is already ‘overly burdened’ by the elderly and chronically ill whose absence would be welcomed.

Moreover, no one knows what the rates of abuse, error, and overreach are. Under what may be the guise of privacy, the government can indefinitely hide the evidence of such abuse, error, and overreach. Once tax-funded and rationed health care is coupled with a public acceptance of euthanasia that is conducted with next to no transparency, a bad outcome seems inevitable.

To complicate matters, MAiD is not merely a means of saving money; it may also be a significant means of making it. The Legal Insurrection website (January 13, 2026) notes that some of MAiD patient’s organs are harvested for ‘donation.’ Raising the topic of “organ tourism,” the Legal Insurrection continues,

I wasn’t the only one who noticed, either. The U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) leadership is now sharply criticizing Canada’s MAiD program, which is now linked to organ donation, with one top official calling it a ‘strange new horror’ and a cautionary example for other countries. U.S. Deputy HHS Secretary Jim O’Neill said that Canada’s permissive assisted-suicide regime has ‘crossed ethical boundaries’ by helping drive up organ donation rates from people who die via euthanasia.

The phrase “strange new horror” comes from a January 8, 2026 interview with the Washington Examiner in which O’Neill explained how disturbed he was “to learn that Canada’s physician-assisted suicide program…has enabled it to become a world leader in organ transplant policy from deceased donors.” Some consider O’Neill’s concerns about MAiD to be wildly exaggerated and attribute part of the increase in Canadian organ transplant to other sources. For example, Nova Scotia is an automatic organ donor province. If a person doesn’t explicitly opt out of organ donation then, his viable organs will automatically be harvested and sold to other provinces or other countries.

It is not technically permitted to sell organs in Canada, but Revenue Canada notesthat the expense of providing organ transplants can be written off, which is a form of remuneration. These expenses include “reasonable amounts paid to find a compatible donor, to arrange the transplant including legal fees and insurance premiums, and reasonable travel, board and lodging expenses for the patient, the donor, and their respective attendants.” Clearly, money changes hands. This opens another Pandora’s box of ethical questions.

The only path back from the medical dystopia of MAiD is to remove government involvement. I would like to say that those who choose death-by-government are within their rights. I can’t because such people are enabling oppressive laws and a medical bureaucracy that threaten the rest of society.

MAiD is a sea change in one of Canadian most important institutions—health care. Instead of extending life, hundreds of clinicians devote their skills to facilitating death. In turn, this causes a sea change in how many people view the health system.

As a Canadian, I am now unwilling to be candid with the doctors I visit or to answer all medical questionnaires. This is not paranoia. The last health survey I received had incredibly intrusive and unprecedented questions, including about my mental state. No one will keep this information away from the government that prepared the survey in the first place. How do I know it won’t be used against me in the future?

Of one thing, I am certain; government has no place in euthanasia or assisted-suicide. MAiD is not compassionate. It is not mercy killing. It is a cruel, uncaring bureaucracy looking after its own interests, as all bureaucracies do. Consider one more MAiD case. In March 2024, the quadriplegic Normand Meunier was administered MAiD as a result of a hospital visit in Quebec. “Before being admitted to an intensive care bed for his third respiratory virus in three months this winter,” the CBC explains. “Meunier was stuck on a stretcher in the emergency room for four days.”

Due to neglect, improper care surfaces, and inadequate repositioning, he developed such severe bedsores (pressure ulcers) that bone and muscle were exposed. The excruciating sores were deemed untreatable. Meunier, who had asked for help, decided not to live with the pain.

MAiD is a type of “Therapeutic Nihilism”—the belief that there is little hope of curing or significantly improving a patient’s condition and death is more appropriate. In Orwellian fashion, it redefines “Do no harm” into “It is best to kill the patient.” This nihilism ignores the common phenomena of misdiagnosis, the creation of breakthrough treatment, or the simple fact that many patients live for years and years beyond even a correct diagnosis. MAiD is the creation of a health system that cannot or will not provide “basic, standard” service.

Covid devastated the medical profession’s reputation. The shreds that remain will not survive MAiD. Nor should they.

UK College Student Covid Tuition Settlement Far Exceeds That of US

Brownstone Institute — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 09:19:36 GMT

BY LUCIA SINATRA

You’ve probably seen the headlines: University College London (UCL) settled a massive lawsuit for £21 million with college students who got an inferior education due to Covid-19 pandemic closures. That’s roughly $26 million in US dollars with each student of the 6,000+ students represented getting about £3,270 (around $4,100). Meanwhile, in the US, Penn State—which had our largest settlement to date at $17 million—paid out just $236 per student. So why are British students receiving roughly 17 times more money than American students when learning disruptions were far more severe and longer-lasting in the US?

The answer lies in fundamental differences in how the UK and US law treat students. Put simply: UK students got Zoom learning and were compensated for overpaying. US students got Zoom learning with no legal pathway to get their partial refund.

The British students have a secret weapon that US students just don’t have; the Consumer Rights Act 2015. It explicitly treats students as consumers and universities as businesses providing a service. Under this law, if you pay for a premium service but receive a basic service, you’re entitled to a price reduction—period. The law says services must be performed with “reasonable care and skill,” and if they are not, consumers are eligible to get their money back for the difference in value.

Importantly, the Consumer Rights Act overrides vague clauses that allow claims for “We can’t be held responsible if something extraordinary happens” to escape responsibility. This is precisely what happened in US cases; the universities used “reservation of rights” language buried in student handbooks and government lockdown orders as valid defenses. Whereas in the UK, consumer protection law says: nice try, but students are consumers, and you still owe them a refund.

The UK students made valid legal claims, the UK courts agreed, and the rest is precedent.

In the US, over 300 lawsuits were filed against 70+ US colleges and universities. Students alleged breach of contract and unjust enrichment—basically arguing they were promised in-person education, didn’t get it, and deserved a partial refund.

Only it is not that simple to get in the US.

While the US has consumer protection laws—both at the federal level (the FTC Act) and state level (UDAP laws in all states), they don’t specifically apply to education the way the UK’s Consumer Rights Act does.

Some college students did try including consumer protection claims in their lawsuits—particularly in California, which has strong consumer protection statutes. USC’s lawsuit, for example, included violations of California’s Business & Professions Code. But these claims were always secondary to the breach of contract arguments. Why? Because successful student claims under US consumer protection laws simply don’t exist.

US lawsuits did not and will likely never result in UK-level settlements because judges refuse to assess educational quality, and they recognize “It is not our fault” defenses. US courts are extremely reluctant to assess the quality of education to determine if students got what they paid for academically. In other words, they don’t want to be in the business of deciding whether your online chemistry class was as good as your in-person class. US courts also give enormous weight to “It is not our fault” defenses. Universities argued that the pandemic was extraordinary, and given that the government advised us to close, you can’t hold us responsible for converting to an online learning model.

So where do US college students stand? Many of the early cases got dismissed outright with courts ruling that the students had no case. Others are still dragging on many years after they were filed, and some have settled.

As of today, about 30+ universities have settled—mostly to avoid the cost of continuing litigation but lest you think that these settlements caused a dent in the budgets of US colleges and universities, think again. Most of these settlements were funded by CARES Act dollars. The federal government gave universities $76 billion in Covid relief funds through the CARES Act and subsequent legislation. They eventually put a deadline on that money: spend it by September 2023 or lose it. So many universities scrambled to use that federal money to quietly settle tuition lawsuits starting in 2021 and continuing through the September 2023 deadline.

For reference, the top 10 US Covid tuition settlements are as follows:

Penn State – $17 million / 72,000 students = $236 per student
Columbia University – $12.5 million = ~$350 per student (estimated)
USC – $10 million = ~$250 per student (estimated)
University of La Verne – $8.9 million = ~$300 per student (estimated)
University of Pittsburgh – $7.85 million = ~$200 per student (estimated)
Johns Hopkins – $6.6 million = ~$300 per student (estimated)
University of Delaware – $6.3 million = “several hundred dollars”
George Washington University – $5.4 million = $193 per student
American University – $5.44 million = $400-475 per student
University of Colorado – $5 million = ~$250 per student (estimated)

Ever heard of any of these settlements? Of course you haven’t. The mainstream media completely ignored them. Penn State paid $17 million to 72,000 students in February 2025. This is an important story about university accountability, student rights, and Covid disruption and yet crickets from the Washington Post, NPR, and the New York Times.

To find the settlements, you would have to search higher education trade publications (Inside Higher Ed, Chronicle of Higher Education), student newspapers at the affected universities, local news stories in the cities where universities are located or legal news websites that track class action lawsuits.

Meanwhile, the UCL £21 million settlement went viral.

Do not underestimate how influential this intentional lack of mainstream coverage was in helping the settlements stay low. First, it kept college students in the dark. If you didn’t attend one of these 30 universities, you didn’t know you could sue, and you surely had no idea other students were getting money back. Second, it prevented the kind of momentum that UK students built. The UCL settlement made major headlines, which drove 30,000 more students to sign up for claims at other universities within days after the settlement was announced.

You can practically hear the US university legal meetings—settle quietly, use CARES Act dollars, and make it disappear.

Another major reason the UK case was so successful is that the UK students formed a Student Group Claim, a coordinated legal campaign that signed up students across 36 universities—eventually reaching 194,000 students total (now over 230,000 after 30,000 signed up days following the UCL settlement). In other words, the collective action of the students rather than several individually scattered lawsuits made an enormous difference in their case.

This mass coordination created enormous pressure on the universities. UCL couldn’t just quietly settle with a handful of students and make the problem go away. Initiated by a large coalition of students and backed by strong legal arguments under the Consumer Rights Act, UCL didn’t stand a chance.

The momentum is just beginning in the UK. The settlement has created a precedent that is rippling across the entire UK higher education system. Other universities are now looking at UCL’s £21 million payout and are quite concerned. They’re facing similar claims from thousands of students. They know the Consumer Rights Act applies to them, and they know the students will win.

Legal experts estimate that anywhere between £100-200 million ($125-250 million) could be spent on the total payout across UK universities in the next few years. For additional context, that would be 2-4 times larger than the combined total of all 30+ US settlements put together.

The deadline for UK students to file claims is September 2026 (six years from the breach under the Limitation Act 1980) which explains the recent wave of new claims as the other universities try to comprehend what this means for them.

Back to students in the US. Here’s the cold hard truth. Even if the legal arguments existed, getting courts to recognize students as consumers with UK-level rights would require either: new federal or state legislation explicitly classifying students as consumers, a dramatic shift in how judges interpret existing consumer protection laws, or state Attorneys General bringing enforcement actions. Don’t bet on any of these happening anytime soon.

US colleges and universities are powerful institutions with significant lobbying influence. They will fight to the death before they let pesky college students rock the sacred principle of academic freedom deeply embedded in US law.

The contrast between the UK and US settlements tells us something important about how our legal system treats students. In the UK, when universities couldn’t deliver the education students paid for, the law said: “Students are consumers. They’re entitled to a refund for the difference in value.” Simple and fair.

In the US, courts told students that education is special, and courts are in no position to assess quality. Plus, the pandemic wasn’t their fault, and they had no choice but to act accordingly. So please take this pittance and go away.

The UCL settlement is remarkable not just for the money but for what it represents. It says that students have rights as consumers, that universities can’t hide behind “It’s not our fault” claims when they fail to deliver, and that organized collective action can win against powerful institutions.

American students fought hard in their lawsuits, but the bottom line is this. US college students lack robust consumer protection laws and courts willing to reverse decades of precedent.

And because mainstream media has largely ignored the victories, most students never even knew settlements were happening. Universities paid out over $100 million combined—much of it with federal CARES Act dollars—and it barely made a ripple in the national conversation.

But the UK students had something we don’t: a law that explicitly says students are consumers entitled to fair value. Without that, US students are trying to win a game with very different rules—rules that strongly favor colleges and universities.

Crunch Time for the WHO

Brownstone Institute — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 09:15:46 GMT

BY DAVID BELL & RAMESH THAKUR

The polarised debate on the World Health Organization (WHO) has been based more on mud-slinging and all-or-nothing dogma than scientific evidence and empirical data. However, with trust plummeting in public health and the WHO’s funding rapidly falling as it scrambles for more to fund what it claims are ever-increasing threats, change is needed.

The International Health Reform Project (IHRP) formed with the intent of returning this debate to a rational framework. It did not begin as an anti-institutional campaign but as a professional reckoning. Its origins lie in a shared unease among physicians, public health practitioners, economists, and former senior international officials who watched the Covid-19 response unfold with growing alarm. Their concern was not with public health itself, but with the direction it appeared to be taking. The two of us, long engaged in global health policy and governance respectively, are co-chairs of a diverse group of ten experts who have spent the past 18 months thinking through this problem from evidence and orthodoxy rather than soundbites. The project delivered its first reports in March.

For decades, the post-war health architecture led by the WHO rested on principles such as proportionality, transparency, subsidiarity, and the primacy of human welfare. Covid exposed strains in that architecture. Emergency powers expanded, dissent narrowed, and policy debate became increasingly constrained. Measures once shunned for their inevitable harms and ethical concerns—lockdowns, prolonged school closures, border restrictions, universal mask and vaccine mandates—became normalised across very different societies with little regard for age-specific risk or local context. Balancing costs and benefits of interventions—the basis of public health policy development—became anathema in professional discourse.

Several IHRP members with long experience in low- and middle-income countries were particularly sensitive to the harmful consequences of the Covid public health response. Disruptions to agriculture and food distribution increased hunger and malnutrition. Routine immunisation programmes were set back. Extended school closures affected tens of millions of children, locking in intergenerational poverty and exposing millions of children to added risks of child labour, child marriage, and trafficking. Poverty reduction efforts suffered reversals and economic losses and national debt will stymie future healthcare programmes.

Those raising such concerns were often dismissed as reckless or ideological. Yet, the questions were rooted in core public health principles: What are the costs as well as the benefits of intervention? What trade-offs are justified? Who decides, on what evidence, and with what accountability? Why were these basic principles of public health abandoned?

During this period, Brownstone Institute emerged as a forum for open debate, building on discussions associated with the Great Barrington Declaration, which called for focused protection of the vulnerable rather than broad society-wide shutdowns. At the same time, the UK-based initiative Action on World Health was exploring the need for a systematic review of the performance of the WHO and the wider international health architecture. Conversations among participants in these efforts helped shape the idea of an independent expert panel to examine global health governance more broadly.

From the outset, IHRP sought to offer constructive reform rather than reactive protest. Its founders were clinicians, economists, and former multilateral officials committed to public health and international cooperation. Their aim was and remains to ensure that future health crises are addressed effectively and with proportionality, transparency, and respect for human dignity.

In this sense, IHRP arose not from hostility to public health, but from fidelity to its core principles.

Rebuilding International Health Governance on Ethics, Evidence, and Sovereign Responsibility

Thus the IHRP is a response to a growing crisis of confidence in international public health governance. Although this crisis became highly visible during Covid-19, its roots predate 2020 and reflect deeper structural and ethical problems within the WHO and the broader global health architecture.

The IHRP panel has developed two linked outputs, The Right to Health Sovereignty, published last month. The Policy Report distils these findings into principles and reform pathways for policymakers. The Technical Report provides the analytical foundation, examining ethics, institutional history, disease burden, financing, governance structures, and legal frameworks.

International cooperation in health is both necessary and valuable. Cross-border surveillance, data sharing, and technical assistance have contributed to dramatic gains in life expectancy, particularly in low- and middle-income countries. Early WHO programmes demonstrated what focused, technically grounded cooperation can achieve.

Over time, however, global health governance has drifted from those foundations. The IHRP identifies several interrelated trends:

Expansion beyond core public health functions (“mission creep”).
Centralisation of authority justified by emergency framing.
Growing dependence on earmarked and non-State donor funding.
Preference for technological interventions over foundational determinants of health.
Treaty-based rigidity that locks in policy regardless of evidences.
Weak accountability to Member States and affected populations.

These developments have not merely reduced efficiency; they have also eroded trust and legitimacy. For healthcare is not value-neutral. Its legitimacy rests on four foundational ethical principles embedded in medical tradition and international human rights law:

Beneficence
Non-maleficence
Confidentiality
Voluntary informed consent

These principles impose constraints even during emergencies. They require individuals and the communities and states that represent them to be at the centre of health decision-making. This—the sovereignty of individuals and States—is the basis of modern human rights and underlies the Charter of the United Nations. We argue that recent practice has too often subordinated them to abstract notions of collective security, insufficiently weighing human dignity, proportionality, and long-term harm.

The Policy Report advances a conception of health sovereignty that is grounded in responsibility, not isolationism. States bear primary responsibility for protecting their populations’ health. International organisations exist to support states—not to replace or override them. International cooperation derives legitimacy from voluntary state participation. When authority drifts towards centralised technocratic bodies detached from domestic accountability, legitimacy weakens. Intentions being benign or otherwise is neither here nor there.

We identify subsidiarity as the missing organising principle. Decisions should be taken at the lowest level capable of acting effectively:

Individuals retain autonomy in medical decisions.
National governments lead policy.
Regional bodies coordinate where necessary.
Global institutions provide normative guidance on health standards; data, for example on disease surveillance; and technical support such as acceptable laboratory testing standards.

The Technical Report also demonstrates that pandemics account for a small share of long-term global mortality compared to endemic infectious diseases and non-communicable diseases. Historically, life expectancy gains have primarily come from resilience built through sanitation, nutrition, antibiotics, and primary care—not emergency architectures. Proportionality must guide future investment and intervention decisions.

Institutional Reform

The Right to Health Sovereignty proposes principles for a transformative reform of the WHO—or, if necessary, establishing a successor International Health Organisation (IHO):

Decentralised authority.
Proportionate emergency policy focus within a more people-centred public health approach.
Financial independence through assessed contributions.
Strict and enforceable conflict-of-interest rules.
Limited, clearly defined mandates.
Time-bound interventions that build national capacity.
Success measured by redundancy, not expansion.

The goal is not institutional destruction, but restoration of legitimacy through clarity of purpose, funding, and accountability.

Why This Matters Now

The exit of the United States, reduced funding prospects, and the pending election of a new WHO Director-General in July 2027 present a critical moment. Leadership transitions create space for institutional reassessment. Member States will have an opportunity to debate not only personalities, but also mandate, structure, financing, and scope.

IHRP is intended to inform that debate. It promotes cooperation, coordinated response, and science-based decision-making. It argues that effective cooperation requires legitimacy—and legitimacy is built on ethics, evidence, proportionality and respect for sovereign responsibility. At its core, this project is about rebuilding trust in international health governance before further drift renders reform politically impossible.

The Challenge Ahead

Brownstone Institute — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 09:06:04 GMT

BY BROWNSTONE INSTITUTE

Ten years ago, the movement for medical and health freedom – the demand to get pharma out of agencies, media, universities, and professional societies – was small. It was a niche concern, seemingly idiosyncratic, with only a small group of activists and scientists.

Then came the Covid response. Governments smashed businesses, churches, schools, censored the press, spent trillions they did not have, and inflated the money. It was tyranny. The idea of freedom itself was trampled nearly to death.

We know now that the power and reach of this one industry is boundless. It had crept into every nook and cranny of public, private, and commercial life. It was powerful enough to lock down 194 countries to await its product.

Today awareness has never been higher. The movement focused on medical and health freedom–profoundly aware of industry capture–is huge, learned, sophisticated, independent, passionate, focused, and backed by agile and effective institutions. It long survives the Trump administration.

Big Pharma is in a panic. Pfizer had to abandon its Covid shot trials because it could not recruit enough people. Parents are demanding answers before they shoot their kids up with shots with a liability shield. The pressure to build a wall between industry and government has never been stronger. Nations are leaving the World Health Organization.

It is now a massive and global social and cultural movement. It cannot be stopped because such a thing is more powerful than any political structure. Plotters might believe that they can redirect energies, shut people up, throttle communication, and shame people. No more. Cannot be done.

There are strong reasons to believe that the second stage of the Great Reset is upon us, as governments around the world restrict energy use, impose price caps, and flirt with stay-at-home orders. It will be much harder this time. We know too much. We know what it means to suffer for a cause and we are ready this time.

Brownstone Institute faces new demands to adopt and support cancelled scientists – yes, that still happens daily. And with the new threat of energy lockdowns, we need our local communities more than ever. Please come to a supper club and make friends.

Also, Brownstone truly needs your support right now if we are to step up and deal with these new pressures. We invite your support. We truly need it. The cause of freedom needs your commitment today.

The Brownstone Show is going well. Tune in to these episodes, including the latest one this week with Senior Fellow Dr. Aaron Kheriaty. BROWNSTONE SHOW

These are the sorts of topics we talk about at Brownstone Supper Clubs, now coast to coast. Pick one and go!

Chattanooga: On Tuesday, April 7th, the inaugural Chattanooga, TN Supper Club welcomes Debbie Mize. Get tickets.
Boston: On Tuesday, April 7th, the Greater Boston Supper Club welcomes Drs. Mary Kelly Sutton and Mark Brody, and Attorney Ilya Feoktistov. Get tickets.
Utah: On Thursday, April 9th, the Utah Supper Club welcomes Dr. Josef Witt-Doerring. Get tickets.
Midwest: On Monday, April 13th, the Midwest Supper Club welcomes Dave Rollo. Get tickets.
Manhattan: On Tuesday, April 14th, the Manhattan Supper Club welcomes John Gilmore. Get tickets.
Puget Sound: On Tuesday, April 21st, the Puget Sound Supper Club welcomes Corey DeAngelis. Get tickets.
Pittsboro, NC: On Tuesday, April 21st, the Pittsboro, NC Supper Club welcomes Drs. Patricia Robitaille and Coleen Rickabaugh. Get tickets.
Charlotte, NC: On Tuesday, April 21st, the Charlotte, NC Supper Club welcomes Andrew Byrd. Get tickets.
West Hartford, CT: On Wednesday, April 22nd, the West Hartford, CT Supper Club welcomes Walter Kirn. Get tickets.
Austin, TX: On Wednesday, April 22nd, the Austin Supper Club welcomes Jenna McCarthy. Get tickets.
Pittsburgh, PA: On Wednesday, April 22nd, the Pittsburgh Supper Club welcomes Mike Costarell. Get tickets.
Chattanooga, TN: On Tuesday, May 5th, the Chattanooga Supper Club welcomes Michele Reneau. Get tickets.
Chicago, IL: On Thursday, May 7th, the Chicago Supper Club welcomes Tom Sosnoff. Get tickets.
Polyface Farm: On Friday and Saturday, August 28th and 29th, Brownstone will host our annual Polyface Retreat at Polyface Farm in Swoope, Virginia. REGISTER NOW. NOTE: Tickets for the VIP dinner August 28 are now available. TICKETS.
Chattanooga: On Friday and Saturday, November 6th and 7th, Brownstone will host our 6th Annual Conference and Gala. Save the dates.

If you are interested in being a supper club host in your area, please visit our Supper Club information page here.

Here is some content since our last email.

UK College Student Covid Tuition Settlement Far Exceeds That of US By Lucia Sinatra. The UK students had something we don’t: a law that explicitly says students are consumers entitled to fair value. Without that, US students are trying to win a game with very different rules—rules that strongly favor colleges and universities.

Suicide Should Not Be a Government Service By Wendy McElroy. The core and constant concept: at the request of an eligible individual, the government administers death either by euthanasia through a lethal injection delivered by a clinician or by assisted suicide through self-administered medication that is facilitated by a clinician.

Let’s Save Our Doctors’ Time for Sick People By Alan Cassels. What would a smarter approach look like? Our health systems need to create clear, evidence-based thresholds for when to recommend screening or primary prevention drugs — thresholds based on absolute risk, life expectancy, and patient values.

The Digital Leviathan By Renaud Beauchard. Some books explain events, and others explain the world in which events become possible. Jacob Siegel’s The Information State: Politics in the Age of Total Control leans firmly to the second category. Siegel watched it up close.

The Right to Health Sovereignty By International Health Reform Project. An International Health Organization built on sovereignty, subsidiarity, and ethics would integrate universal moral principles (beneficence, non-maleficence, confidentiality, informed consent) and consequently a set of public health principles derived from these including an architecture of accountability and decentralization.

The Last Lesson My Mother Taught Me By Joseph Varon. In the end, we cannot stop the circle of life. But we can decide how we meet its final turn. With fear or with clarity. With chaos or with dignity. With denial or with truth. My mother chose dignity.

How Dissent Was Silenced By Sonia Elijah. This excerpt from Chapter 16 of my new book 3/11 Viral Takeover lays bare how the Covid response became the pretext for normalizing government-directed censorship, throttling legitimate scientific debate, and entrenching state power over public discourse.

A Free Speech Victory, Sort of By Brownstone Institute. Attorneys announced a “Consent Decree,” which will put an end to the years-long litigation in Murthy v. Missouri (previously called Missouri v. Biden), which focused on government-induced social media censorship. The text implicitly suggests that the practices will largely continue.

Ketanji Brown Jackson Remains “Puzzled” by Medical Freedom

Brownstone Institute — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 09:15:44 GMT

BY BROWNSTONE INSTITUTE

President Biden celebrated the confirmation of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson by telling reporters on the White House South Lawn, “America is a nation that can be defined in a single word….Asufutimaehaefutbuhwuhsh.” That proved to be a fitting foreshadowing for a tenure that has been defined by directionless verbosity, unintelligible standards, and the determined advancement of partisan dogma.

On Tuesday, Justice Jackson issued the lone dissent in an opinion overturning Colorado’s ban on “conversion therapy.” The state law was broad enough to apply to any discussions acknowledging biological realities with gender-confused patients or contradicting the precept that the LGBTQIA+ socialization process is a cure without trade-offs.

The near-unanimous court ruled that the First Amendment barred this “egregious form of content discrimination,” which banned therapists from voicing “perspectives the State disfavors when speaking with consenting clients.”

Justice Jackson, however, described the defense of free speech as “puzzling,” which is unsurprising given her comprehension issues on the bench. In dissent, she embraced the State’s power to quash any professional speech that deviates from “current beliefs about the safety and efficacy of various medical treatments.” As Justice Neil Gorsuch acknowledges in the opinion for the Court, that principle would allow the government to apply those malleable standards to “teaching or protesting,” but Jackson welcomes that threat.

Justice Jackson does not sidestep the issue; she embraces the muzzling in the name of “scientific consensus,” which she never considers could be incorrect. As support, she cites the American Psychological Association and the medical bureaucracy’s treatment of “conversion” as an “unattainable goal.” (Jackson notably omits that the former president of the American Psychological Association argued that therapy to change sexual orientation is legitimate for those who consented).

According to Jackson, the suppression of liberty is justified because “scientific evidence supports the conclusion that the anticipated harms from conversion therapy” should be avoided. Notwithstanding the widespread dissent on the issue, these were the same groups that embraced lockdowns, vaccine mandates, masking, and rioting in the Covid response. Their purported “consensus” was concocted through vast censorship efforts and smear campaigns.

Businesses shuttered, schools closed, and churches were banned as the facade of expertise became a bludgeon for ideological tyranny. The ostensible “consensus” maintained protections for riots, liquor stores, and abortion services, later culminating in the reshaping of our election process. And Justice Jackson wouldn’t have it any other way.

Her long-standing antipathy to free speech is ironic given her use of its liberty. She speaks 50 percent more than any of her colleagues and more than Justices Amy Coney Barrett, John Roberts, and Clarence Thomas combined.

That allows her to make sweeping claims (such as comparing banning transgender mutilation surgeries to prohibitions on interracial marriage), and it provides a corpus of material to understand her opposition to the First Amendment.

In oral arguments for Murthy v. Missouri, which considered an injunction prohibiting the Biden administration from colluding to censor its critics, Jackson stated that her “biggest concern” was that the plaintiffs’ efforts may result in the “First Amendment hamstringing the Government,” apparently unaware that this is its very purpose.

More recently, in a hearing on Trump v. Slaughter, Jackson spoke longingly for bureaucratic supremacy, arguing that “experts” like “doctors and the economists and the Ph.D.s” should be immune from presidential control. That was in line with her tenure as a District Court Judge, during which she overturned four executive orders that sought to rein in the power of the nearly three million federal employees who effectively inhabit permanent jobs.

While Tuesday’s opinion was a victory for free speech and medical freedom, Justice Jackson’s opinion is not merely the ramblings of a radical ideologue. She is the mouthpiece for a large and powerful cohort that seeks to strip Americans of their autonomy in the name of “expert control.”