Dr. Jonathan Leighton
Member of Advisory Board
As Executive Director of the think-and-do tank OPIS, one of Jonathan's areas of focus is advocating for access to effective treatments for cluster headache. In 2020, OPIS published a policy paper titled Legalising Psilocybin for Cluster Headaches. In 2025, Jonathan co-authored a case series in Cephalalgia Reports on psilocybin and LSD with ketamine in a pain clinic in Switzerland.
A research molecular biologist by training, Jonathan holds an AB from Harvard University and a PhD from the University of Basel. He is the author of The Tango of Ethics: Intuition, Rationality and the Prevention of Suffering (2023), which develops a holistic approach to ethics centred on the urgency of suffering, and The Battle for Compassion: Ethics in an Apathetic Universe (2011), which methodically addresses the question “What matters?” In 2025, OPIS published a wide-ranging guide he wrote titled Compassionate Governance: A Strategic Guide to Preventing and Alleviating Global Suffering.