[ExI] Medical power of attorney for cryonicsts

[Rafal Smigrodzki]

On Thu, Dec 4, 2014 at 12:23 PM, Anders Sandberg <anders at aleph.se> wrote:

> Ben <bbenzai at yahoo.com> , 3/12/2014 7:51 PM:
>
> Rafal Smigrodzki <rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >If anybody has any comments, please do comment here, I intend to finalize
> >the PoA documents soon and advice is welcome: Do you think these
> >instructions are OK? Is there anything you would formulate differently or
> >add?
>
>
> I do have comments.  Did a lawyer take money to draft this for you?
>
> I'd be (pleasantly) surprised if this has anything but the most trivial
> legal force.  My understanding is that if the gubmint want you
> autopsied, and you don't, you get autopsied, end of argument.
>
>
> Now, gubmints seem to be a particular American problem - some kind of wild
> monsters roaming the countryside doing whatever they want. In the rest of
> the world we have governments. Potentially as dangerous (some are pretty
> feral), but usually bound by the rules of their own laws - and they are
> mindless, with multiple internal goals. People regularly win court cases
> against their governments. More importantly, waving the right piece of
> paper at a government often makes it back down, since the small part you
> are interacting with does not want to get into a bureaucratic struggle -
> most bureaucrats prefer things to be easy.
>
>
> I kind of doubt that government ownership of our bodies is something
> that can be wished away in writing like this, not for a while yet, anyway.
>
>
> Depends on how you play it legally. In the case of advance medical
> directives the issue is more what doctors do rather than lawyers.
>

### Indeed, the document is aimed at doctors, not lawyers, and I drafted it
myself. It is clearly not strongly binding but it will influence behavior,
especially regarding the access of Alcor personnel to my medical
information, and it provides guidance to my PoA's. It's good to have PoA
with a strong, pushy style, so he can make the doctors stick to the
instructions. It won't stop a coroner but it will definitely stop a curious
pathologist (not that there are many left nowadays).


>
> In this case the severe global brain dysfunction euthanasia issue might
> be legally tricky in some jurisdictions, but a doctor could easily claim
> that in his professional opinion that the severe dysfunction made recovery
> so unlikely that further treatment was not in the patients best interest.
>

### The instructions do not specify euthanasia, which is an active process
and very strictly forbidden, but rather withdrawal of care, which is
passive and well-accepted by medical personnel. I would of course prefer
euthanasia but unfortunately it won't happen.

Rafał
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