[ExI] Medical power of attorney for cryonicsts

[Rafal Smigrodzki]

On Sun, Dec 7, 2014 at 12:40 PM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:

>
>
>
> If my worst nightmare came to pass and I found myself running a hospital,
> I durn sure would form that.  Where would I get my people?  I suppose I
> would have to choose from applicants, and those applications would be heavy
> in people with degrees in medical ethics, ja?  That experiment tells me
> that medical ethics is a legitimate field of study and a legitimate degree,
> providing a service that I occasionally want and need.
>

### Other parts of my PoA, which I have not excerpted to the list, actually
do that - I selected three of my friends to act on my behalf if I were
incapacitated, using the instructions that I shared with the list as
guidance. However, none of these friends have medical or ethics degrees -
they are PhDs or equivalent, selected because of their intelligence and
emotional stability, as well as geographical proximity and a pro-active,
achiever personality.  One of them does have a bachelor's degree in
philosophy but this is just a side-effect of him being better than 999
smart.

As a fringe libertarian, I see personal autonomy as the highest level good,
and this leaves little for a medical ethicist to contribute to my care.
There is just so much technical detail and so little ethical knowledge that
is needed to make decisions under my value system that what I need is a
friend who cares about me, knows biology, and is very smart - the requisite
ethics capabilities are a minor by-product of his intelligence. This is not
to say that a studious person could not contribute to progress after
learning a lot about other people's value systems, like a professional
ethicist would, but his usefulness is limited.

Rafal
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