If someone had the ability to instantly heal any physical or mental injury, deformity or illness (including adding an extra decade to their lifespan) by merely touching the person with their hands and wanted to help as many people as possible while still having their own life what would be the most effective and efficient system for them to do so?
In the long term, the greatest benefit would come from studying the magical healing ability, so as to figure out how to replicate it. One miracle-healer can do a lot, but ten thousand miracle-healers can do a lot more.
They should become a preacher, build a massive church and charge people a goodly portion of their life’s earnings to belong.
Run, hide, and heal discretely and anonymously. You have become a commodity and possibly a weapon, and the law will not protect you.
^^^
This.
Is the healing permanent? Does one touch heal all physical or mental injury, deformity or illnesses" or just one specific “physical or mental injury, deformity or illness?” Can the healer heal themself?
I’m not quite sure what you mean by ‘system’? Does the healer know how this works, or is it something that ‘just happens’? If the latter, then I guess you are asking what sort of clinic or other social organization would produce the ‘greatest good for the greatest number’?
Of course, there would be a risk that if this ability was revealed, the healer would be whisked away to a government or corporate laboratory where they might be subjected to possibly very nasty tests to try to discover how it works…
How much of the hands must contact the other person? For how long? Would I have to grab them by the throat for 5 minutes, or can I flick a fingernail trimming at them? Does it work on me? Does the power lie in my total corpus, or just my hands? Is a fingertip of contact enough? Because I could see having a fingertip removed surgically, regrowing it instantly and send the tip to the Mayo Clinic or St. Jude’s for use on the terminally injured/ill.
Whoever wanted to harm you would have to be confident first that you only have abilities to heal, not harm. How do they know you can’t hurt those who’d hurt you?
Yes to all three questions.
The healer has to grab the other person anywhere for a second. The power is only in the hands and the healer can heal himself.
To further this, can the healer control how long the healing takes? Taking a year rather than instant could make it much harder to “connect the dots”.
No. It takes a second every time.
They wouldn’t to harm you, though. They would want to keep you from harm, any possible harm, to ensure that you can be used. You would be in a nice comfortable cage, fed food designed to extend your life, and denied access to any information that might cause stress.
Damn it, wish you’d spoilered that
Also, this:
Y’know, all these threads about “what would you do if you had superpowers”, everyone’s always saying what they’d do to make sure they wouldn’t end up in some lab. Me, I’d do what I could to make sure I would end up in a lab. Set it up as a collaboration between, oh, the National Institute of Health, the Cleveland Clinic, and Johns Hopkins University. Publicize it as much as possible. With different institutions involved from government, academia, and private industry, and with enough publicity, it’d be really hard for any of them to just disappear me or to hide the results, but they would be able to study me.
I hadn’t fleshed the idea out, but that gives me a hint. Once I couldn’t be “disappeared” I’d offer my services to any billionaire on the planet - the minute they become not a billionaire. Or even a 100 millionaire. Give away all your riches to make peoples lives better in myriad ways. Then we’ll talk about curing your cancer. Same same for every nuclear power - none of your citizens get bupkis until all your nukes are gone.
Most of them started by the OP…
That part would never work.
None of the agencies mentioned in the previous post have the ability or agency to protect you. In fact, I can’t think of a single incorruptible government agency that would act on your behalf and not on the behalf of the congresscritters that fund them.