For the purposes of plot you wake up and find you have miraculous healing powers. All you have to do to heal any person is lay your hands on them for a few minutes and they will be cured, its 100% effective.
Given that you can only heal one person at a time and it takes from about one to five minutes to do so what would be the best and fairest way to help the most amount of people?
Assume you’ve already been studied inside out and your abilities can’t be replicated, in addition you are motivated to help people, and as many and as fairly as possible. You are quite happy with a modest lifestyle and building personal wealth isn’t a factor in your considerations.
Should you just turn up at a hospital and start healing people? Set up a permanent clinic and wait for people to come to you? Travel the world and heal people in different countries?
Would it be first come, first served or healing by lottery, if your number comes up you get healed? Do you make your own decisions on who to heal or leave that to others?
This would take a lot of thought, but my first impulse is to somehow seek out the mentally ill, especially the violent ones.
(And maybe some of those shouldn’t be cured, because if they finally understood the pain they had caused, they might decide to try self-inflicted capital punishment – so no net good result.)
Quite a mixture of blessing and curse, I expect. There would be a lot who still couldn’t be cured just because of lack of time, but that doesn’t mean the guilt would easily be dismissed. But giving up on the whole idea doesn’t sound good either.
Start charging rich people obscene amounts of money for healings. At least a million dollars a pop. Then use that money to fund basic medical care in the third world.
I’d only charge super rich people. I may charge upper middle class people a few thousand each though too.
Use the money to fund basic health care in the developing world. That would go pretty far.
Everyone else gets healed for free.
As far as the free healings, I would prioritize to heal people who would be very productive if not sick. People who are young, intelligent and competent but due to physical or mental illness are a drain on society. Healing people like that would benefit society more than healing an elderly person with a shattered hip so they can collect social security and medicare for another 2 years, then die of a heart attack. If you heal someone with a serious illness at 19, they could spend the next 40 years being productive, paying taxes and contributing to society.
These, and the people with rare, crippling physical illnesses. There are conditions which are crippling (or viewed so by society) but which are common enough that we have treatments, people studying them…
Also, I’d want to get medically trained ASAP, to work within my UHC system and to have things set up so both my power and the results of my work would be recorded and studied. Compare before and after tests on the patients, etc. It could lead to better diagnostic tools, or to finding out that certain illnesses are more prevalent than previously thought, or who knows what other interesting things I can’t even think of.
In some cases I’d require that several people accept treatment, usually family groups. We’ve got a case right now in Spain of a guy who weighs about 385kg (850lb); doctors are at a loss what to do with him (it takes seven people just to change his position in bed), but nobody gets that fat without help. He was already severely obese as a child, at age 9 he weighed about 4x as much as a normal child the same age. His obesity is a symptom of multiple wrong things within his family, not just of a thyroid problem.
I’d hold lotteries.
Restrictions would include:
Must be on a list of things not really able to be treated with current medicine. I’m not replacing doctors.
Can travel to my locale (which would move around the world to spread the benefits - a new lottery each time)
Only one lottery entry per person.
You can re-enter the next lottery anytime I’m in the neighbourhood.
There is no charge to enter the lottery. Only for treatment.
I’ll charge lottery winners 10% of their nett worth, whatever that is.
You can’t be someone I would personally consider an asshole. This assessment comes after the lottery i.e. you can win a lottery place and I still won’t treat you if I think you’re an asshole. You agree to me having access to your social media and web accounts for this evaluation. I will freely publish a comprehensive yet non-exhaustive list of criteria for assholishness.
I will do that from 10-4, 3 days a week.
On Thursdays, I will have paid-for sessions - as in, it’ll cost money just to get on the list, plus much more money to be treated - if I decide they’re not an asshole. So the billionaires with Alzheimer’s or a dodgy ticker can still get their cure - provided they’re not assholes. But it’ll cost them. More than if they entered the lottery. Say, 20%.
I reserve the right to treat other people, as-and-when I feel like it, and to charge them whatever I feel (or not charge at all) This may be friends and family, the entire local paediatric ward, someone I read about in the news, whatever.
Bitching about my schedule and methods, anywhere where I can find out about it, will definitely get you on the asshole list. Bugging me for treatment when I’m not at work will also get you on the asshole list.
First I’d hide, like Johnny did in Stephen King’s book The Dead Zone. So many people would seek me out and I’d never be alone. Their pain, and their anger would be overwhelming. I’d have to figure out how to cure people stealthily, because folks would never leave me alone.
I’m going to keep it quiet. I’m not going to let myself be studied. My name is unique within the UK, and my full name is probably unique worldwide. I’d be an instant target for kidnappers hoping to sell me to leaders of less salubrious countries. The problem for me is the extended contact time required, being more than a handshake or a hug. Thus I’d have to try and learn physiotherapy or massage. Maybe nail-painting?
The bigger problem would be continuing to avoid notice. If I have a nail-painting day at a hospital and they all get better then someone is going to notice. So I’m going to have to deliberately not cure people and that will be very hard.
I’d take up and master the art of juggling, with my goal being to become the best juggler ever. I’d practice every waking moment, even juggling my meals whilst eating (and not just apples, either).
This all consuming obsession with honing my craft would take my mind off the healing thing.
I would go to a hospital, preferably a childrens hospital, and start by going thru the neonatal ICU. I used to work there and the cries of the sick children still haunt me. Then I would go see the children in the cancer ward. Then the developmental ward for children with autism or other mental issues. Then other areas like say for burn victims or the ER. Then to a downs syndrome event.
Then to Special Olympics events.
Then go to a school for the blind.
Then I would go to the summer camp programs they hold for such children.
I know of one such camp where there is a cross and attached to the cross are small placards with names of former campers who have died. Many kids who attend that camp have issues like cancer and dont even live to be 21.
BUT, at least for a week they could forget their pain and be just a normal kid.
I would try to arrange an intro to Trump. Then Putin, Im, Duterte, … Then after all that, I would worry about healing ordinary people. But that’s the way to benefit the most people.
Winning over the rich and powerful would be a good way to change the world. But I don’t think those people are necessarily ill. Trump may have dementia and NPD, but I assume Kim and Duterte are healthy, just assholes.
Ooh, that raises some interesting questions. Is it possible to heal mental illnesses? Personality disorders? Moral illnesses? Just being wired differently?
My assumption was that mental illnesses could be healed, but not moral illnesses.
If you could heal moral illnesses, you could do a lot of good. But would the people who need it line up for it? Would the dictators and generals in the middle east and asia agree to be ‘healed’ of their cruelty and evil?
My understanding is that there are a few thousand people on earth who are highly influential (high ranking business leaders, political leaders, social leaders). If those people change their ways, the entire world changes. But I’m not sure if apathy or just being an asshole is an actual illness.
Assuming my goal is to help the most people, I’d tell the government I will withhold my ability from everyone until a universal health system is set up, and then I’ll only heal the people the health system declared to be otherwise incurable.
If the problem is genetic, would the cure include changing the genes so that the problem could not be passed on? Whether the answer to that is yes or no, I’d start with a list of harlequin and tay sachs babies and work from there.
Why stop there? Why not mandate that the rich and upper middle income nations fund and establish a universal health care system that is global in scope, and then you will heal anyone who can’t be healed by the system.
But sadly, most diseases are diseases of aging and even if you cure one, another one will come.
