You wrote about doctors being “to a large extent replaceable,” and taking this consideration at face-value in the past has made me give less consideration to this possibility. However, if you were a doctor, presumably you could be an earning-to-give doctor?
Yes. Greg Lewis, a British doctor, estimates that earning to give in medicine beats direct medical work by a considerable margin. As he put it in an interview I had with him recently, “the chequebook can likely beat the stethoscope.” He also believes medicine is a reasonably good earning to give career, though probably not as good as other lucrative careers prospective doctors can pursue instead.
Yes, based on Greg’s analyses, this seems pretty clearly true for most developed world medicine.
However, it’s worth noting that Greg’s work is mostly about average marginal cases, and it’s mostly about the developed world. Circumstances could conspire to make the direct impact win in a few cases. If your top priority cause is developing world health, and you are prepared to practice medicine in a developing nation, then I might lean toward direct action. If you’re particularly talented in a highly leveraged area like public health medicine or cost-effectiveness research, then you could make a case either way. We might be able to have a better discussion about this after Greg publishes more on the topic.
Yes. Greg Lewis, a British doctor, estimates that earning to give in medicine beats direct medical work by a considerable margin. As he put it in an interview I had with him recently, “the chequebook can likely beat the stethoscope.” He also believes medicine is a reasonably good earning to give career, though probably not as good as other lucrative careers prospective doctors can pursue instead.
Yes, based on Greg’s analyses, this seems pretty clearly true for most developed world medicine.
However, it’s worth noting that Greg’s work is mostly about average marginal cases, and it’s mostly about the developed world. Circumstances could conspire to make the direct impact win in a few cases. If your top priority cause is developing world health, and you are prepared to practice medicine in a developing nation, then I might lean toward direct action. If you’re particularly talented in a highly leveraged area like public health medicine or cost-effectiveness research, then you could make a case either way. We might be able to have a better discussion about this after Greg publishes more on the topic.