This is the Reason interview with Nick Gillespie. My guest today is Jeffrey Singer, who's been a practicing surgeon for over 40 years, and is the author of the new Kato Institute book, Your Body, Your Health Care, which makes the maximalist case for patient autonomy, informed consent, and the right to self-medication.

This conversation took place at a live event in New York City. Go to reason.com slash events for information about upcoming events.

We do them every month.

And please subscribe to the brand spanking new Reason Interview channel at YouTube

by going to YouTube.com slash at the reason interview.

And here is my Reason interview with Dr. Jeff Singer.

So before we talk about your book, you are a general surgeon.

What is that like? I mean, you are a general surgeon. What is that like?

I mean, you are cutting into human bodies as you're living.

Like, isn't that kind of weird?

You know, some people can do it, some can't.

That's, you know, when you're a medical student,

some of my classmates, you know, they

had to all rotate through that experience, but that part really was hard for them to take,

and then for that reason they decided to go into non-surgical fields.

Did you know you always wanted to be a surgeon or you weren't sure?

Actually, it was, every rotation I took, I said, this is what I'm going to do.

Except for psychiatry, interestingly.

And then I had to make a decision as it was time to apply to residency programs.

They call a postgraduate education these days.

And it was really very difficult because I liked internal medicine a lot like the

what does internal medicine well that's the thing diagnosing and treating diseases

...