The point wasn't to highlight the distinction between low-quality life and high-quality life per se. (That's a separate issue, as epoxyhockey said.) The point w

The point wasn't to highlight the distinction between low-quality life and high-quality life per se. (That's a separate issue, as epoxyhockey said.) The point was only that the badness of an accidental death, and the cost we might be willing to imposed to reduce them, should probably reflect that counterfactual where no mistake occurs. QALYs lost are one way to measure the badness of a death, but he could have also just said "expected days of life lost". Of course, epoxyhockey's would likely still disagree.