Your mistake is to treat a year of person X's life as equal to a year of person Y's life. Her 10 or 15 years is worth more, because we can already know that sh

Your mistake is to treat a year of person X's life as equal to a year of person Y's life. Her 10 or 15 years is worth more, because we can already know that she is a good person. The young person could haunt us for decades. Also, why should we extend life? Well, some people are worthy of it. So again, my grandmother wins. I see no benefit the maximizing the value of random abstract people. Merely maximizing total longevity fails to distinguish desirable people from undesirable people. This is partly why death row exists; in that case we certainly aren't maximizing longevity, and we are declining the obvious choice to extend life. If maximizing life were really the goal, we could ban birth control or even force people to become pregnant. Past accomplishments count. My grandma has earned the organ.