Yes, "potential person years" or a similar phrasing would have been clearer.
>(Grim discussion, I guess, but I'm just not certain I agree with the unspoken assumption that seems to be in that statement, that the younger the death, the more tragic/more effect on society.)
It is a matter of morality and personal ethics. I chose to mention it only because the discrepancy in this case is so large, and it felt almost misleading to not relate the information. That said, I regret framing it in such a coldly utilitarian way.
These cold terms are how these discussions are had in industry. It's the core behind value based pricing - quality adjusted life years or QALYs are what many health systems use to determine what they will or wont pay for. As long as money is scarce, these are how conversations are had. A drug that saves a child's life is worth more, and people are willing to pay more, than a drug that saves an older person's life. There are cutoffs and thresholds. In the UK, with a few exceptions, a drug cant cost much more than 30 thousand pounds for each extra quality adjusted year of life (e.g. an extra year bedridden might only count as 30% of a year, while an extra year closer to functional might count as 95%) for NICE to approve paying for it. In the developing world, the value of a human life is set at about 2x GDP per capita per QALY. In the US, for a drug to be cost effective, it should be less than 150,000 dollars per QALY (but many drugs aren't).
Re:Malaria 'Completely Stopped' by Microbe
by thaumasiotes on Monday May 04, 2020 @03:18PM
(#23072129)
The usual metric is QALY, "quality-adjusted life years". (The idea of quality adjustment being that three years of being 82-84 isn't as good as three years of being 22-24.)
It's a horrible assumption. I know that my parents probably have only 5-15 years of their life left, so I make sure to have contact with them as much as possible, and keep up longevity research, though I know that they don't like to experiment as much as I would in their place.
> I know that they don't like to experiment as much as I would in their place.
Hard to know. Do you think there's zero chance that, when you're their age, you might be the one telling your adult kid that you've had a happy, long life, and don't feel the need to experiment with longevity?
"Potential" person years lost, I guess. If you used "person years" the same way you use "Our firm has a combined 125 years of experience" then it's the other way round.
(Grim discussion, I guess, but I'm just not certain I agree with the unspoken assumption that seems to be in that statement, that the younger the death, the more tragic/more effect on society.)