Thanks for the handy list. a few quick additional thoughts
1)Perhaps there should be an expanded QALY (QALYX?)… just as a life year of significant suffering may have less value, a life year of increased pleasure or satisfaction would have increased value. Can of worms of course in comparing “units of happiness” 2)Perhaps this could be also equity adjusted. Just as with a dollar given to a rich person would seem to generate less “good” than a dollar given to a poor person, so would units of happiness (assuming one had worked out a reasonable metric of happiness) 3)This is a bit dark, but in considering QALY, there are also society costs to lengthening the life of someone who has some debilitating condition. It seems that saving and lengthening someone’s life with disability should consider these costs. There are of course competing values (optimization of potential good human years vs duty to maximize care for currently disabled), but such an accounting would make this trade-off transparent. Shifting implied calculus here is of course why infanticide of the disabled was common in the past but uncommon in modern societies.
Thanks for the handy list.
a few quick additional thoughts
1)Perhaps there should be an expanded QALY (QALYX?)… just as a life year of significant suffering may have less value, a life year of increased pleasure or satisfaction would have increased value. Can of worms of course in comparing “units of happiness”
2)Perhaps this could be also equity adjusted. Just as with a dollar given to a rich person would seem to generate less “good” than a dollar given to a poor person, so would units of happiness (assuming one had worked out a reasonable metric of happiness)
3)This is a bit dark, but in considering QALY, there are also society costs to lengthening the life of someone who has some debilitating condition. It seems that saving and lengthening someone’s life with disability should consider these costs. There are of course competing values (optimization of potential good human years vs duty to maximize care for currently disabled), but such an accounting would make this trade-off transparent. Shifting implied calculus here is of course why infanticide of the disabled was common in the past but uncommon in modern societies.