[wutbrodo]

> When the only certainty is killing people, I'd question whether the incalculably remote possibility of "unforeseeable advantages" undoing that killing counts for anything at all.

I'm somewhat inclined to agree with you but I don't think misrepresenting the arguments made by proponents is the same thing as rebutting them, like you did in this second comment.

> The last thing advocates of euthanasia and DNR for the heavily-suffering should want to see is their ethical arguments muddied by cryogenics salespeople hanging round hospitals persuading people that they'd be better off dying shortly after diagnosis...

Uh, that's great and everything but it's not even remotely relevant to the point of whether QALYs are a more appropriate measure than raw years of life for measuring the effectiveness of cryogenics. Sorry if that sounded a little caustic, but I find enormously tiresome the cynical tactic of appealing to "that argument is dangerous, what if someone down the road abuses it?" when one is unwilling or unable to address a point. Particularly because you could come up with some scenario in which pretty much every assertion could be used for ill.

[notahacker]

As you seemed to acknowledge yourself, QALYs don't really affect my original argument because unless you're ascribing negative utility to the remainder of the patient's lifespan, hastening a patient's death in the hope that it might have some effect on an incalculably small probability of future resuscitation still has a negative impact on QALYs. A fantasy of massively expanded future lifespan in perfect health multiplied by a probability best estimated at zero is still zero, to the best knowledge of all medics involved in the process.

If patients are making decisions to shorten their lifespan it should be on the basis of suffering less pain rather than subscribing to pseudoscientific twaddle about unforeseeable sufficiently advanced technological magic. The OP seemed to think the latter should have been prioritised if legal.

Its rather tiresome when people accuse me of being "unwilling or unable to address a point" after they've already parenthetically acknowledged it doesn't really change anything.