How should different life expectancies be valued?

Editor—Problems with the valuation of life expectancy and quality adjusted life years1 can be traced to the underlying philosophical paradigm. The quality adjusted life year paradigm is based on 19th century classical utilitarianism. The greatest good is perfect health, which is valued at 1; being dead (and the event of death) has the value of 0. Other states are given values of <1; states judged worse than death may be given negative values.2