The critique of DALYs: a counter-reply.

Reply to Crisp

We are grateful for, but unconvinced by, Roger Crisp’s defence of the Priority View against our critique.1 In this reply, we show that Crisp fails to grapple with, much less defeat, the central claim of our critique. We also show that an example that Crisp offers in support of the Priority View in fact lends support to our critique of that view. 1. In sections I–II of our article, we endorse th...

Measuring the Benefits of Healthcare: DALYs and QALYs – Does the Choice of Measure Matter? A Case Study of Two Preventive Interventions

Background The measurement of health benefits is a key issue in health economic evaluations. There is very scarce empirical literature exploring the differences of using quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) or disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) as benefit metrics and their potential impact in decision-making.   Methods Two previously published models delivering outputs in QALYs, were adapted...

The utility of DALYs for public health policy and research: a reply.

The WHO Advisory Committee on Health Research (ACHR), through its DALY Review Group, has recently criticized the use of disability-adjusted life years (DALYs). To suggest that the use of DALYs should be discouraged as an aid in health resource allocation may, however, be premature, since it enhances informed debate on the social values that influence resource allocation, identifies health probl...

Understanding Cultural Evolutionary Models a Reply to Read’s Critique

02 10 0 v 1 1 3 Fe b 20 03 Reply to comment on “ A simple explanation of the non - appearance of physical gluons and quarks ”

This is the reply to a comment by Andreas Aste on a previous article of mine in Can.J.Phys. The counter-arguments used by Aste utilize a mathematical limit without physical meaning. We still contend that in QCD, the particles “gluons” and “quarks” are merely artifacts of an approximation method (the perturbative expansion) and are simply absent in the exact theory. The critique of my previous a...