Years of life lost and other mortality indices

In 1953 together with a colleague (Benjamin and Logan) the author called attention to a paper by Haenzel (1950) describing a new index of mortality years of life lost. The argument was that many people were living for more than the three score and ten years and that every earlier death represented a loss of potential further years of life; that adding up the total years of life lost might be a significant measure of the toll of largely preventable disease; that changes in this total year by year would maximize the improvement gained by curative and especially preventative medicine.