"Quality of life" only matters if you consider the possibility they may have chosen to die if no doctors had consented to try the operation. Then it becomes an lifesaving operation.

The doctors who made the decision were able to talk to the patients - something which none of us discussing the issue here did. You're second-guessing doctors and judging them based on a complete lack of the same information they had. If you say specifics don't matter, you're making the same mistake doctors are often accused of: not listening to patients and treating them as individuals. Whether any of us think they should have even considered suicide is irrelevant. It's an issue of ideals and personal opinions instead of an evaluation of a real situation. The likelihood of them doing so would have been very relevant to the doctors' decision.