Agreed. They should be award miles that allow for PQM accrual. Or make them all PQM. That way someone could get gold for life (plus spouse) for a code execution exploit.
Conferring lifetime status isn't necessarily even that expensive to the airline--you only get the benefits after you give the airline your money for tickets. It also creates an incentives to buy tickets on one particular airline, even when they might be slightly more expensive (which is the whole purpose of frequent flier CRM programs).