You keep saying "Mortality adds up to 100% in the end." From the standpoint of the individual, though, it makes a big difference whether that happens at age 55 or 75, don't you agree?Precisely. We need to review the impact on real lives, not mortality from a particular cause.
Example: If it is shown that conservative treatment of a screened condition gives you an average extra ten years of quality life, the fact that it still gets you in the end need not be a failure. Especially if the alternative aggressive treatment has a high chance of making the rest of your life a misery and you are immunosuppressed and die the same year of pneumonia, thus contributing to a decreased cancer mortality figure that some will say is a sign of a successful health system.
"... They ne'er cared for us
yet: suffer us to famish, and their store-houses
crammed with grain; make edicts for usury, to
support usurers; repeal daily any wholesome act
established against the rich, and provide more
piercing statutes daily, to chain up and restrain
the poor. If the wars eat us not up, they will; and
there's all the love they bear us."
-- Shakespeare: Coriolanus, Act 1, scene 1
