>That analogy is way off base!
>Unless he's incompetent, when that mechanic makes that repair, it's almost a certainty that the car will be fixed.
>Given enough money and time, at least potentially, a mechanic can have a 100% success rate.

Yes and no... some of those 100% solutions may be an entirely new car. Not an option for a mechanic, but also not for an MD.

>By that standard, the medical profession has a 0% success rate since all patients ultimately die, regardless of the size of the budget.

And the percentage of cars running at age of 80 is...? :)

The mechanics get new models every year, and a new technology to learn every few years. Doctors are fixing the same model for what, 7000 years? And they only need to learn new tools.

>If an MD actually had a success rate that was even half that of the mechanic's instead of pretending to - as many do - then your analogy might hold water.

Now that's closer to the real reason why the analogy is wrong. The mechanic has a clear feedback - it works or it doesn't, it breaks or it keeps, the MPG get better or worse. The doctor doesn't really know. If the patient dies, he may have died for some other reason. If the patient gets well (word for "ozdraviti" really missing in english) it may be because or despite the treatment; the diagnose may have been wrong or right; most of it is somatic anyway and just the feeling that one is being cared of may cure most of the ills (or placebos wouldn't work). There's no psychosomatic mechanical engine failure, nor can any of it be fixed by any kind of placebo.

IOW, any parallel between humans and mechanisms (of any kind, including software) is true. True to its nature: it keeps the distance indefinitely and never gets any closer.