How does your "wrinkle" make things necessarily worse? All [men] must die (sorry) at some point so succeeding at removing the biggest killers would give more people a second chance to die of something else later. Just because we cure cancer won't mean that there are suddenly more causes of death, just that the people who would have died from cancer will die of a variety of other existing things.
Anyway, your point likely still stands. It makes sense that companies will have to spread resources across a diversifying research field once the big killers become treatable.
> How does your "wrinkle" make things necessarily worse?
If a small number of causes continued to be responsible for a large fraction of all deaths even as causes were defeated/delayed by medical interventions, then a continuous application of research resources could plausibly lead to consistent increases in life expectancy. For instance, if as heart disease deaths are being reduced by endovascular procedures those people are dying mostly of colon cancer, then we could divert resources to colon cancer research and hope for continued progress. But if, once the major diseases are suppressed, the number of causes of death explodes into a diverse spectrum of unique illnesses, there is little hope that constant (or reasonably increasing) resources can do much.
Not something you read everyday!
How does your "wrinkle" make things necessarily worse? All [men] must die (sorry) at some point so succeeding at removing the biggest killers would give more people a second chance to die of something else later. Just because we cure cancer won't mean that there are suddenly more causes of death, just that the people who would have died from cancer will die of a variety of other existing things.
Anyway, your point likely still stands. It makes sense that companies will have to spread resources across a diversifying research field once the big killers become treatable.
edit: format