I agree and I might add that we probably don't want to normalise the idea that the elderly just randomly die of "old age". That could easily result in a decline

I agree and I might add that we probably don't want to normalise the idea that the elderly just randomly die of "old age". That could easily result in a decline of standards in hospitals and elderly residential homes, or it could even give the Harold Shipmans of the world free reign to do as they please: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Shipman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Shipman Everybody dies and we can't deny that, there likely won't be some breakthrough within my lifetime where we conquer death. But we should still be striving to understand the causes, to know whether someone died because of heart failing due to being really old[0], or whether it was down to something preventable or that otherwise indicates a failure in our system [0] - not a doctor, I don't know what sort of things they normally use for this. Substitute an actual cause of death if this doesn't sound right :)