>If we focused resources on the community instead of punitive [...]

Yeah, but the problem with this approach is that the benefits are uncertain and take forever to materialize. Going back to the example of heart attacks, we might be able to prevent them if only we convinced people to have healthy diets and exercise, but doing so is fiendishly hard, so we end up with the imperfect solutions of open heart surgery and statins.

My point about heart attacks is that everyone dies and something has to kill you if you don't die of getting hit by a bus, or cancer or whatever. Cause of death: 'old' is not a thing. So healthy diets won't prevent heart attacks unless you can prevent death from old age.

I don't get it, is your claim that we shouldn't engage in public health interventions until we solve the problem of aging once and for all? I don't think anyone is under the illusion that curing heart attacks will make people live forever. Sure, someone who didn't die of a heart attack at 75 or whatever might have lived until 85 and died from dementia, but living 10 extra years is an improvement that we shouldn't pass up.

I don't think you understand what I am saying. When a person gets old and then has an acute health problem they have to go to the hospital for, they stay there until they die because you can't just keep zapping people with paddles and intubating them -- they die eventually. The doctor has to write a cause of death and it says whatever medical name for 'heart stopped' and 'lack of oxygen to brain' is. Pouring money into medical research to prevent those two things is not going to stop people from dying of old age. You have to die from --something-- and criminals have to get caught --somehow--. Saying 'they get caught driving so we should pull over more people' is silly because pulling people over has nothing to do with it, just like the heart attack isn't what kills old people.