<human>: I have been struggling with this question and every way I look at it, it is wrong.  
I just sat by while my grandmother passed away.  Slowly.  She developed throat cancer (ironically never smoked) about 2 years ago and survived until last October.  I say survived because my aunts and uncles, and for a while my mother, did all they could to keep her alive.  My grandmother was a deeply spiritual Christian, one of the few I have met that I believed they "walked the walk".  I know from her words that she was ready to pass on 2 years ago.  Yet she accepted painful surgery and expensive medication because she knew her children would miss her.  
What I'm trying to say is that increasingly often, people go out of their way to extend their own or their loved ones lives for selfish reasons.  I believe that prolonging lives unnaturally leads to negative impacts on the rest of society.  It seems fairly obvious that humans are overpopulating the Earth.  Nature is doing its damndest to fight our exponential growth.  With disease especially the planet is attempting to limit our over consumption.  In this society where money is prized above so much else, one of the fastest growing fields of science is medicine.  
I may have ranted a bit (could have said more) here but,

Can you give me a shortened version of the text?
<bot>: if anyone has some insight on the reasons for our zealous mission to prevent death, I'd appreciate it.