Yep, but of course if you retard the aging process, the capacity for breakthroughs in Medicine and technology necessary to treat disease and physical trauma would accelerate (as you'd expand the length of time experts at the top of their field operate).

With time, you could effectively massively reduce the risk of accidental death, murder or disaster through breakthroughs that allowed the human mind to be backed up, and then installed to a new body (for example).

Something like nanotechnology could effectively render most forms of physical death obsolete - as it could repair damage faster than organ failure could induce brain death (or at least suspend animation whilst repairing catastrophic damage). With the right technology, you could pretty much restrict the impact or risk of death considerably.

You could in theory, develop 'disaster recovery organs' to prevent or delay injury that could be implanted (i.e. designed to keep the brain and head alive until such time as it can be transferred to a clone body or some such).

Arguably, the best approach to developing cures for most diseases, would be to first focus on retarding aging rather than finding 'a cure for cancer' - as you'd extend the period of time people at the cutting edge of Oncology could perform research towards treatments for cancer.

I think to reasonably having some form of 'immortality' and individual would have to accept becoming sterile.