This is a strawman and has nothing to do with the logistical nightmare of traversing an inclined glacier at 8000 metres in freezing hurricane winds, with no breathable air. If you don't realise how deadly an environment that is, you have no business being up there. The alternative life preservation option to not saving people on Everest is banning people from climbing the highest point on Earth which seems unfair to those who feel capable of it and unnecessarily legislative.

The reason people continue on up when people are in trouble is because the routes up and down are not the exact same and they can barely carry enough equipment to ensure their own survival in the oxygen-depraved environment for the planned journey. There's hardly any margin for error. Everyone is on a clock. On top of this the journey down is actually more dangerous: where the surface is not it's usual ice and snow, it's gravel.

If they could rescue people, they would, as it is, they can't even bring the bodies down. If they can't get inanimate bodies down, how are you supposed to carry someone living, who feels pain and may even struggle. At a stretch they could lever and crane bodies down obstacles but how are you supposed to deal with someone in the throes of exposure or oxygen deprivation.

None of it is by choice, the dying or the leaving the dying. The choice is made to face that upon embarking. They are in one of the harshest environments on Earth, you're taking your life in your hands just being there. People die of exposure on city streets, imagine how easy it is on an oxygen deprived glacier with hurricane winds. I don't think you appreciate how extreme the environment is.

Source: My friends climbed to Base Camp 3.