[cgriswald]

Not to defend your particular dentist, but...

> I asked if we could just do an extraction but they only responded with "Oh you don't want to do that!" (playfully) but legitimately not saying it was an option.

I think dentists are culturally and by training pre-disposed to keeping your real teeth in your mouth. I've asked different dentists why and they get a hand-wavy, but they all say it's better if your real teeth are in there. This even happened in a scenario where I wanted a tooth removed and an implant put in - they would have made more money saying yes to me, but they pushed me towards other options.

[kpil]

It's because there are risks, up to infections that eats your face and might kill you, and the implant does not last forever.

I'm starting to get old, and I have realised that the trick is to keep all your body parts together until everything gives up at once :-)

[dreamfactory2]

It's because your jaw will change shape when there is a void an it can affect other teeth in the row. Also if you remove a tooth on the lower jaw, the corresponding tooth above on the upper jaw can start to travel downwards in the absence of a bite.

[PeterisP]

Those are valid reasons to avoid having a gap instead of a tooth, but should make no difference in the heavily-repaired-but-"real" vs implant tooth question that the parent poster had.