[Crusty Old Shellback]

I'm in agreement with Mikefish here.
I actually participated in a thread here on RC about MI's and finally got a wholesaler to admit that he had more blue tangs die in his tanks than MI's. Even though the tangs are imported on a daily basis and are seen as easy fish to keep, there are more of them dying in the wholesalers tanks than MI's. Why? who knows.
But his response was that he knows they will die in a customers tank. Similar to what you are saying. Dosen't make sense to me unless you are tracking each and every MI you sell to know it's outcome.
There are several people here on RC who have kept them longer than 2 years. As well, there IS a wholesaler who has been keeping them and doing research on them for the past 10 years. I'm not saying they are easy to keep as they need avery varied diet to survive but to blatley throw out that they should be left in the reef is absured, unless you want to throw everythging else back in the reef and just look at pic's.
If you ever spend time diving, you will see a lot of MI's out in the wild. Some fish just have special needs more so than others. As with ANY selection of animals you wish to keep, you should do your research first and RC is a good place to start.