Wut? I don't think you understand what was written if you believe that to be the case. I am all for (reasonable) loss of progress as penalty for failure, as well as other methods of penalization. I know you are too, so what are you getting at?
The has to be some kind of penalty for failure, it's extremely integral to game design on a fundamental level. Vita chambers as it stands in Bioshock offer none outside of the approximate 5 seconds it takes to return to where you died. In fact, death is more often a reward in that game than it is a penalty, technically. there's more times it benefits you than hinders. You can save health hypos by just reusing vita chambers and the health they give over and over. I mean this doesn't actually benefit you because you just don't need to do it, but it would be a legitimate strategy in a different game (e.g games that have infinite health sources, it is wise to abuse those sources as much as possible before moving on, and is often also lame).
Why do you keep bringing up a feature that is 100% optional and pretending you're making some kind of point?