“Thirty Ghosts” and Statistical Significance

I'm sure my fellow sf fans are familiar with the following Arthur C. Clarke quote (I was reminded of this by The Omega Point (seen via Reality Carnival)):

Behind every man now alive stand thirty ghosts, for that is the ratio by which the dead outnumber the living. Since the dawn of time, roughly a hundred billion human beings have walked the planet Earth.

By now it's down to fifteen ghosts (one of them is Clarke's). In other words, the claim “All men are mortal” is no longer established to better than a 95% confidence.

Is this an argument against the usual treatment of statistical significance?