El Gato27, One of my touring bikes has bar-ends and the other has STI, I like both. The STI bike is a high mileage example with 15 year old shifters that exhibit some crash damage.
While one STI, of many, in the household did die in an epic crash losing the brake lever it's been my experience that a STI shifter will more likely fail if there has been long periods of inactivity and the grease hardens, which is fixed with a WD40 flushing and a re-lube with something like LPS2.
Brad