Like it's often the case this is not just a problem of money. You can research virtually anything and not everything will yield anything of value to the human r

Like it's often the case this is not just a problem of money. You can research virtually anything and not everything will yield anything of value to the human race. We need to have some direction. Epidemiology for example, sounds like a good high level scope that is definitely more directed towards human gains. Biology is a huge field. Also private funding and humanity's benefit are often at odds. Private funding tends to aim at making investors a return. What we really need (and Sam alludes to it) is a government/public fund for research so that labs have the ressources to research things that may never yield commercial profitability. If you leave it to big pharma and other private biotech companies to advance humanity, it's like leaving the food industry in charge of making humans healthier.... not happening :(