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I have the answer. It's a simple one word answer. GREED. But seriously It's the money that keeps us from curing cancer, or lack thereof. Nothing else. As human

I have the answer. It's a simple one word answer. GREED. But seriously It's the money that keeps us from curing cancer, or lack thereof. Nothing else. As human beings we really need to decide what's more important....Wealth or our survival and wellbeing. We're too smart as a society to let things like lack of money keep us from curing disease and exploring other planets.

aidenn0 15y ago
It's not lack of money, it's lack of what money represents, which is goods, services, and in general labor. If the US wanted to spend $100 trillion on cancer cures it could, but the moment it printed all that money, the purchasing power of it would decline to the point that they wouldn't actually have enough money to cure cancer. Consider a single cancer researcher. They need to eat. They need machines that sequence genes that use techniques developed by other researchers, designed by engineers, built by people in factories. All of those people need to eat. The raw materials are mined out of the ground in work that is environmentally damaging, hard work, and often dangerous work. It is not possible to snap your fingers and have more work immediately happen. There have been exceptions to the above, but it has been temporary in export economies with exportable natural resources attainable at a below-market level (e.g. OPEC, Soviet Union). You can't just say "Is it really just money that keeps us from doing X?" since money isn't the issue, it's that we don't have enough of the value that backs the currency.
tsotha 15y ago
It's not lack of money at all. How many researchers, worldwide, do you think have the expertise necessary to make a nontrivial contribution? The problem is we simply don't have the technology to develop a cure for cancer, and we don't even know the precursor technologies we need to develop a cure for cancer.

aidenn0 15y ago

It's not lack of money, it's lack of what money represents, which is goods, services, and in general labor. If the US wanted to spend $100 trillion on cancer cures it could, but the moment it printed all that money, the purchasing power of it would decline to the point that they wouldn't actually have enough money to cure cancer. Consider a single cancer researcher. They need to eat. They need machines that sequence genes that use techniques developed by other researchers, designed by engineers, built by people in factories. All of those people need to eat. The raw materials are mined out of the ground in work that is environmentally damaging, hard work, and often dangerous work. It is not possible to snap your fingers and have more work immediately happen. There have been exceptions to the above, but it has been temporary in export economies with exportable natural resources attainable at a below-market level (e.g. OPEC, Soviet Union). You can't just say "Is it really just money that keeps us from doing X?" since money isn't the issue, it's that we don't have enough of the value that backs the currency.

tsotha 15y ago

It's not lack of money at all. How many researchers, worldwide, do you think have the expertise necessary to make a nontrivial contribution? The problem is we simply don't have the technology to develop a cure for cancer, and we don't even know the precursor technologies we need to develop a cure for cancer.