That we haven't cured cancer is a problem of culture. And I'm not talking about that culture that we put in paintings and films, but about the more fundamental

That we haven't cured cancer is a problem of culture. And I'm not talking about that culture that we put in paintings and films, but about the more fundamental one that tells everybody what's the proper way to live a life. That base level of culture that tells people they should have kids and buy a car and a house (though not necessarily in that order), and go to a grill party from time to time. That part of culture that tells people is better to die of cancer than risk a leak of something dangerous from a laboratory, or letting the ayatolahs produce biological weapons. In Vinge's novel "Rainbow's End" there is a particular fragment about how they had automated biological research, with robots at big connected research factories making all the experiments. Such factories would go a long way to shorten the "long cycles" the article mentions, and they perhaps would democratize bio-sciences research. I don't think there are any technological obstacles to building those factories; robots have been employed at factories for a long time and there many robots already used in expensive biological labs. But note the word "expensive". In cultural terms, "expensive" means "big commitment that has to be more important than anything else that can be bought with that money.". This is the cultural part I refer to. As a society, we discuss many things, but biological research is very, very low in that awareness list. In Europe, for example, putting spyware on people's phones is way higher in the agenda. And thus, the public would never approve a 20% (or any other number) of the government budget going towards biological research, unless they had material evidence that that money would indeed cure cancer. For the same reason, they wouldn't use use 20% of their savings to invest on biotech. But if, by the right means, those perceptions could be changed, we would see a revolution in biology and really substantial breakthroughs in life-expectancy.