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The US has poured tens of billions into cancer research, and much more globally.. is money really the biggest limiting factor?
by exacube 12y ago
The US has poured tens of billions into cancer research, and much more globally.. is money really the biggest limiting factor?
- D_Alex 12y ago>is money really the biggest limiting factor? Kind of... To begin with, science jobs pay poorly, and a lot of exceptionally intelligent people choose high paying but ultimately ~zero-sum jobs like law and investment banking. And then there is the continual struggle for funding, which absorbs a good part of the scientists' time and energy.
- et2o 12y agoYes, definitely. These discussions often ignore that we have done very, very well for certain cancers.
- ghshephard 12y agoKeeping in mind, that compared to the scope of the problem, over 500,000 americans year die of Cancer, our investment has been miniscule. Compare this to EBola, which, even liberal estimates suggest we won't see more than 100 fatalities/year in the United States, and America has invested $1Billion. Cancer is a multi-trillion dollar problem - but the technology required to effectively combat it (nanobots, protein folding technology, targeted molecules, rapid-dynamic DNA assessment) is still many decades in the future. Of course, doing the basic research to develop those technologies is going to cost a lot of money as well. But the difference is, unlike many human maladies (Old Age) Cancer has a pretty well defined solution, we (perhaps appropriately) just haven't invested enough time and resources to deliver that solution yet.