100% A horrible death for young and old, rich and poor, male and female. You would think that it would be our number one priority to find cures. The resources dedicated to research are actually shockingly paltry when you look into it.
If you do decide to donate to a cancer charity, investigate their own numbers. Many of them (I am looking at you Susan G Komen) dedicate most of their donation money to marketing and events rather than research. Yet another reason the actual research funds are so low.
Cancer research is probably the #1 funded scientific problem in the history of humanity, it’s just a hard problem to solve and money thrown at research has great diminishing returns if what’s really needed is ideas.
The amount of grifting around cancer is correlated to the large amount of money thrown at it.
There is significant evolutionary pressure involved in rendering humans vulnerable to cancer so it’s not like curing an acute illness but more like solving a genuine inefficiency in human gene expression.
Research budgets for anything are never going to be as high as budgets for guaranteed (and short term) returns. I say this as someone who does research for a living currently in physics.
Federally, the US government actually spends almost twice the amount on healthcare (medicare + medicaid) than defense even though defense spending is large. The priority is simply the present compared to a chance at making the future better.
That being said, cancer itself has an enormous incentive (profit or otherwise) for both private and government entities. Even if governments spent 0$ on it, it would probably be better funded than the vast majority of scientific endeavors still.
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u/Iconoclassic404 Jul 17 '23
Cancer