I voted against them then. Government funding of cancer research means no real accountability for finding solutions. Prefer venture capital to fund start ups around new and novel ideas.
In theory, I agree with you. But in practice, it just doesn't work that way.
Consider pharma research. Biotech companies (both established entities and start-ups) spend billions of dollars each year trying to find new drugs and other therapies. This research largely involves rudimentary guess-and-check methods. If they know that a particular disease is caused by an excess of protein X, they put protein X in 5,000 test tubes and then put a different drug in each test tube. The ones that show an impact are studied further.
The hope is to some day be able to design a drug that will have the desired effect on a given protein. But before that can be done, basic research is required to learn more about how proteins work. Scientists are currently able to map the static structure of a protein, but surprisingly little is known about why proteins take the shape they do, i.e. how individual electrons interact with each other within a protein. And even less is known about the dynamic characteristics of proteins.
One of my relatives is currently pursuing a PhD in biophysics. His research focuses on how proteins "wiggle" when suspended in solution. It's all Greek to me, but the gist of it is that we can't even begin to understand how proteins interact with other molecules until we understand how the bonds within proteins change in response to stimuli (temperature, pH, magnetism, exposure to other chemicals, etc.).
A while back, I asked my relative what his research was for (i.e. cancer, brain disease, etc.). He said there is no way to know. What he is doing could help cure a disease or eliminate aging. It could make crops more drought resilient, or enable food production in a zero-G / zero-oxygen environment. It could lead to better recycling of plastics, or enable the creation of synthetic materials.
But most likely, it won't yield any usable results for decades. His research will be published in journals, as will the work of other scientists. They will each use the others' results to launch new studies. There will be more dead ends than successes. But ultimately, they will discover more about how proteins work.
Unfortunately, private industry does almost no research on this basic level. There are several reasons for this, but there are two particularly big ones. First, the results generally can't be patented or otherwise protected. The law does not provide protection for knowledge of fundamental facts, and it is hard to conceive of how that could be done. Second, even to the extent that ideas might be protected (or kept secret), the research won't generally yield usable results for many decades -- long beyond the decision-making horizon for private companies.
Governmental funding of science research (mostly through university labs) has been very successful over the years. Today's new drugs are largely built on techniques developed by university researchers in the 1950's, 1960's, and 1970's. The research being done in universities today will yield results at some point in the distant future, and for-profit entities will be there to reap the rewards.
(this one passed with the closest margin).
