> There’s no evidence than just pouring more money into cancer research is going to give us a miracle cure.

The HPV vaccine will almost entirely wipe out cervical cancer: not by curing it, but preventing it entirely. Not sure if that meets your “miracle” standard, but it’s a totally unreasonable standard to apply to scientific research. By definition, a miracle is something that is not physically possible.

Research seems expensive, yes. You have to work in every possible direction, fumbling in the dark metaphorically, because you don’t know the answers yet. It’s a lot messier than giving a hungry person a meal. But hundreds of years of research have made that meal way more abundant and less expensive…

In the grand scope of the country, we spend quite small amounts on research. The U.S. GDP generates half a billion dollars in less than 10 minutes, for example. It’s less than what we spend on takeout coffee.