Really? Because the amount of money put into researching how to cure life-threatening diseases, as well as prevent and vaccinate against them, seems pretty high.
Pharmaceutical companies spend billions trying to research drugs to cure diseases, and so do governments, universities, private research funders, and charities.
There are people who dedicate huge portions of their lives to raising money and resources for charities trying to research cures for diseases that kill millions of people.
And we've had some success. Just the other day, there was an article published about the men who thought they were going to die of AIDS in the 80s, but whose lives are now in their 60s and approaching retirement age because of the provision of highly active anti-retroviral therapy. (And now they face issues because they never thought they'd survive and so didn't plan to have a career or a retirement etc.)
http://projects.sfchronicle.com/2016/living-with-aids/story/
I just don't see how anyone can claim that society isn't "doing serious focused R&D" on life-threatening diseases.