But I wholeheartedly agree that rather than trying to be a billg and earn money to fund philanthropy, the world needs more researchers.
That's not even true if you look only at rich countries - cardiovascular diseases cause more deaths.
The amount of effort, let alone money, spent on cancer research is already obscene compared to what is spent on other serious problems.
cancer.org states that 15% of deaths worldwide are due to cancer, with 50% being spread amongst other non-communicable diseases.
http://www.cancer.org/research/infographics/rising-global-ca...
"In 2010, 65% of all deaths worldwide were due to noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) like heart disease, lung disease, diabetes and cancer. 15% of all deaths worldwide, nearly 8 million people, were due to cancer alone. The number of deaths worldwide from cancer dwarfs the number of global deaths from malaria and HIV/AIDS, as is projected to exceed 13 million by 2030."
The first sentence and the next two aren't at all related. It's possible that the amount of money we're collectively spending right now is all that can be used effectively, and more money will yield at best highly diminishing returns.
As much as I'd like to do my share in X, if I can't make a living of it, I won't dedicate my whole life to it. Some will, but many won't.
I'm not convinced that what this world needs is research into keeping sick people alive longer. We have lots of people as it is.
Given that the average costs of bringing up any single individual are nowadays probably at an all-time high, it makes sense to invest something into keeping those people from dying prematurely.
Also, this is less about keeping sick people alive longer, but about making them unsick, or even prevent them from becoming sick in the first place (prevention, timely diagnosis, study of the immune system behavior and reactions related to the cancer onset).
When I was a kid childhood leukemia was a death sentence. These days survival rates are in the 80% and up range.
The goal isn't non-dead sick people. It's well people.
Attacking that problem doesn't mean that you can't attack the problem of too many people too. Hopefully in a more productive way than having a horrible, lingering, painful disease solve it for us.
EDIT - I had a little time to think about your statement a little. Your statements are basically just ridiculous venom. In any other venue, it would be met with the vitriol it really deserves but I just find this to be essentially inhuman.