>Especially if you consider that cancer is showing no sign of being a curable problem, while HIV is.
"We haven't found a solution to this problem" is possibly the worst reason I've ever heard to cut back on research.
It's not just that we haven't found a solution. Cancer is not a single condition - it's a multitude of different diseases with similar mechanisms and different causes. The cure for one type of cancer is usually ineffective for most other types. Frequently researchers have encouraging results on one set of patients that never happen again on another set.
HIV is a relatively easy problem when compared to cancer.
I'm not suggesting cutting back on research, but distributing the research budget effectively. We need some long-term research into cancer cures, but not at the cost of the lives of people who can be saved today or in the very near future.
Surely at some point it makes sense to cut your losses and redirect funding to research on other diseases. It's just an ROI calculation.
For other diseases - malaria, dengue, hepatitis, typhoid etc., not to mention malnutrition - global spending is massively disporportionate in favour of cancer.