> Suddenly everyone is a poet, inclined to the morbid.

This is an equally eye-roll inducing over-generalization. Death is a profound topic to many people - the contemporary considerations of immortality may bring what you see as the superficiality of death, to light, for others. That's nothing to snub your nose at. While some may actually take immortality literally, for many people it is better thought of as a metaphor.

I would suppose that at the point we understand biology well enough to beat aging and death, overcoming the "ratchet" DNA degeneration mentioned in the article will be pretty trivial.

Haha, yeah, let's treat and prevent all the conditions that cause us to die, except all the conditions that cause us to die.

Cancer research is well into the realm of diminishing returns. Far more lives could be saved if the money were spent on things such as malaria prevention and potable water in the developing world.

8.2 million cancer related deaths in 2012:

http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs297/en/

627,000 malaria related deaths in 2012:

http://www.who.int/gho/malaria/epidemic/deaths/en/

Lack of potable water is a harder one to pin down for things other than childhood mortality, but probably in the low millions per year:

http://www.cdc.gov/healthywater/global/wash_statistics.html

Further, cancer research is far from being in the realm of diminishing returns. The next generation of targeted treatments such as immunotherapies, chimeric antigen related approaches, engineered viruses, etc, that work for many different varieties of cancer will be far more effective than today's staples of chemotherapy and radiation therapy.

Not to be callous, but diminishing returns for whom? Hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, medical science, or humanity? Who is to say that research for cancer couldn't lead to breakthroughs in other important areas. Saying we shouldn't pursue X because you could do Y better strikes a bit hollow. Why do we explore space? We could spend that money on impoverished children.[0]

The fact is, people just aren't that inclined to give a damn about some kids wallowing in a third-world country as they are their dying grandmother, father, or child. There is nothing wrong with that. Human suffering is human suffering.

[0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8917045

The reason there is malaria and potable water shortages in the developing world is that no one gives a shit, and cutting funding for cancer research isn't going to change that. There is absolutely no reason not to do both.

Also, disagree that cancer research is "well into the realm of diminishing returns". Seems quite fruitful to me.

We (in the west) have spent a lot of money doing that already. The local governments should take care of that anyway.