Government funding for basic research remains essential certainly in the case of cancer research.

FORBES: How We Can Pick Up The Pace In The Race To Cure Cancer

When the director of basic sciences at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Centre in Seattle received a call at half past two in the morning from a Swedish professor, he assumed the caller was looking for a job.

ECONOMIST: The Nobel prizes

With good epidemiology and good basic research, we've identified a cancer-causing agent, and it's called tobacco.

CNN: Debaters Agree Cancer War Should Stress Prevention

This has been the problem with the war on cancer all along, is that we've mainly been supporting basic biology research and while that's fine and good for biology, what we really need is an aggressive campaign against the causes of cancer, against things like tobacco, against things like asbestos.

CNN: Debaters Agree Cancer War Should Stress Prevention

But we're not going to reduce the deficit by gutting education investments, gutting investments that we make in our infrastructure, gutting our investments in basic science and research that can lead to discoveries in clean energy or lead to discoveries in curing cancer.

WHITEHOUSE: The White House