Government funded basic research gives birth to new industries and jobs.  Shortchanging it is akin to not eating while you are pregnant to save money for the baby’s future. Nevertheless, our nation’s growing (and repeated) budget crisis is short changing research and its long term economic cost is perhaps nowhere so clear as is it in research advancing health. The Atlantic Meets The Pacific, an annual event of The Atlantic Magazine and University of California San Diego (UCSD), gave testimony to the high return to innovation and the urgent need for more of the same. Sadly, many speakers coupled their comments about discoveries with growing fear that the lack of reliable funding will harm our ability to push the boundaries of medicine forward. One medical frontier is cancer, a disease that will afflict one in four of us and poses a demographic time…