Here's an article from Future Pundent in 2006: Cure For Cancer Worth $50 Trillion Just To Americans

The economic pay-off of medical research will be enormous when cures for cancer are developed. A couple of academic researchers claim that  a cure for cancer would have an economic value of $50 trillion for Americans alone . Add in the value of the cure to other industrialized societies that the total value of the cure likely exceeds $100 trillion.

A new study, to be published in a forthcoming issue of the Journal of Political Economy, calculates the prospective gains that could be obtained from further progress against major diseases. Kevin M. Murphy and Robert H. Topel, two University of Chicago researchers, estimate that even modest advancements against major diseases would have a significant impact – a 1 percent reduction in mortality from cancer has a value to Americans of nearly $500 billion. A cure for cancer would be worth about $50 trillion.

"We distinguish two types of health improvements – those that extend life and those that raise the quality of life," explain the authors. "As the population grows, as incomes grow, and as the baby-boom generation approaches the primary ages of disease-related death, the social value of improvements in health will continue to rise."

Many critiques of rising medical expenditures focus on life-extending procedures for persons near death. By breaking down net gains by age and gender, Murphy and Topel show that the value of increased longevity far exceeds rising medical expenditures overall. Gains in life expectancy over the last century were worth about $1.2 million per person to the current population, with the largest gains at birth and young age.

"An analysis of the value of health improvements is a first step toward evaluating the social returns to medical research and health-augmenting innovations," write the authors. "Improvements in life expectancy raise willingness to pay for further health improvements by increasing the value of remaining life."

Murphy and Topel also chart individual values resulting from the permanent reduction in mortality in several major diseases – including heart disease, cancer, and diabetes. Overall, reductions in mortality from 1970 to 2000 had an economic value to the U.S. population of $3.2 trillion per year.

In 2005 the US economy produced  $12.4 trillon worth of goods and services. So the value of a cancer cure equals over 4 years of US economic output.

The enormous economic value of curative treatments for cancer and similar magnitude economic value for cures for other major killers such as stroke and heart disease mean we can get huge the future returns on investment in public spending for basic biomedical research. This means increased biomedical research funding by governments is pretty easy to justify when viewed in economic terms. Yet in order to fund a war, pork, and other wastes  the Bush Administration has sought to cut biomedical research spending in inflation-adjusted terms and even  proposed a freeze in nominal dollar terms (which means that real research spending goes down by the rate at which inflation goes up).

The numbers bandied about above understate the coming return on decades of basic biomedical research. Rejuvenation therapies will lengthen working careers and brain rejuvenation will boost productivity for most years worked. Minds which have both youthful vigor and the knowledge and skills accumulated from decades of work will achieve much greater feats and operate at much higher levels of productivity.

Because the rate of advance of research can not be forecasted accurately I think there's a tendency on the part of policy makers and the public to underestimate the future return on biomedical research and in other forms of research as well. Our accumulating body of knowledge is going to reach a critical mass at some point in the next 50 years where the vast majority of diseases become curable and replacement or rejuvenation of worn aged body parts becomes commonplace. We ought try much harder to make that day come sooner.