Science Quote by Paul D. Boyer

Boyer’s sentence is doing more than praising science; it’s quietly lobbying for a moral contract between the public and the laboratory. By choosing “basic research” over the flashier “cure,” he insists that the unglamorous work of understanding how cells function is the true upstream source of medical revolutions. The phrasing rejects the consumer fantasy that breakthroughs arrive on schedule if we simply “fund cancer research” in the abstract. He’s narrowing the target: fund curiosity, mechanisms, and long timelines, or keep paying in funerals.

The most effective move is generational. “My great grandchildren” stretches the horizon past election cycles, quarterly earnings, and even his own lifetime. It’s a scientist’s way of admitting what grant proposals often disguise: real progress is slow, cumulative, and frequently delivered by people who won’t be alive to claim it. That personal stake also softens the technocratic argument. Instead of GDP or national prestige, the metric is “the agony” of bereavement, a word that drags cancer out of statistics and back into kitchens, hospital corridors, and phone calls at night.

Context matters: Boyer, a Nobel-winning biochemist, came of age when molecular biology and enzymology transformed medicine by explaining life at the smallest scales. His career embodied the thesis that today’s obscure pathway is tomorrow’s therapy. The subtext is a warning against austerity and impatience: starve foundational science, and you don’t just slow discovery - you mortgage future families to familiar grief.