If breast cancer is a more serious disease than prostate cancer, it does make sense to spend more on the former.
(Assuming that the number of breast cancer deaths equals the number of breast cancer cases times exp(-(federal funding for breast cancer research)/k) and likewise for prostate cancer disease, the constant k is $529M for breast cancer and $204M for prostate cancer, and the allocation of $1.262bn among these two diseases that minimizes the total number of deaths is about $765M for breast cancer and $497M for prostate cancer, resulting in about 68,200 combined deaths compared to the actual 71,890, so the actual allocation is at least in the right ballpark.)
If breast cancer is a more serious disease than prostate cancer, it does make sense to spend more on the former.
(Assuming that the number of breast cancer deaths equals the number of breast cancer cases times exp(-(federal funding for breast cancer research)/k) and likewise for prostate cancer disease, the constant k is $529M for breast cancer and $204M for prostate cancer, and the allocation of $1.262bn among these two diseases that minimizes the total number of deaths is about $765M for breast cancer and $497M for prostate cancer, resulting in about 68,200 combined deaths compared to the actual 71,890, so the actual allocation is at least in the right ballpark.)