But CERN is funded by tax payers money, most other medical research is funded by charities or medical/drugs companies looking to turn a (huge) profit. Anywho, I'm not picking on CERN in particular, more using it as an example of where I believe money could be better spent.
Governments across the world spend trillions funding all sorts of things which are neither use nor ornament to mankind when people go hungry in the streets. Me ranting on here about CERN isn't going to change that, it's also not going to stop the billions spent on space missions by China and India (and other countries where people have to use food banks or live in cardboard boxes in the pissing rain and snow) or finding new ways to kill people by the "defence" industry.
Something as simple as providing fresh water and sewage systems in the third world is a real world problem but we in the UK get our knickers in a twist about the amount of money put into the foreign aid budget. Let's shelve HS2 and the replacement for Trident and put this money in to the UK aid budget.
I shall now get down off my soap box and apologise for having taken this thread wildly off topic.