It's difficult to overstate just how menial, fiddly, difficult, risky, time consuming and unclearly profitable foundational biomedical research is. A research project could easily take 4-5 years, have a 5% likelihood of success, and have no clear monetizability, yet end up being a groundbreaking foundational result and necessary to investigate.
In other fields, either there's some tangible hope of profit down the road, or at least you can attract talent and prestige. Not so much here.
In other fields, either there's some tangible hope of profit down the road, or at least you can attract talent and prestige. Not so much here.