More progress at a higher price.

The article focuses on the expensive proposition of new lines of research projects of industrial and university laboratories in the U.S. It states that the budget of the U.S. government for research and development (R&D) has doubled from 27 billion dollars in 1970 to 50 billion dollars by 1980. It mentions that the laboratories aim to develop perfect vaccines to prevent several types of cancer in humans and experimental devices that could harness the power of atomic fusion.