Primary Prevention? Where is the cure?

I read 2 bios of women with advanced breast cancers, beating the odds with one living 20 years after stage IV dx, the other living 8 years after liver mets.   In both, their doctor at one point or other encouraged them with variations of "hang around, in a few years there might be cure".

Sadly both of them passed away without seeing the cure.    I just went through the same chemos/therapies they went through,.   For certain subset of stage IV BC patients (triple negative, luminal B), life expectancy has not significantly increased in 30 years. Many of these patients are young with younger children.   One of them on mother's day board quoted her 9 year old daughter saying "thanks mom for not dying".   Then there are story of Kate Greene, died of triple negative breast cancer, doctor gave her 18 months life expectancy, she got 18 days.

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/woman/4163841/Mums-List-Cancer-victims-moving-list-of-rules-for-her-sons-is-a-book-sensation.html

18 months prognosis, 18 days survival, these are the tragic reality of metastatic breast cancer.     So I understand stageIVer's frustration.    30 years, millions died, hundreds of billions of dollars spent, what have we got for a cure?   Just all those unnecessary mammograms that silently failed to detect most aggressive cancers in younger denser breasts?  "Primary prevention", is at best an interesting sidetrack, at worst is an expensive distraction.

In the same 30 years, AIDS has gone from a mystery 1-year death sentence, to become a chronic disease where patients can expect to survive near the normal life span.     That is not a cure, but close enough that every metastatic breast cancer patient would gladly swap her disease for AIDS.    There have been progress for MBC, but not enough.    Research dollars for MBC are small percentages of overall breast cancer fund raises, and there are so many exciting new directions that are not been explored at full speed.

Truth is, all breast cancer patients are stage IV.   The interest of every breast cancer patients are the same as the interest of metastatic patients, which is to find the cure.   It's important that early stage breast cancer patients not to be complacent of their "survivorship", but align their interest with the metastatic patients in support.