Exactly... after all, those rings could just make it easier to grip, etc.

The pay wall model for journals is what allows them to afford their rigorous peer review process, which is critical to science. Plus all research papers resulting from research funded by the National Institutes of Health end up posted for free -- we Americans paid for that research, after all. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/

More to the point, why would the most intelligent beings on Earth (mice) allow us to give them cancer?

How do you figure that money pays for research? The insurance company / hospital is plowing all their profit into research, you figure? I somehow doubt that. If contributing to research is your primary motive, just donate it to a research grant organization directly.

Exactly. And there's also the factor of leaving your entire family in insurmountable debt and poverty. It's not about putting a price on a life, it's about comparing the sick person (or family's) two priorities: keep living no matter what, vs. ruining their family's lives for many years even after death. Yes, OP, it's disgustingly tragic -- but so is the alternative, in extreme cases like this. Such is the way of things in a resource-limited life. (resources = health care and money.) Arguably, spending every last cent of your family's money on your own health care is the economic (and moral?) equivalent of ditching your penniless spouse and family. Of course in reality, we aren't often presented with such an extreme case, and hindsight is always 20/20.