Your argument is honorable. I personally don't think exclusion of research or delaying advancement in human knowledge until poverty is conquered will improve the plight of humankind. I think it would have the opposite effect. If the priority is ending poverty, the path to that end is much more complicated than money. We have to change base human instincts bred into us from millions of years of tribe survival thinking. We have to remove war/greed thinking from science, replace survival thinking based on the individual with survival of the human race and the planet. We have to change the politics of money and greed with the politics of humanity.
And how is that accomplished? Education, instill wonder, exercise life and the expansion of human possibities, dwell on going beyond the worst of our nature and embrace the future. If we don't change our thinking, our politics, our relationship to the planet we will never end poverty.
Money fixes nothing, it exaserbates the problem. But if that is the only physical means available, we have to use it to break the 'cause' of poverty or poverty itself remains self perpetuating.
If I were to choose the top priority it would be education in its broadest sense.
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