You can have it both ways.
You can fund stem cell research in the corporations and universities at the same time that you do not provide insane tax breaks to the industry and you do not design major entitlement programs to provide the industry with windfall profits, and you do not fund pounds of earmarks bought and paid for by that industry.
And while I am at it, you can fight terrorism and not trash the constitution, not resort to torture, not secretly dismantle checks on executive power.
Maybe what we are talking about is a lack of imagination. People who can only conceive of one way of doing things.