Actually, I DO have qudrapalegic CP, and that goes a long way to explaining why I feel this way. I'm all for researching disease mechanicisms, infectious diseases, chronic, progressive diseases, etc., but to pour money into restoring people's ability to walk... why? WHY is walking that important? (Seriously, I'm asking). Schizophrenia? That's horribly debilitating, yes, and should be researched and researched well. Same thing with MDD, bipolar, eating d/o's, etc. Those truly can heavily impair a person's life or even lead to death directly (AN and BN) or indirectly (suicide). Ditto with severe CP (the type that is at extremely high risk for aspiration, for example). Or really most any disease/chronic condition, even if it doesn't kill you (though I'd still say funding for a cure for cancer should probably come above funding for a cure for the common cold).
It's funding to do things like restore people's ability to walk that I have an issue supporting. Would it be nice to have full control over my limbs, full spatial abilities, balance, ability to walk, normal speech, etc.? Yeah. But I could never in good conscious say we should be putting research dollars into that when we could be investigating promising new cancer therapies, creating more effective, less side effect prone SSRI's and antipsychotics, looking into the molecular structure of avian flu, developing better treatment for Crohn's or diabetes, etc.
And yes, I'm aware that people w/ CP have higher morality rates. Much of that is agruably due to lack of health care/insurance (lack of employment contributes to this), issues with transportation, issues with accessible medical equipment. The rate of breast cancer deathes for people with CP is manyfold higher than it is for the population at large, for example, likely due to the fact that people with CP tend to lack access (both financial and physical) to early detection screenings (though I once read a chilling article that suggested a link between CP and brain tumors

based on the higher than average rates of occurence). This could be combatted much more quickly and effectively, imo, through healthcare reform than through attempts to cure CP (exception made for very severe CP).