President Donald Trump insinuated in a tweet on Thursday that his administration played a role in the US cancer death rate hitting a record low in 2017. The American Cancer Society says that's not true.
Trump's tweet appeared to be referring to the findings of an American Cancer Society report released on Wednesday, which said the rate of people dying from cancer in the United States declined in 2017 for the 26th year in a row. Trump took office in January 2017.
Trump's tweet on Thursday said, "U.S. Cancer Death Rate Lowest In Recorded History! A lot of good news coming out of this Administration."
Gary M. Reedy, chief executive officer of the American Cancer Society and American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, told CNN that the 2017 findings are not connected to the actions of the Trump administration.
"The mortality trends reflected in our current report, including the largest drop in overall cancer mortality ever recorded from 2016 to 2017, reflect prevention, early detection, and treatment advances that occurred in prior years," Reedy said in a written statement on Thursday.
"Since taking office, the president has signed multiple spending bills that have included increases in funding for cancer research at the National Institutes of Health and National Cancer Institute -- though the impact of those increases are not reflected in the data contained in this report," he said.
"The administration has an opportunity to significantly impact future declines in both cancer incidence and mortality by increasing access to comprehensive health care, supporting robust and sustained increases in federal funding for cancer research and passing and implementing evidence-based tobacco control policies."
The President has a history of proposing to cut funding from the National Institutes of Health's budget, which includes funding for the National Cancer Institute, an agency that leads, conducts and supports cancer research. The final budgets that Congress approved ended up being more generous than Trump's proposals.
Florida Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz wrote on Twitter, in response to Trump, that "cancer rates dropped before you took office. Hopefully they keep dropping because Congress rejected your cruel research budgets, which sought billions in CUTS to @NIH and the National Cancer Institute. This is good news despite you - not because of you."
*Excerpts shared from CNN by Jacqueline Howard and Daniel Dale.
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