Day 1,085: Trump wants credit for cancer death rate dropping for 26th straight year
American Cancer Society: uhh, no.
The U.S. cancer death rate dropped from 2016 to 2017, the most recent available data, according to an American Cancer Society report. The cancer death rate has now fallen every year since 1991, a streak of 26 straight years.
The author of the report, Rebecca Siegel, noted that the biggest reason for the continued drop is a reduction in people smoking and better treatment for lung cancer, the leading cause of cancer death.
“The biggest driver is the reductions in smoking, but also contributing are improvements in treatment as well as early detection for some cancers, like breast and colorectal cancer,” she said. “It was exciting that we’re seeing that decline continue because for other leading causes of death like heart disease and cerebrovascular disease progress is really slowing and in fact death rates have stabilized for cerebrovascular disease,” or stroke.
Yet according to Donald Trump, Donald Trump is the biggest reason for the reduction in cancer-related deaths.
Trump is a science skeptic, has expressed doubt about the efficacy and safety of vaccines on a number of occasions and actively tried to strip health insurance from millions of Americans. The last person that deserves credit for a two-decade-plus trend continuing is Trump. That’s especially true since the data was from Trump’s first year in office when everything from policies to public funding was still the result of Barack Obama’s pen.
Gary Reedy, the American Cancer Society’s CEO sharply rebuked Trump’s claim, saying Trump’s administration had zero impact on the newest data.
“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.”
Thursday’s claim marks yet another sad obsession for Trump with taking credit for something that he clearly had nothing to do with.
1,085 days in, 377 to go
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