Donald Trump took to Twitter on Thursday to take credit for a drop in U.S. cancer rates, and the American Cancer Society quickly corrected him.
Trump’s tweet shared news that the cancer death rate hit a record low in 2017, and appeared to attribute it to the work of his administration.
“U.S. Cancer Death Rate Lowest In Recorded History! A lot of good news coming out of this Administration,” Trump wrote.
But the American Cancer Society released a statement correcting Trump’s statement. The organization’s CEO, Gary M. Reedy, told CNN that while the Trump administration has taken steps to boost cancer research, the drop in cancer rates could not be attributed to his administration and mostly took place before he took office.
“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.”
As CNN noted, the information came from a report showing that the cancer death rates fell “continuously” from 1991 to 2017, with nearly all of the drop coming before Trump took office in January of 2017. The report showed that the most significant decline, a 2.2 percent drop, came at the end of Barack Obama’s second term in office and was caused mostly from a drop in lung cancer rates.
Trump has been frequently criticized for taking credit for accomplishments that took place under Obama. As The Inquisitr noted, Trump has, on 56 occasions, taken credit for signing the Veterans Choice Act, a veterans health care bill signed in 2014 by Obama and co-sponsored by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and late Arizona Sen. John McCain.
Trump has also frequently taken credit for the strong economy and low unemployment rates that many economists believe is an extension of the economic growth started under Obama.
Others criticized Trump this week for taking credit for the drop in cancer rates. Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz wrote on Twitter that the drop in rates came despite Trump’s budget proposals that sought billions of dollars in budget cuts for the National Institutes of Health and the National Cancer Institute.
