Congresswoman Kelly (Illinois’s 2nd congressional district) has tweeted a message seeking to correct the record on President Trump’s attempt to claim credit for the declining number of U.S. cancer deaths. This was in response to the news that the cancer death rate in the U.S. has fallen 2.2 percent between 2016 to 2017. The data, released in January 2020, represents the largest single-year decline in cancer mortality ever reported. This is based on American Cancer Society figures and published in the journal CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians (see “Cancer statistics, 2020”).
As the New York Times explains, medics have connected the decline with the cancer death rate to a lowering of smoking rates and also to advances in lung cancer treatment. With this, there have been new therapies for melanoma of the skin and to address cancer that has spread to other parts of the body. The new report also notes that progress is not even across the board, with a slowing for death reduction in relation to colorectal, breast and prostate cancers.
The dispute between Trump and Kelly began with President Trump tweeting: “U.S. Cancer Death Rate Lowest In Recorded History! A lot of good news coming out of this Administration” 9as tweet which has received over 100,000 ‘likes’).
In response, Robin Kelly has tweeted: “Please! Your most recent budget tried to cut nearly $900 million from @theNCI. This reduction is cancer death is 100% the result of the Affordable Care Act; stop claiming credit for President Obama’s achievements! #ACAWorks” (a tweet that has at the time of writing, received only 15 ‘likes’, with the difference between Kelly’s and Trump’s social media interactions highlighting the relative power of social media irrespective of the relative accuracy).
Robin Kelly goes on, through further messages, to argue that President Trump’s most recent budget sought to bleed millions from the U.S. health institutions CDC, NIH and NCI. Second, many reports link the declining U.S. cancer death rate to the success of the Obama Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (often abbreviated to ACA).
Kelly expresses concern that despite these clear successes, President Trump consistently attempts to repeal, defund or limit the ACA and the progress it has generated.
