President Donald Trump appeared to claim credit today for a record drop in cancer death rates that occurred the year he took office. Scientists say lower smoking rates, earlier detection and better drugs are responsible for a steady decline in cancer deaths since 1991.

The president, who unsuccessfully advocated cutting $4.5 billion from the NIH budget last year, tweeted that U.S. cancer death rates are the lowest in recorded history, adding there is “a lot of good news coming out of this Administration.”


The U.S. cancer death rate dropped 2.2 percent in 2017 compared with 2016, a record decline that was part of a 29 percent overall drop in the cancer death rate since 1991, the American Cancer Society reported Wednesday. That translates to about 3 million fewer cancer deaths in the past three decades.