Is breast cancer on the decline?
The short answer is yes – in some ways and depending on what measure you look at.
Long answer? Breast cancer deaths are generally declining (except for among women of African ancestry), but diagnosis rates (incidence) aren’t clearly going down and in some groups are rising.
Now a new wrench has been thrown in the works which could complicate matters even further: a fight over breast cancer research grants.
Trump says no. Congress says yes.
Federal cancer research funding faces an unstable future, as President Trump has proposed cutting the National Institutes of Health budget by nearly 40% in fiscal year 2026.
The White House also cut into the hopes of researchers like Joan Brugge who runs the cancer lab at Harvard. When the university decided to push back on President Trump's concerns of the school's handling of antisemitism concerns, the National Cancer Institute froze her $7 million grant.
That's one side of the coin.
The other side is in the chambers of Congress. The Senate and House Appropriations Committees recently floated a compromise bill that would raise the NIH's budget some $415 million than last year.
While Congress and the President duke it out, ongoing research like Brugge's is being swept into the dustpan.
Out the door has gone more than a third of Brugge's lab employees in addition to fellowships its lab members had acquired. Add to that, Brugge was prevented from applying for renewal during the freeze and she missed the deadline, meaning her funding goes away in August.
What does this mean for you?
In KFF's coverage of the situation, WBUR's Martha Bebinger reports that there are those advocates such as American Cancer Society policy director Mark Fleury is not giving up on proving the value of breast cancer research.
If he were invited to the White House, Fleury's sermon would be pretty simple: that U.S. cancer death rates have fallen 34% since the early 1990s, a decline driven in part by advances made possible through federally funded research.
Still, Fleury says the work is far from finished.
“There are still cancer types that are fairly lethal, and there are still populations of people for whom their experience of cancer is vastly different from other groups,” Fleury said.
The impact isn't exactly rosy
How does impact senior women? According to Congressional Budget Office projections, a 10% reduction in the National Institutes of Health budget could eventually mean:
- Two fewer new cancer drugs or treatments each year
- Delays in generic drug options and new uses for existing drugs
- Immediate delays in new drug approvals
And, further downhill, Brugge is not betting on things ever returning to normal for the research her lab was doing.
“There’ll always be, now, this existential threat to the research,” Brugge told Bebinger.
“I will definitely be concerned because we don’t know what’s going to happen in the future that might trigger a similar kind of action.”
Disclaimer: This article is for general information and educational purposes only. It is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Breast cancer risks, screening recommendations, and treatment options vary by individual.
Readers should consult a qualified healthcare provider with questions about their personal health or medical care. Policy discussions and funding proposals described here reflect reporting available at the time of publication and may change as legislative decisions evolve.
Sources include:
KFF: https://kffhealthnews.org/news/article/nih-grant-freeze-breast-cancer-research-slowed-harvard-lab/
CBO Letter (July 18, 2025): https://www.budget.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/cbo_fda_nih_letter_071825.pdf
Underlying Data Sources (Cited in Footnote 12 of the CBO Letter) These links contain the raw data used to compare the volume of new drugs (50) vs. new uses (144) vs. generics (720):
• For New Drug Counts (50 approvals): FDA, “Novel Drug Approvals for 2024” https://tinyurl.com/4ena4kfs
• For New Uses/Supplemental Counts (144 approvals): FDA, “Drugs@FDA Data Files” https://tinyurl.com/3kmj9ekr
• For Generic/Abbreviated Counts (720 approvals): FDA, “Drugs@FDA: FDA-Approved Drugs” www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cder/daf
