NIH Funding and Breast Cancer Survival Rates

Everyone keeps saying that when calling a Congress members we should tell them personal stories of how the DOGE/Trump cuts will affect us.

As a person insulated by a lot of privileges, I never feel as though I have anything personal to say. But then I saw this*:

I haven't mentioned this on the blog because I don't talk about my personal life here, but I was diagnosed with breast cancer last summer, and have been in various kinds of treatment since then, and going forward. I won't go into the details but I know that without the research that's been done over the past decades, it's unlikely I would be one of the ones who survives. 

It's still possible I might not be one of the ones who survives long-term, but I like my odds much better, given all of the research that was done. Even since 1990, major improvements have been made in survival rates — and I also know improvements have been made in decreasing the side effects of treatment. 

And cuts are also pending to Medicaid (and Medicare?) coverage, and probably the ACA as well, which means that even if treatments exist, people won't be able to afford them, and they'll die when they should have survived.

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* There are no sources provided for that graphic, so I tried to track them down.

Overall, the percentages appear to be five-year survival rates. The 1920 and 1960 numbers are verified on PubMed here.

I couldn't find a site that provided that specific range of 64–80% for 1990, but I did find a number of sites that said there were significant improvements in survival rates between the 1960s and 1990 (including the widespread introduction of radiation as a treatment), and then another big improvement after 1990, leading to the current survival rate.

The current 91% figure is given by the American Cancer Society here, and on a number of other sites.