The year 2021 marks the 50th anniversary of the National Cancer Act of 1971, which designated defeating cancer a national priority and allocated substantial resources to the National Cancer Institute, including a budget bypassing congressional approval.1 Subsequently, the National Cancer Institute’s annual budget increased 25-fold, from $227 million in 1971 to $1 billion in 1980 and $6.01 billion in 2019, a total of $137.8 billion. In this cohort study, we compared contemporary cancer mortality with that in 1971.