Fewer people died of cancer in America in 2004, the second year in a row that the death rate for the disease has dropped, the American Cancer Society reported.

The back-to-back declines show the earlier decrease wasn’t an aberration, officials said. In 2003, the society recorded the first decline since it began tracking death rates 70 years ago, with 369 fewer deaths than in 2002. More than 3,000 fewer people died in 2004, the society said in a statement yesterday.

Cancer is the second-most common cause of death in Americans after heart disease. The report, gleaned from the latest American government data available, recorded declines for the most common cancers in men and women: lung, breast, prostate, and colorectal. President Bush credited the declining cancer deaths to increased funding for research over the past several years.

“These are tangible results as a result of the research that takes place around the country,” said Mr. Bush, attending a roundtable discussion with cancer experts at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. “We’re spending about $28.6 billion here at the NIH, which was doubled from 15 years ago.”

About 1.44 million Americans will be diagnosed with cancer in 2007, the cancer society estimated. Nearly 560,000 will die this year, or about 1,500 deaths each day, the society said.

“This second consecutive drop in the number of actual cancer deaths, much steeper than the first, shows last year’s historic drop was no fluke,” said John Seffrin, chief executive officer of the American Cancer Society.

A decline in smoking, improved cancer screening, detection and treatment are boosting survival, said Elizabeth Ward, director of surveillance research for the American Cancer Society and one of the report’s authors.

Mammograms are detecting breast cancer at an early stage when treatment can be more effective. Doctors, using colonoscopy and other screening techniques, are finding and removing colorectal polyps before they become cancerous. Colorectal cancers had the biggest drop in the report.

“It really is a combination of research and taking public health actions to translate research into changes in medical practice,” Ms. Ward said in a telephone interview yesterday. ‘It’s also funding for public health programs, for tobacco control programs and for programs to allow people without health insurance to have access to screening.”

Lung cancer is still the top cancer killer in both men and women. About 30% of cancer deaths in America are caused by smoking, and thus preventable, the report said. In women, lung cancer is expected to cause 70,880 deaths and breast cancer 40,460 deaths this year.

About one-third of the 559,650 cancer deaths expected to occur this year will be related to obesity, physical inactivity and poor nutrition.

The NIH estimates direct medical costs for cancer last year were $78.2 billion.

Details about the declining death rates are contained in the Cancer Statistics 2007 booklet, which appears in the January/February edition of CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians.