Shedding Light on the Melanoma Myth

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Shedding Light on the Melanoma Myth
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Shedding light on the melanoma myth
"Here comes the sun (doodle-de-do), and I say: It's all right..."
-- The Beatles
"Here comes the sun: You'd better run."
--The Modern Medical Establishment
Long have I railed, and loud, about the medical establishment's misguided sun-phobia. And with summer approaching, it won't be long before the lemming-like mainstream media begins their yearly journey to hurl their sunscreen-gooped and parasol-twirling selves off reason's cliff in the name of sensationalism. As always, I'll be there on the edge, offering the truth about sunlight exposure to all who will listen.
But if a recent New York Times article is any indication, I won't be alone this time (like I have been for the last thirty years or so). At least one other doctor - world-renowned dermatologist Bernard Ackerman - will be right there with me. Flying in the face of the "conventional wisdom" that sunlight causes skin cancer, Dr. Ackerman himself vacations without sunscreen - and doesn't even bother to cover his bald head, according to the Times piece.
Founder of the Ackerman Academy of Dermatopathology in New York, Dr. Ackerman has published over 600 research papers on skin diseases and disorders, and was awarded the prestigious Master Award by the American Academy of Dermatology in 2004. He's also spent years studying the so-called correlation between sunlight exposure and melanoma. At the end of it all, he's concluded that the bulk of the widely held assumptions about this relationship are "nonsense."
Among the interesting points he raises about melanoma are the facts that in some groups (Blacks and Asians), melanoma appears most often in places on the body rarely exposed to sunlight - places like the palms, soles of the feet, nails, and mucous membranes. He also attributes the modern "epidemic" of melanoma to the changing definition of what constitutes the cancer, coupled with advancements in medicine's ability to recognize the condition early. In other words, modern doctors are on the lookout for melanoma nowadays, spotting, biopsy-ing, and removing growths that would have been considered benign just a few years ago.
To be clear about it, Ackerman isn't on a crusade to exalt the sun and its benefits (like I am) - he's just a scientist looking at the evidence. According to the Times article, the good doctor claims "If the evidence were compelling, I'd be the first to capitulate."
Which makes his arguments even more convincing, doesn't it?
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California, east
Ah, Maryland.
Called "America in miniature" both because of its extraordinary diversity of topography and life (they've got mountain ranges, flatlands, swamps, sub-arctic bogs, an oceanic coast and the country's largest estuary) and its varied economic and cultural influences, the Old Line State has more history per mile packed into its compact acreage than perhaps any other state.
But with all those people and diversity in such close quarters, Maryland also is home to a bureaucracy of fearsome proportions. And one of the issues in front of that bureaucracy right now is sunscreen - specifically, whether or not to have an official state policy on the use of sunscreen by schoolchildren at recess and phys-ed.
Currently, the policy differs from county to county. Some counties allow kids to possess sunscreen and apply it at their own discretion, while others require the goop to be kept in the school nurse's office and administered only with parental consent. Still others require a doctor's note before sunscreen may be used. It is this last policy that has a fringe group called the Coalition for Skin Cancer Prevention in Maryland up in arms. Apparently, they feel that this kind of policy is needlessly restrictive, and prevents kids from getting the sun protection they "need."
Though I don't live in Maryland and I don't have any kids of school age, I'm also against the "doctor's note" policy - but for different reasons than the cancer-weenies. I'm against it because to require a doctor's note for sunscreen use is to dignify sunscreen as MEDICINE, which it is not. It's a bunch of slick marketing of overpriced slime, and nothing more. For school systems to even HAVE an official policy on sunscreen use is ridiculous (of course, California has one)...
It's like regulating Chap Stick. Utterly meaningless.
Echoing the "Fab Four" when it comes to the sun,
William Campbell Douglass II, MD

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