HEALTH NEWS

Don't let the phoney melanoma scare keep you out of the sun
There are many good reasons why we won't – and shouldn't – give up our tan

Sam Shuster The Guardian, Wednesday 21 July 2010

Kira Cochrane asks "why can't we give up the tan?" (Going for the burn, G2, 7 July). The answer is simple: we are not convinced that the alleged harm outweighs the obvious benefits, and we dislike the bullying, fear-mongering campaign against sun exposure.


Skin cancer statistics are used to scare, not educate. Almost all of the 84,000 skin "cancers" that appear each year are in fact benign: they don't spread or kill; their cancerous name is a historical misnomer. Of course, sun exposure increases facial wrinkling, as does smoking, but the black ace in the fear game is melanoma, because the real thing is vicious.


As the article tells us, Cancer Research UK say the incidence of malignant melanoma has "quadrupled in Britain in the last 30 years". But if this were so we would have seen coffin-loads of consequences by now. We haven't, and in a recently published large UK study (British Journal of Dermatology, 2009), I and my colleagues showed that the reason mortality has not increased with incidence is that the tumours reported are actually benign; they are not true malignant melanomas. Our explanation of the phoney melanoma epidemic is "diagnostic drift which classifies benign lesions as … melanoma", a misdiagnosis "driven by defensive medicine, an unsurprising response to its commercialisation".


The recategorisation by the International Agency for Research on Cancer that Cochrane quotes, which gives sunbeds "the same high risk … as cigarettes and asbestos", is absurd. The field is an unreliable mess of conflicting conclusions, and the claim of a special risk for younger people, which the article repeats, is now denied. But critically, since we now know incidence is invalidated by classifying benign disease as malignant, until diagnosis is improved only studies of melanoma mortality are acceptable; and the few that have been done show that melanoma mortality actually decreases after UV exposure!


The poor relationship of melanoma to cumulative UV dose had solarphobics running for cover in the idea the article quotes, that a one-off sunburn "could develop into a melanoma". But that doesn't happen: unlike the benign tumours that really are caused by UV, melanomas do not predominate in sun-exposed skin. There are commonsense reasons to avoid sunburn, and for use of sunscreens – but not, as Cochrane implies, to prevent melanoma, for which they have been shown to be ineffective.


Cochrane wonders why "we still associate tanned skin with good health", but there are many good reasons. Although the medical uses that gained Niels Ryberg Finsen a Nobel prize have long past, there are newer uses in photo-chemotherapy, dermatology and psychiatry.


Self-image is measurably increased by a tan, and we will learn much from understanding the mechanism of this wellbeing. UV initiates the synthesis of vitamin D, essential for our bones, and sunscreen promotion has led to problems. It also has a profound effect on our immune function. Strangely, the bastard science of descriptive epidemiology that masterminded the melanoma myth now claims that UV lowers the incidence of many internal cancers and melanoma, thereby outweighing any harmful effects.


Plants and animals owe their existence to the sun, and it is hardly surprising that we've learned to adapt and use it. That's why we can't give up our tan, and more importantly why we shouldn't try.

MUST READ: THE FLU/VACCINE SCAM

Pulling back the curtain
on swine flu.. From the "DAILY DOSE"

"Looks like the swine flu "crisis" has finally unraveled -- just as I've warned right from the start. A leading European health official is now pushing for an investigation into the so-called pandemic -- and the desperate push to line Big Pharma pockets at your expense.

Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg, health chief at the Council of Europe, put it best when he told the European press, "We have had a mild flu -- and a false pandemic." His resolution calling for the investigation passed the Council, setting the stage for an emergency debate. It seems they've finally realized that the real emergency isn't the flu -- it's the lies we've been told about it, and the dangerous vaccines forced on millions based on those filthy falsehoods.

The good doctor -- turns out there are still a few of us left -- is even calling the non-pandemic "one of the greatest medical scandals of the century." We're only a decade into this century -- we've still got 90 years to see what else Big Pharma has up its sleeve! But already, this one's been a doozy. It'll be hard to top Vioxx in terms of death and destruction... but as far as swindles go, swine flu takes the prize. Around the world, supposedly concerned and impartial health "experts" all predicted terrifying (and ultimately nonexistent) consequences from the swine flu... and many of them just so happened to have financial ties to Big Pharma.

Maybe that's why the World Health Organization was so quick to change its definition of "pandemic" to make swine flu fit the bill. These same experts are now warning of a swine flu "third wave" and urging more people to submit to the needle. Listen closely and you might hear them laughing as they count their money. Give it a rest already, guys. This con job's over."

William Campbell Douglass II, M.D.

More:
http://www.naturalnews.com:80/027984_swine_flu_vaccines.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1K74Tnrrok

http://www.wanttoknow.info/healthmediaarticles

http://www.wanttoknow.info/a-swine-flu-fear-mongering