ARTICLES

Is the Sun Really Responsible for Skin Cancer?

I remember about 20 years ago, all the commercials were praising Coppertone for helping to get sun tan. Now we have gone in another extreme: sun all of a sudden has become an enemy and we all need protection, otherwise we get skin cancer. People are spending billions on buying sun blockers. Let us see, what is the evidence that sun causes skin cancer. As usual, there are some statistics to support it: Southern states have more cases than Northern, white people more often have skin cancer than blacks.

On the other hand, skin cancer often appears on the parts of body, which are never exposed to sun. Less than 10,000 people die from skin cancer in US each year. To place this in proper perspective, people in United States are 10 times more likely to be killed in a hospital due to a medical error or twice as likely to be shot to death by a gun. People are now spending billions on the so-called sun-blockers, trying to save themselves from something, which does not threaten them at all: out of 300 sun-baders, 299 never get skin cancer.

If the sun was really responsible for skin cancer, should not the number be much greater? Last, but not least: if sun were the cause of skin cancer, introduction of sun-blockers would have significantly reduced the cases of skin cancer. It did not.