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Years ago, I read a news story about a guy who owned a fleet of cement-mixer trucks that supplied concrete for road construction in his area. He was also active in community affairs and won all sorts of citizenship awards. Then some financial analyst noticed that the community devoted an unusually large proportion of its budget to roadwork. It turned out that the man routinely overloaded his trucks. The trucks cracked the roads they traveled on, which guaranteed his company a steady stream of business. An elegant scam.
I think about that guy every spring when the Skin Cancer Foundation (SCF) makes its annual appeal to the public to use sunscreen. As people heed their warning this year, few will remember the report that made headlines in February. According to a survey of new research by epidemiologist Marianne Berwick of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, there is no evidence that sunscreen offers any real protection against malignant melanoma, the most dangerous form of skin cancer. "It's not safe to rely on sunscreen," Berwick told the press.
The SCF promptly refuted her findings in a press release, telling consumers that "sunscreen should continue to be an integral part of a comprehensive program" to prevent melanoma. That's what most people will likely hear from their dermatologists as well. What they won't learn is that dermatologists get much of their information from the SCF, and the SCF, in turn, is heavily supported by the sunscreen industry. (A sunscreen manufacturer even funded SCF's quarterly consumer publication, "Sun and Skin News.") No wonder the foundation doesn't give much credence to the growing number of studies showing that even so-called broad-spectrum sunscreen doesn't prevent melanoma. Like the road-destroying trucks that guaranteed work for the concrete company, rising melanoma rates scare people into using more sunscreen.

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Jeff