The marketing and amount of money being made out of false information regarding sunlight and sunscreens has been a thorn in in my flesh for quite some time. So, here goes:-
The World Health Organization reported in 2021 that since 2017 only 12 new antibiotics have been approved, 10 of which belong to existing classes with established mechanisms of antimicrobial resistance. In other words, only 2 new ones.
Barriers to development of new products include the lengthy pathway to approval, high cost and low success rates. It can take up to 15 years to progress a new antibiotic from the pre-clinical to the clinical stages.
Therefore pharmaceutical companies are now rather investing into an easier market, where they do not need clinical trials, don’t have to prove that the product works and the profit margin is much higher.
Almost nothing we’ve are being told about skin cancer is the truth. The public is constantly being told to avoid the sun to prevent skin cancer, what they’re not telling us is that sunlight is essential to the human body. By avoiding sunlight, you increase the risk of some cancers. Sunlight is critical for your mental health, triggers the production of Vitamin D and is vital for proper immune system function.
Skin cancers are by far the most commonly diagnosed cancer in sophisticated 1st world countries, so to prevent them, the public is constantly told to avoid the sun. However, skin cancers that are caused by sun exposure are benign ones. Malignant melanoma, which can cause death, is never associated with sunlight, does often appear on areas of the skin that are never exposed to the sun or in organs unrelated to the skin such as the eye. So these 2 are conveniently thrown together to deliberately cause confusion to the lay public. There is big, easy money to be made out of the sale of sunblock creams and body skin scanners.
Sunlight is a problem in so far that it is freely available, safe, and effective. So, nobody has a patent on the sun and can’t make any money from using it. Because of the successful war against sunlight, many people are unaware of its benefits. For example:
Sunlight is critical for mental health. Such as depression (e.g., seasonal affective disorder) and unnatural light exposure destroys your circadian rhythm. For example, every winter many people leave Alaska because they can’t handle the depression that comes with the long sun-less months.
You need a really good justification to avoid sun exposure.
Skin cancer is the most common diagnosed cancer in the United States and Australia.
Basal cell and squamous cell carcinomas are the two most common forms of skin cancer and are highly treatable if detected early and treated properly.
More than 2 people die of skin cancer in the U.S. every hour.
That’s sounds scary and is where the convenient misinformation comes into play. Basal Cell Carcinoma (BCC) is by far the most common type of skin cancer is basal cell carcinoma (comprising 80% of all skin cancers). But, it almost never metastasizes, it is not very dangerous. Most sources say it has a 0% fatality rate.
Squamous Cell Carcinoma (SCC) is the second most common type of skin cancer. It can also be caused by sunlight and can be dangerous, if it is left too long as it does metastasize. But, if it is removed prior to metastasizing, it has a 99% survival rate.
Melanoma comprises 1% of all skin cancer diagnoses and then, just to confuse things further, there are benign as well as malignant melanomas. Malignant melanoma is responsible for most of the deaths from skin cancer.
What’s critically important to understand about melanoma is that while it’s widely “marketed” to be linked to sunlight exposure—it’s not. Research has found using sunscreen either has no effect on the rates of malignant melanoma or increases it, which makes it quite frustrating that governments around the world advise you to wear more of it, especially whenever melanoma rates are rising.
The big pharma scam:-you are not told that the most common “skin cancer” by far, is not dangerous. The “skin cancers” you do need to worry about are only an extremely small portion of skin cancers.
Sunlight exposure does not cause dangerous cancers.
There’s no way to justify “banning sunlight” to “prevent skin cancer,” as the “benefit” from this prescription is vastly outweighed by its harm. Big Pharma plays a very clever linguistic trick to bypasses this contradiction. Intentionally causing confusion by a single label, “skin cancer,” that is used for everything, which then selectively adopts the lethality of melanoma, the frequency of BCC, and the sensitivity to sunlight that BCC and SCC have.
In so doing they demonize the sun, create a massive sales funnel by being allowed to do a massive number of routine full body skin exams (on otherwise healthy individuals). This is not a medical issue; it is a money making ploy.
Given how much money is being spent to end skin cancer, one would expect some results. Unfortunately, like many other aspects of the cancer industry that’s not what’s happened. Instead, more benign “cancers” are being diagnosed, but for the most part, no significant change occurring in the death rate.
Vitamin D deficiency has again become more prevalent in children, and rickets has become a global health issue.
Sunscreen that absorbs UVB, can markedly diminish the production of vitamin D3 by more than 90%.
Vitamin D deficiency is the most common cause of rickets.
In the sunniest areas of the world, rickets is a major health problem. Because of the practice of wearing a burka.
Dark skinned and women who always wear sun protection are often vitamin D deficient. If they provide breast milk to their infant as the sole source of nutrition, the infant will become vitamin D deficient and the infant will inevitably develop rickets.
Neonates who are vitamin D deficient during the first year of life are 2.4-fold more likely to develop type 1 diabetes
Melanoma, one of the most feared cancers because of its ability to rapidly metastasize before it is obvious to either the patient or physician, has been branded as a sun-induced skin cancer. However, most melanomas occur on the least sun-exposed areas, and it has been reported that occupational exposure to sunlight might actually decrease the risk of melanoma.
It is curious that in the 1930s and 1940s, when children were encouraged to be exposed to sunlight and artificial UV radiation to treat rickets, the incidence of skin cancer did not increase. Thus, there needs to be a reevaluation of the beneficial effect of sensible exposure to sunlight as noted by the Australian College of Dermatologists and the Cancer Council of Australia, which recommend a balance between avoiding an increase risk of “skin cancer” and achieving enough UV radiation to maintain adequate vitamin D levels.