Skin Cancer

Ah, summertime! Picnics . . . beaches . . . the sun toasting your skin. Alas, those glorious sunbeams are potential killers. For years, doctors have warned that ultraviolet rays cause more cancers than nicotine, pesticides, automotive fumes or any other carcinogen. About 850,000 new cases of skin cancer - about 9,000 of them fatal - are expected this year in the United States alone. Advances in molecular science are revealing how those invisible waves of solar energy - no more than 10-billionths of an inch from crest to crest - create such havoc.

The Great American Smoke-Out encourages cigarette smokers to kick the habit - at least for one day each year in November. Now dermatologists are hoping that Melanoma Monday will encourage Americans to develop a lifelong habit of checking their bodies periodically for the signs of skin cancer, especially the virulent form called melanoma. The American Academy of Dermatology designated the first Monday in May - that's today - as Melanoma Monday. But the personal skin-check should occur periodically throughout the year.

With the summer months creeping up and the sun shining longer each day, the scene is set for the dermatologists' nightmare: skin cancer. Memorial Hospital of Burlington County is meeting the danger head-on. From 3 to 5 p.m. Friday, free skin cancer screenings will be available to the public and will be conducted by staff dermatologist David High. Skin cancer is on the rise and, according to hospital officials, getting tan may have greater consequences than one thinks. Part of the danger with skin cancer is that the effects do not surface until years after the original damage is done, High said.

Gov. Casey, dogged by health problems since taking office in 1987, had a minor skin cancer removed from his chest two weeks ago and will undergo an additional precautionary procedure tomorrow, his office said yesterday. Casey's doctor said that the basal cell cancer, which was less than a quarter-inch long and was the same type of cancer removed from President Reagan's nose in 1985, posed no further health risk to the governor. "These really are a dime a dozen," said Donald Lookingbill, chief of dermatology at Hershey Medical Center, "And they're not a threat to the patient.

Genes responsible for the most common type of cancer in humans have been found, and the discovery could lead to development of a treatment other than surgery or radiation, two international teams of scientists reported. When the gene is damaged by ultraviolet radiation from the sun, it can produce a relatively harmless kind of skin tumor, known as basal cell carcinoma, that afflicts about 750,000 people in the United States each year. Pale-skinned, middle-aged and older people of Northern European ancestry are the most susceptible to these growths, which do not spread to other parts of the body and, if caught in time, are easily removed.

American health officials are launching a nationwide public-education campaign this summer to combat what they say are alarming and unexpectedly rapid increases in the incidence of skin cancer. Health experts are particularly concerned about the skyrocketing rate of malignant melanoma, a deadly form of skin cancer, which has increased 83 percent since 1980. While nobody knows for sure why the rate has soared in recent years, many think that changing American lifestyles that expose more people to the sun are a major factor.

We can blame the French for popularizing the consumption of snails, harboring convicted Philadelphia murderer Ira Einhorn - and increasing the incidence of skin cancer. It was Coco Chanel, the famous French fashion designer, who is credited with popularizing the suntan after being spotted in Cannes in the 1920s, deeply bronzed after a yachting trip from Paris. Before that, it was perfectly acceptable, even preferable, to walk around with a pale complexion. "Until Coco Chanel made the suntan popular, it was considered a sign that you were a working-class laborer who toiled outside in the fields.

A vaccine tested on patients with advanced melanoma has been found to be 70 percent effective in preventing the recurrence of their deadly skin cancer, Philadelphia scientists reported yesterday. The vaccine was made from the patients' own tumors and is the first to show such a high level of success in halting the spread of the disease, the scientists said. "The same approach could be used to develop vaccines against breast, colon and other forms of cancer," said David Berd, a professor of medicine at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, who announced the findings at the annual meeting of the American Association of Cancer Research in San Francisco.

Findings by a team of 10 scientists from the University of Pennsylvania and two other institutions could provide clues to the causes of melanoma and eventually lead to diagnostic tests and treatments for this deadly form of skin cancer. In an article in today's issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, the scientists from Penn, the National Cancer Institute and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced that they had located the gene that causes a deadly form of melanoma on a human chromosome.

Edward Williamson was no sun worshipper. In fact, most of his life he diligently avoided it. "I never saw my father with his shirt off," recalls his daughter Tara Coates. "He didn't enjoy being out in the sun and on the beach. " Adds his son Greg: "He worked indoors all life; his skin was the color of milk. " The one thing that drew him outdoors was golf, a favorite pastime. He wore a hat and covered his arms. The only part of his body that was exposed was the small area of his neck where his golf shirt parted to form a V. And it was there in 2005, when Williamson was 59, that his wife, Adell, noticed a suspicious-looking flat brown patch.

Councilman William Greenlee hopes not to get burnt Thursday when his indoor-tanning bill comes up for a vote. Citing what he called "a preponderance of evidence" that indoor tanning greatly raises one's risk of developing skin cancer, Greenlee has introduced a bill that would restrict minors from using indoor-tanning facilities in Philadelphia without parental permission. The measure would also prohibit those younger than 14 from using commercial tanning beds and other ultraviolet-emitting equipment without a doctor's permission.

The scientist and his companions puttered down winding waterways by boat, and bounced along dirt roads in a Ford Explorer. The longest of more than a dozen such trips into the Malaysian jungle took 10 hours. Only then could the researcher from Penn State College of Medicine ask tribal leaders for the information he sought: Surat warisan manusia . The letter of human inheritance. That was Khai C. Ang's way of explaining the concept of DNA, and it was effective. Hundreds of villagers agreed to give blood samples, and now back in the Hershey, Pa., lab of Ang's supervisor, Keith Cheng, their DNA has begun to yield insight into a weighty trio of subjects: cancer, human migration, and race.

A new campaign by the tanning industry to promote the safety of sunbed use has been attacked by the American Academy of Dermatology as "ridiculous" and unsupported by scientific evidence. The dermatologists blasted the newly formed American Suntanning Association for disputing the medical consensus that tanning indoors raises the risk of skin cancers, such as melanoma, the deadliest kind. The launch last month of the tanning association, made of up to 1,400 salon owners, marks an escalation in the $5 billion industry's campaign to rebut the mounting evidence of the harm from indoor tanning.

As both a science writer and a melanoma survivor, I eagerly attend the annual scientific retreat of the Melanoma Research Alliance, which funds cutting-edge research on the skin cancer. Last year, the first drug targeting a genetic defect that causes melanoma, vemurafenib, came on the market with much fanfare. But at this year's meeting, researchers reported that the drug would not cure most melanoma patients because they eventually develop drug resistance. Much of the research reported at this conference delved into what caused vemurafenib to fail in so many patients, and what new drugs it could be combined with to be more effective.

On June 9, Commerce Secretary John Bryson was hospitalized after his reported involvement in three auto accidents. Although details were not disclosed, the White House confirmed that he had a seizure. On July 30, 2007, Chief Justice John Roberts collapsed on a boat dock at his Maine summer home. Although that seizure was Roberts' second, he offered little explanation. When Time magazine asked "Does Justice Roberts Have Epilepsy?" Roberts didn't answer, and he hasn't in five years.

Edward Williamson was no sun worshipper. In fact, most of his life he diligently avoided it. "I never saw my father with his shirt off," recalls his daughter Tara Coates. "He didn't enjoy being out in the sun and on the beach. " Adds his son Greg: "He worked indoors all life; his skin was the color of milk. " The one thing that drew him outdoors was golf, a favorite pastime. He wore a hat and covered his arms. The only part of his body that was exposed was the small area of his neck where his golf shirt parted to form a V. And it was there in 2005, when Williamson was 59, that his wife, Adell, noticed a suspicious-looking flat brown patch.

Sunscreens should be used regularly by people of all ages to prevent skin cancer, including the most dangerous form of cancer linked to sunburns: melanoma. However, a new study shows that kids are really bad about using sunscreen consistently. Researchers studied fifth-grade children in Massachusetts in 2004 and then resurveyed the same 360 children three years later. In the first survey, more than half of the kids said they had experienced at least one sunburn, and this rate did not change three years later.

Eliminates wrinkles. Removes blemishes. Reduces pore size. Reverses the effects of aging. These are just a sampling of claims in an overwhelming market of skin-care products. Sound too good to be true? Usually, it is. In most cases, the benefits have not been adequately tested, and the claims may be greatly exaggerated, since cosmetics do not go through a U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval process. But this doesn't mean good skin-care products can't be found - and on a budget.

As the darkest days of the year close in, some of us crave the feel of sunlight on our skin. That could reflect our evolutionary heritage, since we humans are not well-adapted to live as far north as Philadelphia. We're essentially an equatorial, tropical species who migrated only recently to places with long, dark winters. There hasn't been time to adapt. One major problem with living this far from the equator is that it's hard to get enough Vitamin D, a hormone that turns out to be essential not only for keeping our bones strong but also for running our immune systems and just about everything else.

Issa: Subpoenas are due soon WASHINGTON - The chairman of the House oversight committee said Sunday that he could send subpoenas to the Obama administration as soon as this week over weapons lost amid the Mexican drug war. Rep. Darrell Issa (R., Calif.) suggested on Fox News Sunday that Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. knew about the gun-trafficking operation known as Fast and Furious earlier than he has acknowledged. In the 2009 operation, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives let intermediaries for drug cartels buy thousands of weapons from Arizona gun shops and lost track of about 1,400 of the 2,000 guns.