Anti-sun crusaders urge tanning drugs instead of natural sunlight exposure

Sunday, September 26, 2010 by: Ethan A. Huff, staff writer
Tags: tanning, sunlight, health news

(NaturalNews) Enemies of the sun continue to harp on the public about the alleged, but unsubstantiated, dangers of sunlight exposure. Earlier this year, it was tanning beds that were the boogeymen, but now the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is going after the sun directly, suggesting that people use tanning lotions and sprays -- and even tanning drugs -- rather than dare to expose their skin to natural sunlight.

Official CDC rhetoric insists that the sun's ultraviolet (UV) rays are harmful to the skin and cause skin cancer, and the agency constantly reiterates scary-sounding statistics about the thousands who die every year from melanoma supposedly caused by the sun.

Besides being ridiculously overblown, such nonsense "science" only confuses and deceives the public into thinking that the sun is an evil menace that destroys health. On the contrary, the sun's UV rays are actually necessary in order for the body to produce adequate vitamin D levels, without which a host of other serious diseases can develop -- including other types of cancer.

But none of these facts seem to phase the CDC. The agency actually hired "research assistants" to pass out samples of tanning lotions and creams at the beach this past summer in order to convince tanners not to go in the sun. The CDC even handed out "skin cancer education" pamphlets designed to discourage natural sunlight tanning.

Published in the Archives of Dermatology the study explains that women given the samples tanned 33 percent less after two months, but after a year, they returned back to normal sun tanning. Ironically, these same tanning lotions contain a chemical drug called dihydroxyacetone that is implicated in causing organ toxicity and cancer.

According to reports, there are currently tanning drugs in the works that may soon become available as well, pending approval by the FDA.

Sources for this story include:

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE68K0UH...

http://www.cosmeticdatabase.com/ingredient.p...