hockeylover
Well-known member
yeah, tanning beds were invented 53 years ago.No no. You can't do that. You're doing the correlation = causation thing again and trying to explain something over a statistic that tells us very little about this particular diagnosis.. or at least you're JAQing off. If you're not looking at where the increase is coming from you are doing it very wrong. The general population trends tells us nothing about the prevalence of a particular diagnosis that only 1-3% of the world will receive in their entire lifetime.
You may have certain segments of the population that use tanning beds regularly or more than they used to, or sun tan more than they used to.. Or you may just have more lighter skinned folks living in hotter, sunnier areas than they used to (which is an actual thing that has happened too).
We know that excess UV exposure is the primary driver of melanoma. If the increase in melanoma extends to people who work indoors/people do don't travel and generally stay home often, then we can look at something else going on. But I don't think there is any evidence of that at the moment. Right now the primary driver of growth is women under 50 so we can all create our theories on why that is the case. Tanning bed and tanning culture is my bet to be one of the drivers. But it's just a guess really.
i dunno, i'm still stunned this is a debate really.