The National Cancer Institute’s cancer registry now shows that melanoma incidence in women under 20 years of age is significantly less than 1 case per 100,000 girls and has actually decreased in the past 10 years — published data that fly in the face of what dermatology has claimed.

The melanoma incidence rate for women under age 20 was about 0.5 cases per 100,000 girls in 2008 — a small decrease from around 0.6 cases per 100,000 in 2000. In whole numbers, that’s a reduction from 6 cases per million to 5 cases per million.

“In lobbying against indoor tanning, dermatology has falsely alleged that this number is increasing based on anecdotal stories, but the data just aren’t there,” Smart Tan Vice President Joseph Levy said. “This is the government’s own data. There is no way to spin this. It is what it is. And what it shows is there is no increase in this group and that the numbers in this group are really small.”

Where melanoma is increasing is men over age 50. In that group, incidence rates have risen from about 62 per 100,000 in 2000 to around 80 per 100,000 in 2008 — a 29 percent increase in just eight years.

“Dermatology directs almost none of its public health campaigns about melanoma at the group actually getting melanoma,” Levy said. “Instead the focus on the group that has historically been their best customers for most of their cosmetic services: young women. It’s an abrogation of trust for a medical discipline to continue to mislead the public in this fashion.”

The National Cancer Institute’s data form the basis for the American Cancer Society’s annual cancer figures. ACS has often said that NCI’s data actually is more accurate for year-to-year comparisons. But even ACS published in its annual report that since 2000 melanoma incidence has been stable and the mortality rates have been declining since the mid-1980s for women.

“This is not the story that is being told externally by anti-sun groups right now,” Levy said. “They are not representing the data correctly.”