“The dogma, now fossilized in print, is that any tan is a sign of skin damage. Tell that to Darwin. Pigmented melanocytes in the skin are a system that protects it from excessive UV, which evolved long before the advent of sunscreens. Even if there was hard evidence that melanoma was UV-induced it would be all the more important to keep a protective tan.” – Dr. Sam Shuster, professor of dermatology, Newcastle University in England.

Shuster writes in his essay, The Skin Cancer Cover-up: “Excessive avoidance and UV screening is a danger because it does not allow a tan, nature’s own sun block, to develop and as a result exposure is likely to cause sun-burn.”

He also points out that melanoma research is not based on true clinical obseveration, but on survey-studies designed only to show correlation but not causation: “The problem with melanoma, as with many other branches of contemporary clinical research, is that it is based on circumstantial evidence obtained from epidemiological studies rather than an understanding of the pathology,” Shuster writes.