{"id":8774,"date":"2012-04-11T04:00:34","date_gmt":"2012-04-11T08:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/smarttan.com\/news\/?p=8774"},"modified":"2012-04-11T00:18:30","modified_gmt":"2012-04-11T04:18:30","slug":"the-medias-anti-tanning-bias","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.smarttan.com\/index.php\/the-medias-anti-tanning-bias\/","title":{"rendered":"The Media\u2019s Anti-Tanning Bias"},"content":{"rendered":"

When it comes to reporting medical news, the news media seems to be blinded by the dermatology and pharmaceutical industry\u2019s sun scare messages, as studies about alleged risks of UV exposure aren\u2019t treated the same way as studies about other alleged risks.<\/p>\n

NBC News today reported that a study published Tuesday in the medical journal Cancer suggests that having dental X-rays doubles your risk of certain brain tumors. But in reporting on a survey-study about the potential dangers of dentistry\u2019s common usage of X-ray radiation \u2014 sunlight wavelengths below 10 nm in the light spectrum that do not penetrate the Earth\u2019s atmosphere from the sun \u2014 NBC reporters are quick to point out that the study was just a survey and is \u201cthe weakest kind\u201d of medical study.<\/p>\n

\u201cSignificantly, the study is the weakest type of epidemiology, a so-called \u201ccase control\u201d study,\u201d NBC News reported Tuesday. \u201cThe researchers interviewed 1,433 people diagnosed with meningioma and compared them with 1,350 people with no such diagnosis. The two groups were matched for age, gender, race, income and places of residence. In a tiny portion of the cases the researchers actually looked at dental records. But, most often, they asked the study subjects \u2013 whose average age was 57 \u2013 to recall their history of dental X-rays going back to childhood.\u201d<\/p>\n

NBC even editorialized in its report \u2013 urging people not to interpret a 100 percent increase in cancer-risk from an epidemiology study as meaning that people should stop having x-rays. \u201cIt sounds frightening <\/strong>\u2013 and there is no question it invokes a serious warning \u2013 but even those who carried out the research urge people not to overreact. \u2018Our take home message is don\u2019t panic. Don\u2019t stop going to the dentist,\u2019 said the lead author of the study Dr. Elizabeth Claus, a neurological surgeon at Brigham and Women\u2019s Hospital in Boston and the Yale School of Public Health.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hypocritically, when it comes to reporting on UV exposure and suntanning \u2013 both of which use parts of the sun\u2019s life spectrum that do reach the Earth from the sun and which are necessary for life on the planet \u2013 NBC and the rest of the media are quick to suggest that the same kind of science, case-control epidemiology studies, are all you need to bash sunlight.<\/p>\n

In an NBC News story published a week ago citing a Mayo Clinic Dermatology Unit study that blamed indoor tanning for an alleged increase in melanoma incidence in women under 40 in one Minnesota County, NBC quoted the study\u2019s researcher saying, \u201cAll correlations point toward that as the reason for the increase.\u201d No caveats \u2013 just condemnation.<\/p>\n

NBC did not even acknowledge the obvious confounders that Smart Tan supplied to the media \u2013 such as the fact that the study didn\u2019t even collect indoor tanning data at all, and that the study is totally contradicted by the nation\u2019s largest cancer registry, which does not show the same increase in that age group.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s more, the only studies dermatology has to attack indoor tanning are \u201ccase-control epidemiology\u201d \u2013 surveys that are \u201cthe weakest kind\u201d of science when you\u2019re attacking dentistry, but are just fine when attacking tanning.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn defending dentistry, the same news source suggests that studies designed only to show correlation, but not causation, are all you need,\u201d Smart Tan Vice President Joseph Levy said. \u201cAnd yet when it comes to tanning, most of the case-control studies do not show an increase in risk, the ones that do do not show a doubling of risk like the dentistry study, and there are huge caveats that need to be mentioned but almost never are, including the fact that UV exposure \u2013 unlike X-rays \u2013 is necessary for all life on this planet.\u201d<\/p>\n

To read NBC\u2019s coverage of the dental x-ray study click here.<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

To read NBC\u2019s coverage of the Mayo Clinic melanoma study click here.<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When it comes to reporting medical news, the news media seems to be blinded by the dermatology and pharmaceutical industry\u2019s sun scare messages, as studies about alleged risks of UV exposure aren\u2019t treated the same way as studies about other alleged risks. NBC News today reported that a study published Tuesday in the medical journal […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8774","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Media\u2019s Anti-Tanning Bias - Smart Tan News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"When it comes to reporting medical news, the news media seems to be blinded by the dermatology and pharmaceutical industry\u2019s sun scare messages, as studies about alleged risks of UV exposure aren\u2019t treated the same way as studies about other alleged risks.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/news.smarttan.com\/index.php\/the-medias-anti-tanning-bias\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Media\u2019s Anti-Tanning Bias - 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