Science is wonderful. It's provided many amazing discoveries (and many not so good) over the years. However, science is a human endeavor and, as such, is limited and many times wrong. This important fact is more often than not forgotten by our science worshippers.
Case in point:
Scientists are excited about a vitamin again. But unlike fads that sizzled and fizzled, the evidence this time is strong and keeps growing. If it bears out, it will challenge one of medicine's most fundamental beliefs: that people need to coat themselves with sunscreen whenever they're in the sun. Doing that may actually contribute to far more cancer deaths than it prevents, some researchers think.
The vitamin is D, nicknamed the "sunshine vitamin" because the skin makes it from ultraviolet rays. Sunscreen blocks its production, but dermatologists and health agencies have long preached that such lotions are needed to prevent skin cancer. Now some scientists are questioning that advice. The reason is that vitamin D increasingly seems important for preventing and even treating many types of cancer.
In the last three months alone, four separate studies found it helped protect against lymphoma and cancers of the prostate, lung and, ironically, the skin. The strongest evidence is for colon cancer.
Many people aren't getting enough vitamin D. It's hard to do from food and fortified milk alone, and supplements are problematic.
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2 comments:
Well, if scientists say we need a little more sun, it stands to reason that they now unanimously agree the world was created in six 24-hour days between six and ten thousand years ago, right? Hope you've got a net at the bottom of that chasm you're trying to jump.
No, what stands to reason is that science - while often correct - is always limited. Hence, product A that gives you cancer one week cures cancer the next (or never gave you cancer in the first place). We've become a culture that puts unlimited faith in a thing that is not worthy of it.
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