Outlaw sunshine, no wait, don't outlaw it, soak in it??
On science, the environment, and politics of science
from 
JoeUser Forums
JoeUser Forums
It's always interesting to see how much we learning today about how wrong "our scientific knowledge and expertise" is about some of our common beliefs. Over the last 30 years, in many different areas, we have been coming full circle back to earlier beliefs after learning that what our scientists don't know is much more expansive than the knowledge they have on hand.
As an example, there is now news out that conflicts with the common beliefs regarding our exposure to sun light. See the link here: Scientists Say Sunshine May Prevent Cancer for important news in that area.
Some key points raised in the article:
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.
So the thinking is this: Even if too much sun leads to skin cancer, which is rarely deadly, too little sun may be worse.
No one is suggesting that people fry on a beach. But many scientists believe that "safe sun" - 15 minutes or so a few times a week without sunscreen - is not only possible but helpful to health.
One is Dr. Edward Giovannucci, a Harvard University professor of medicine and nutrition who laid out his case in a keynote lecture at a recent American Association for Cancer Research meeting in Anaheim, Calif.
His research suggests that vitamin D might help prevent 30 deaths for each one caused by skin cancer.
"I would challenge anyone to find an area or nutrient or any factor that has such consistent anti-cancer benefits as vitamin D," Giovannucci told the cancer scientists. "The data are really quite remarkable."
...
Even some dermatologists may be coming around. "I find the evidence to be mounting and increasingly compelling," said Dr. Allan Halpern, dermatology chief at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, who advises several cancer groups.
The dilemma, he said, is a lack of consensus on how much vitamin D is needed or the best way to get it.
No source is ideal. Even if sunshine were to be recommended, the amount needed would depend on the season, time of day, where a person lives, skin color and other factors.
There's a wealth of good information found in this article, and it's well worth reading.
Meanwhile, to me, this article points out a bigger issue, one which I mention above -- that of our continued learning and expansion of our knowledge in scientific areas.
Bear with me for a minute if you please. Lets take as an example another area -- our knowledge of earth sciences and the environment in general. We've spent much of the last 30 - 40 years telling ourselves that we are killing the environment and creating our own hot box of greenhouse gases which are causing global warming and will lead to the death of the planet.
While that may be true in many ways, there's also been much progress in cleaning up the environment and helping to take many pollutants out of the air around many of the cities that were previously known as some of the worst in the country for air pollution. I remember as a child riding in the car on camping trips and family vacations that took us through parts of Pennsylvania where the air was thick with smoke from factories. The same could be said of the Baltimore area, areas in Georgia that literally filled your lungs with the smell of wood pulp. Now, most of that is gone. Some because our factories couldn't or wouldn't upgrade and then couldn't and wouldn't compete against similar factories in other countries. We've put forth clean air, clean skies and clean water iniatives thanks to science that told us we were doing the environment so much harm. Some of the iniatives have caused the loss of many jobs, the closing of many factories, and radical changes in communities that were built around these industries.
Will we find in the future that our science about the by-products of these factories and businesses was wrong, and that instead of harming the environment, some of the pollutants and by-products that were flowing in the air were feeding plants and insects that were in turn feeding other things in our food chain? It's tough to tell for sure.
For the most part I'll buy into the idea that much of what happened back in the 50s, 60s, 70s and parts of the 80s when factories were only losely regulated, and many raw by-products were disposed of in the worst possible ways (literally being dumped into streams, or carted off to landfills, etc.) was just plain wrong. But with that said, I'm left to question other stupid programs and rules that have popped up along the way.
As an example, in Maryland, there are rules that require selling oxegenated and reformulated gasolines in the winter months. Such fuel is supposed to help lower emissions and help protect the environment, but does it really? For many car and truck owners in the area, the alternate fuel causes more problems for the vehicles than can possibly be outweighed in benefits. The cars and truck engines perform poorly and lead to use of more fuel. The measured output of pollutants don't seem to change, and the by products of the exhaust from the cars and trucks are found to be producing other chemicals and materials that are also not supposed to be good for the environment.
Have the scientists that produced the faulty science behind this faulty policy helped to correct the problem? Not that I can see for the most part.
Further, to really circle back around to the political arena and science, we now have raging debates in our school systems about the science of humanity and our own existence and evolution. Will our scientists find in the next several years that believers in "intelligent design" are more right than those that only wish to believe in evolution? Only time will really tell if the story there will be similar to these new findings on the importance of moderate exposure to sun-light.
As an example, there is now news out that conflicts with the common beliefs regarding our exposure to sun light. See the link here: Scientists Say Sunshine May Prevent Cancer for important news in that area.
Some key points raised in the article:
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.
So the thinking is this: Even if too much sun leads to skin cancer, which is rarely deadly, too little sun may be worse.
No one is suggesting that people fry on a beach. But many scientists believe that "safe sun" - 15 minutes or so a few times a week without sunscreen - is not only possible but helpful to health.
One is Dr. Edward Giovannucci, a Harvard University professor of medicine and nutrition who laid out his case in a keynote lecture at a recent American Association for Cancer Research meeting in Anaheim, Calif.
His research suggests that vitamin D might help prevent 30 deaths for each one caused by skin cancer.
"I would challenge anyone to find an area or nutrient or any factor that has such consistent anti-cancer benefits as vitamin D," Giovannucci told the cancer scientists. "The data are really quite remarkable."
...
Even some dermatologists may be coming around. "I find the evidence to be mounting and increasingly compelling," said Dr. Allan Halpern, dermatology chief at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, who advises several cancer groups.
The dilemma, he said, is a lack of consensus on how much vitamin D is needed or the best way to get it.
No source is ideal. Even if sunshine were to be recommended, the amount needed would depend on the season, time of day, where a person lives, skin color and other factors.
There's a wealth of good information found in this article, and it's well worth reading.
Meanwhile, to me, this article points out a bigger issue, one which I mention above -- that of our continued learning and expansion of our knowledge in scientific areas.
Bear with me for a minute if you please. Lets take as an example another area -- our knowledge of earth sciences and the environment in general. We've spent much of the last 30 - 40 years telling ourselves that we are killing the environment and creating our own hot box of greenhouse gases which are causing global warming and will lead to the death of the planet.
While that may be true in many ways, there's also been much progress in cleaning up the environment and helping to take many pollutants out of the air around many of the cities that were previously known as some of the worst in the country for air pollution. I remember as a child riding in the car on camping trips and family vacations that took us through parts of Pennsylvania where the air was thick with smoke from factories. The same could be said of the Baltimore area, areas in Georgia that literally filled your lungs with the smell of wood pulp. Now, most of that is gone. Some because our factories couldn't or wouldn't upgrade and then couldn't and wouldn't compete against similar factories in other countries. We've put forth clean air, clean skies and clean water iniatives thanks to science that told us we were doing the environment so much harm. Some of the iniatives have caused the loss of many jobs, the closing of many factories, and radical changes in communities that were built around these industries.
Will we find in the future that our science about the by-products of these factories and businesses was wrong, and that instead of harming the environment, some of the pollutants and by-products that were flowing in the air were feeding plants and insects that were in turn feeding other things in our food chain? It's tough to tell for sure.
For the most part I'll buy into the idea that much of what happened back in the 50s, 60s, 70s and parts of the 80s when factories were only losely regulated, and many raw by-products were disposed of in the worst possible ways (literally being dumped into streams, or carted off to landfills, etc.) was just plain wrong. But with that said, I'm left to question other stupid programs and rules that have popped up along the way.
As an example, in Maryland, there are rules that require selling oxegenated and reformulated gasolines in the winter months. Such fuel is supposed to help lower emissions and help protect the environment, but does it really? For many car and truck owners in the area, the alternate fuel causes more problems for the vehicles than can possibly be outweighed in benefits. The cars and truck engines perform poorly and lead to use of more fuel. The measured output of pollutants don't seem to change, and the by products of the exhaust from the cars and trucks are found to be producing other chemicals and materials that are also not supposed to be good for the environment.
Have the scientists that produced the faulty science behind this faulty policy helped to correct the problem? Not that I can see for the most part.
Further, to really circle back around to the political arena and science, we now have raging debates in our school systems about the science of humanity and our own existence and evolution. Will our scientists find in the next several years that believers in "intelligent design" are more right than those that only wish to believe in evolution? Only time will really tell if the story there will be similar to these new findings on the importance of moderate exposure to sun-light.