Melanoma By The Numbers

Everybody has to die of something; however, the media would have most of us believing that melanoma is the only “something” out there (particularly for those who use evil tanning machines). This is not to trivialize the fact that melanoma sometimes can be fatal but, for the sake of perspective, I contacted a few different sources to find the latest data on a variety of cancers. What I found may surprise you.

According to the American Cancer Society and its annual SEER report on cancer incidence and fatality, the top 10 cancers that cause fatalities in Caucasian men and women are lung, colon, breast, pancreas, prostate, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, leukemia, ovary, brain, urinary and liver cancer.

Melanoma did not make this list, nor does it make it in to the top five in terms of incidence.

Additionally, from 2000-2004, 97 percent of people who died as a result of melanoma were over age 39—and the median age of those deaths was 67. From what you have read in the media, would you have guessed that?

Overall, the fatality rate for melanoma is three out of every 100,000 people. In less abstract terms, that’s like going to a sold-out football game at Ohio State and surveying the crowd, knowing that three of those people will perish from melanoma. When you use that same scenario in regard to lung cancer, you see that a much greater 56 people in the crowd will die. Though one fatality is one too many, it is necessary to have some perspective in regard to incidence of death.

Consider this: Males are diagnosed with melanoma at higher rates than females and have more melanoma-related deaths. Meanwhile, indoor tanning beds are used predominantly by females; in fact, the ratio of use could be as high as 75 percent for females versus 25 percent for males in the United States. Yet, the media leads us to believe that the popularity of indoor tanning is one of the leading causes of rising melanoma statistics, which begs the question of why males are diagnosed with melanoma more often and suffer more fatalities as a result than females do. Try asking a dermatologist that one!

I have been trying for quite a while to find some verification of the supposed “epidemic of skin cancer”. Many sources indicate that there may be well over 1 million new cases per year—but that must be some estimate since there doesn’t seem to be any record concerning skin cancer incidence available. In fact, here’s the reply I received from the American Cancer Society, which sheds some light on just that subject: