Washington Times Commentary Editor Kelly Sadler interviews author, blogger and podcaster Jenna McCarthy.
[SADLER] I’m a mother of three boys. It is the middle of summer and we go to the pool. They’re outside all the time. In evaluating how effective sunscreen is, we’ve been told that you need to lather up before you step outside or else you’ll get skin cancer. Can you walk me through what your discoveries are on how effective the use of sunscreen is? It’s a $12 billion industry here in the United States.
[MCCARTHY] Well, I’m gonna out myself as a raging conspiracy theorist here, but pretty much everything we’ve been told about sunscreen turns out is a lie. There’s a whole lot of PR spin going on. There was a whole lot of building up of dermatology as this life-saving industry. “We’re not pimple poppers. We’re going to save your life from skin cancer.” The reality is the deadliest skin cancer — the only truly deadly skin cancer — is melanoma, which, by the way, has a 94% survival rate if it’s caught before it metastasizes.
Yes, get your screenings and whatnot. Melanoma, not only not caused by the sun, your chances of getting it increase the more you avoid the sun. In fact, they say people who fully avoid the sun, like they’re absolutely terrified with the parasol and the fully clothed, worse than smoking for your longevity. So, melanomas also typically do not present in places where you get sun exposure, right? People get melanomas on the bottom of their feet. And my aunt had it in her mouth. You get it under your fingernails. So not in any way related to sun exposure.
The cancers that are related to sun exposure, and nobody wants a cancer diagnosis, right? It sounds so terrible. But they’ve linked the lump to everything under this umbrella of skin cancer. Your basal cell skin cancers and your squamous cell skin cancers, the ones that don’t kill you, that you can just have taken off with a nice quick procedure. They’re never, ever, ever going to kill you. Those can be exacerbated by sun exposure. We can talk about some of the things you can do to mitigate that, but they just really spun this whole melanoma. Be terrified of deadly malignant melanoma, which you should be, but you need to get out in the sun in order to not get that one.
[SADLER] So with sunscreen, I’ve got a 50, a 75, a 25 for my boys, it’s all waterproof, lasts 90 minutes. Other than preventing sunburns, which we’ve all had and are not fun to have. Is there any benefits to them?
[MCCARTHY] No, they’re terrible. They’re toxic. They’re endocrine disruptors. Many of them contain carcinogenic cancer causing ingredients. Again, this is where my conspiracy theory comes out. Like let’s encourage people to bathe in toxic fumes right? Because we have this treatment over here that we can sell them afterwards. It’s terrifying.
There’s nothing good about any of them. When I started really realizing this and going down all these roads, I was under the impression it’s just the chemical, the terrible chemical sprays, right? Like you, my daughters are grown, thankfully. But when they were little, they grew up in Southern California. We went to the beach. We were out on the river all the time. “Okay, girls, strip down, shut your eyes. Let me spray you in the face with toxic chemicals,” the mind boggles.
And then I realized, oh, the end studies have come out. They’re terrible. They’re endocrine disruptors and they’re filled with carcinogens.
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