"Let the teens tan" burns readers

In the February 13 opinion piece, “Let the teens tan,” Indiana Daily Student columnist Dane McDonald writes that his personal experiences with tanning beds lead him to oppose Indiana Senate Bill 50, which amends current legislation to prohibit individuals 16 years of age or younger from using tanning beds.

He reports that tanning beds decreased the severity of his acne, raising his self-confidence.

As an ex-pimply-teenager, I relate.

If his column focused on the self-consciousness many teens experience or the legal theory behind Senate Bill 50, which philosophically pits public health against free will, I would not be writing this letter.  

However, the meaty claim of McDonald’s column, that tanning beds are “not the cancer beds people make them out to be,” is blatantly inaccurate.
There is no place in an opinion column for flippant claims about heavily researched phenomena.

Scholarly articles exploring correlations between tanning bed usage and cancer are readily available online through IU’s fantastic library resources.
A 0.11-second Google Scholar search for “tanning beds” returns more than 20,000 results, several of which are peer-reviewed scientific journals precisely relevant to
McDonald’s claims.

For example, the well-cited 2007 review article “The association of use of sunbeds with cutaneous malignant melanoma and other skin cancers: A systematic review” comments on findings from several relevant papers.

The study found that early exposure to tanning beds significantly increased the risk of both melanoma and squamous cell carcinoma, and that no evidence exists that tanning beds benefit users who seek sun protection by building a “base tan.”

Other studies comment extensively on McDonald’s claims that tanning beds provided users with vitamin D and relief from minor skin disorders.

No study suggests that these benefits outweigh the costs of cancer risks.
The “Opinion” header should inspire broad interpretations of intelligent discourse, not
entitle columnists to express misinformed ramblings.


­— Elizabeth Davis,
IU graduate