17 ms·

This is great news! I think people forget how anti-skin cancer protocols even as simple as applying suntan lotion weren't as popular as recent as 50-60 years ag

This is great news! I think people forget how anti-skin cancer protocols even as simple as applying suntan lotion weren't as popular as recent as 50-60 years ago. Lots of "sun children" of the 50s and 60s are now feeling the repercussions of only applying baby oil and are getting hit with lots of melanoma.

moronicles 2mo ago
I knew HN was geriatric, but damn
Insanity 2mo ago
+1. Also, just to call out, it doesn't need to be _warm_ for you to need sunblock. Even when it's cooler / cloudier out there you can still get skin damage. Look for UV rating rather than temperature. Conversely, it being hot doesn't imply high-UV either.
- jjice 2mo ago
  I didn't know about the UV index or what it meant until like three years ago. It blows my mind I went that long without understanding. It was actually wonderful to learn that I could just see if I needed sunblock based on a 0-10 scale. We never wore sunscreen as kids because we didn't burn. I probably have had three sunburns in my life. Learned once I became an adult that that wasn't sound logic...
  - Barbing 2mo ago
    I think the Apple Watch or the Weather app or something finally taught me UV index about the same time. Has this information always been readily available? Similarly mind blown about it.
    - NamTaf 2mo ago
      In Australia in at least the 00s, possibly the 90s, I remember it being reported during the weather forecast on the 6pm nightly news. But Australia has always had a famously robust sun health education programme
- redsocksfan45 2mo ago
  [dead]
- senordevnyc 2mo ago
  I’ve always wondered about this. I have fair skin, and I tend to burn somewhat easily in very sunny environments like the beach. However, I’ve never gotten so much as a whisper of sunburn / suntan / anything on an actually cloudy day where sun wasn’t hitting me directly. Is the damage a different type that’s imperceptible? Or is this a public health comms strategy where they assume people will see a single cloud in the sky and decide it’s fine to skip sunscreen, so they talk about how you should slather yourself with sunscreen 24/7, even if the sun is obscured?
  - ashf023 2mo ago
    I think the point is just about temperature. I've experienced this out on lakes in the northern US for example. It's sunny but not like a tropical beach, and maybe even a little chilly. But you'll definitely get burnt without sunscreen
    - philsnow 2mo ago
      People who are new to skiing/snowboarding are often surprised that their faces get sunburned, because of course it's cold and so how could they get burned
      - rootusrootus 2mo ago
        And snow makes it worse by reflecting.
  - esseph 2mo ago
    Geography has a lot to do with it as well. Proximity to the equator, altitude, etc.
  - kaikai 2mo ago
    I’ve gotten visibly sunburned on cloudy/foggy days, where it was completely overcast. You may have gotten lucky.
    - 2mo ago
- teh_klev 2mo ago
  This was my experience. Years ago I travelled to New Zealand in what would be their spring time. We stayed in Wanaka but also travelled around Twizel, Tekapo etc. Although it was pretty sunny with clear blue skies, the air temperature was fairly chilly (shirt, jumper and fleece cold - and I'm Scottish so used to cold weather) and I started to burn. I was warned about this, and the probability of high UV exposure at altitude by the locals and family, and was advised to apply a high factor sunblock whilst roaming around the higher elevations of New Zealand's South Island, which I did.
- al_borland 2mo ago
  I got the worst sunburn of my life while skiing in Colorado. I wasn’t wearing goggles or anything on my face, and the sun plus the reflection off the snow was brutal. I didn’t notice it when I was out there, but the next morning I wasn’t able to open my eyes. Lesson learned.
Noaidi 2mo ago
[flagged]
- anonymars 2mo ago
  Article: "two forms of rare melanoma are not caused by exposure to the sun.." > Most skin cancers are not a big deal, and even Melanomas can vanish on their own PSA: don't take medical advice from internet comments
  - Noaidi 2mo ago
    [flagged]
    - anonymars 2mo ago
      Your reading comprehension is way off. The article says "Each year in Australia, up to 420 people are diagnosed with acral or mucosal melanomas. They affect people of all ethnic backgrounds, and are the most common forms of melanoma in people with very dark skin." That is a discussion of specific subtypes of melanoma. You've turned that into a general statement about melanoma: > not all skin cancers are caused by sun exposure, and this is more true for Melenoma which occur both more frequently in darker skinned people and in place where there is little sun exposure. These are "Two rare ... forms of melanoma" not "melanoma as a whole." The article does not say melanoma as a whole is more frequent in darker-skinned people and in places with little sun exposure. Those two subtypes are. Let's also quote from https://wasatchdermatology.com/blogs/basal-cell-vs-squamous-vs-melanoma-guide/ https://wasatchdermatology.com/blogs/basal-cell-vs-squamous-... > BCC ... can cause significant local tissue damage if left untreated. Most cases are linked to chronic sun exposure, especially in fair-skinned individuals. > While it often remains localized at first, SCC can invade deeper tissues and, in some cases, metastasize to lymph nodes or other organs. Risk factors include cumulative sun exposure, a history of sunburns, and immunosuppression. > While not all skin cancers can be prevented, effective sun protection and healthy habits can greatly reduce your risk for basal cell carcinoma, squamous cell carcinoma, and melanoma. That does not support "most skin cancers are not a big deal" > Melanomas can vanish on their own Your link does not support that statement https://www.nature.com/articles/s41379-021-00870-2 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41379-021-00870-2 "Whilst some studies reported an association with improved survival ... others did not find any significant association, and some even reported worse outcomes in patients whose tumors showed regression" You seem to have read this as "melanoma just goes away and the problem is gone" rather than "the primary tumor can recede, and in that case survival odds are somewhat better by a few percentage points (but actually worse for Stage III patients!)"
wincy 2mo ago
What’s funny is before the 50s and 60s everyone knew you should cover up and women wore bonnets. That too much sun was bad for you. Laura Ingalls Wilder of Little House fame (I mention this a lot as I read these to my children as an adult, and they’re a fascinating look at 1880s America) has lots of places where her mother says “put on your bonnet! Don’t get too much sun!”. We act like people in the past were ignorant but people in the 50s and 60s were just a very special type of arrogant, all of Chesterton’s fences were torn down during that time period.
- hibikir 2mo ago
  We developed creams that stopped sunburn, but were still great at getting you cancer. A lot of the ads from 70s and 80s talked about how they stopped UVB but let the tanning UVA through! So yes, they didn't burn, but the long term cancer rates exploded, along with all the skin aging. So it's not that they ignored the all knowledge. I blame most of it on the rather detrimental tech advancement. Like cigarettes with filters: now safer (except you can smoke more now, and the cancer risk is still a disaster)
  - dylan604 2mo ago
    > We developed creams that stopped sunburn, but were still great at getting you cancer. I thought you were going to talk about the ingredients in the cream were carcinogenic themself.
  - pazimzadeh 2mo ago
    technically UVB is much more tanning than UVA. UVA tans for a short amount of time. UVA penetrates much deeper into the skin though and has few benefits (UVB stimulates Vitamin D synthesis).
- ViktorRay 2mo ago
  No I think you’re looking at this wrong. They thought too much sun was bad for you because back then tanned skin was considering a mark of being poor and pale skin was a mark of being wealthy since rich people didn’t have to work outside. They also had puritanical Victorian notions of modesty and covering up. There was no knowledge linking sun exposure to cancer or negative health effects. People in the past indeed were ignorant on many things.
paulpauper 2mo ago
melanoma , unlike the others, has a much weaker link to sun exposure. its why melanoma often appear in areas with no sun exposure
- addisonl 2mo ago
  Misleading comment. From https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ijc.35463 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ijc.35463 > Cutaneous melanoma (CM) accounted for around 331,700 cancer cases globally in 2022 > An estimated 267,353 (95% uncertainty intervals [UI]: 242,818, 278,638) CM cases were UVR attributable globally in 2022 UVR = Ultraviolet radiation Cutaneous melanoma (CM) is the vast majority of melanoma cases in the US at least: > The percentages of melanomas that were cutaneous, ocular, mucosal, and unknown primaries were 91.2%, 5.2%, 1.3%, and 2.2%, from https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9781962/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9781962/ tl;dr ~80% of Cutaneous melanoma cases are attributable to UV exposure.
  - bonsai_spool 2mo ago
    Please be careful and charitable in reading others' words, especially as they relate to scientific topics. OP did not say that melanoma has no sun exposure risk but that it is lower than the risks associated with other cutaneous cancers (e.g., SCC and BCC) and it would seem that's true based on the very short search I performed. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5742376/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5742376/
    - HedonicEscal8r 2mo ago
      Yes, but OP said that in response to a comment attributing melanoma to sun exposure, in a conversation where nobody had brought up SCC or BCC. It's still a misleading comment, in my opinion.
      - pessimizer 2mo ago
        > Yes, but OP said that in response to a comment attributing melanoma to sun exposure, in a conversation where nobody had brought up SCC or BCC. In a thread about a trial for a melanoma drug, which has nothing to do with the discussion of sunscreen. Sunscreen was brought up because it is a culture-war topic, the fact that melanomas are not as associated with sun exposure was brought up as the standard opposite-side reply to a culture-war topic. Clearly your unrelated accusation was brought up to silence the other side and accuse them of dishonesty. Your follow-up is to accuse them of some conversational violation (mentioning something that wasn't brought up) which doesn't exist. It's fine to see debate, but this is not debate. At most, consistent daily sunscreen use is associated with a 30-50% reduction in melanoma, and some of the ingredients in US sunscreens are themselves associated with cancer. What would be helpful is a link to a study showing a general reduction in melanomas during a general increase in the use of sunscreen. I'd be able to point that out to friends who questioned me about the efficacy of using it. edit: that one sentence reply is already trying to snowball into a pile on. Now to mention this fact has become "bizarre." Can't wait until it becomes "unhinged."
toephu2 2mo ago
[flagged]
Tangurena2 2mo ago
My parents were nudists. So I spent a bunch of 60s % 70s getting sunburn. I bet that even baby oil would have cut some of that down.
root-parent 2mo ago
>> This is great news... No this is insane news, the world is crazy and dumb. Must be all these LLMs. Stock up more than 150%, based on totally unpublished data and an X post... - The flashy 49% figures are from the old 157 only patient Phase 2, not this Phase 3 trial. The phase 2 was open label, had only 50 controls, and its randomization was disrupted. Meaning 9 patients were reassigned and the final 37 were no longer randomized. Its primary RFS result was p=0.053 two-sided, with the 95% CI crossing 1. It also used an unusually permissive one-sided alpha of 0.10, and much of the later "confirmation" is just longer follow up of those same 157 patients... - This phase 3 news so far is nothing more than a press release. They have not published hazard ratio, or confidence interval, their event counts or survival curves. - They met the endpoint as used in the press release means nothing, until they publish the actual 3 data, so my money is at the end this will be a kind of marginal effect that researchers will struggle to reproduce for years Another type of study that will take 2 to 3 years to validate or dismiss, in the meanwhile stock is up 150%....
- eli_gottlieb 2mo ago
  For what it's worth, AFAICT Moderna and other such high-tech biopharma stocks are way too sensitive to the news cycle and not nearly enough to scientific fundamentals, so I took the opportunity of having it up 150% to sell mine off.
- internetter 2mo ago
  the stock is up 150% because if Moderna has indeed cured cancer, the stock is worth many magnitudes more than that. It's presumably based on the probability this report is indeed as promising as it is at face value. If Moderna had announced "we are 100% sure cancer is cured" the stock would've gone up much more
  - root-parent 2mo ago
    Nobody is talking about curing cancer here. These are patients who had melanoma surgically removed, and IF the unpublished data of phase 3 turn out to be true... you are looking at having improved survival rates after 2 to 3 years on 5 to 10% plus of the patients. That is ALL this still unknown announcement MIGHT mean.
jimnotgym 2mo ago
My mother always covered up and always made us kids cover up. She still died of melanoma. Sun may increase the risk, but sun cream doesn't make it impossible. Cancer has no friends. Well done to the drug researchers. I have my fingers crossed someone else gets to avoid this
- shpx 2mo ago
  There's also the effect that sunscreen makes you spend more time in the sun than if you didn't use sunscreen because you think you're "protected".
  - anthomtb 2mo ago
    You are saying that, even if you wear sunscreen and avoid sun burn, the UV exposure will still potentially lead to skin cancer? I'd like to see the primary research backing that up. Or be told how I misinterpreted your statement.
    - Cabal 2mo ago
      Yes, 100%. It's the same reason that my kids are able to tan through the same sunscreen application regimen that leaves me pale. Source: My Mohs surgeon. And 3 skin cancer surgeries (so far).
  - pazimzadeh 2mo ago
    there is also that anything that blocks UV (sunscreen, windows, etc) by definition blocks UVB first and then UVA, and UVA is the one that penetrates most deeply and has few benefits
- pazimzadeh 2mo ago
  skin grows/regenerates at a rapid pace, which means mutations (mistakes in DNA replication) are naturally likely to happen there than in slow-growing tissue. skin cells and the immune system are constantly self-surveying and nipping these in the buds, under normal conditions. but there are things that can affect this process. a recent study of 2 million people in ontario showed that both high-sun and low-sun exposed people had higher risk of melanoma than people with moderate exposure. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-026-48477-4 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-026-48477-4 https://imgur.com/a/site-specific-melanoma-risk-by-occupational-uv-exposure-HBp8SnH https://imgur.com/a/site-specific-melanoma-risk-by-occupatio... a possible explanation is that UV light stimulates repair pathways within the skin, which boosts the baseline level of repair. Enhancement of UVB-induced DNA damage repair after a chronic low-dose UVB pre-stimulation https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1568786417301635 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S15687... another explanation is that as much as you can try to cover up, occasionally you may slip up, and going from extreme low-exposure to intense sun is especially bad, because your repair pathways are not primed, skin is untanned, etc.. in conclusion, extreme low or high sun exposure is bad. at the beginning of the summer you should gradually exposure yourself, and then exposure yourself daily but not overly, for the rest of the year.

moronicles 2mo ago

I knew HN was geriatric, but damn

Insanity 2mo ago

+1. Also, just to call out, it doesn't need to be _warm_ for you to need sunblock. Even when it's cooler / cloudier out there you can still get skin damage. Look for UV rating rather than temperature. Conversely, it being hot doesn't imply high-UV either.

jjice 2mo ago
I didn't know about the UV index or what it meant until like three years ago. It blows my mind I went that long without understanding. It was actually wonderful to learn that I could just see if I needed sunblock based on a 0-10 scale. We never wore sunscreen as kids because we didn't burn. I probably have had three sunburns in my life. Learned once I became an adult that that wasn't sound logic...
- Barbing 2mo ago
  I think the Apple Watch or the Weather app or something finally taught me UV index about the same time. Has this information always been readily available? Similarly mind blown about it.
  - NamTaf 2mo ago
    In Australia in at least the 00s, possibly the 90s, I remember it being reported during the weather forecast on the 6pm nightly news. But Australia has always had a famously robust sun health education programme
redsocksfan45 2mo ago
[dead]
senordevnyc 2mo ago
I’ve always wondered about this. I have fair skin, and I tend to burn somewhat easily in very sunny environments like the beach. However, I’ve never gotten so much as a whisper of sunburn / suntan / anything on an actually cloudy day where sun wasn’t hitting me directly. Is the damage a different type that’s imperceptible? Or is this a public health comms strategy where they assume people will see a single cloud in the sky and decide it’s fine to skip sunscreen, so they talk about how you should slather yourself with sunscreen 24/7, even if the sun is obscured?
- ashf023 2mo ago
  I think the point is just about temperature. I've experienced this out on lakes in the northern US for example. It's sunny but not like a tropical beach, and maybe even a little chilly. But you'll definitely get burnt without sunscreen
  - philsnow 2mo ago
    People who are new to skiing/snowboarding are often surprised that their faces get sunburned, because of course it's cold and so how could they get burned
    - rootusrootus 2mo ago
      And snow makes it worse by reflecting.
- esseph 2mo ago
  Geography has a lot to do with it as well. Proximity to the equator, altitude, etc.
- kaikai 2mo ago
  I’ve gotten visibly sunburned on cloudy/foggy days, where it was completely overcast. You may have gotten lucky.
  - 2mo ago
teh_klev 2mo ago
This was my experience. Years ago I travelled to New Zealand in what would be their spring time. We stayed in Wanaka but also travelled around Twizel, Tekapo etc. Although it was pretty sunny with clear blue skies, the air temperature was fairly chilly (shirt, jumper and fleece cold - and I'm Scottish so used to cold weather) and I started to burn. I was warned about this, and the probability of high UV exposure at altitude by the locals and family, and was advised to apply a high factor sunblock whilst roaming around the higher elevations of New Zealand's South Island, which I did.
al_borland 2mo ago
I got the worst sunburn of my life while skiing in Colorado. I wasn’t wearing goggles or anything on my face, and the sun plus the reflection off the snow was brutal. I didn’t notice it when I was out there, but the next morning I wasn’t able to open my eyes. Lesson learned.

Noaidi 2mo ago

[flagged]

anonymars 2mo ago
Article: "two forms of rare melanoma are not caused by exposure to the sun.." > Most skin cancers are not a big deal, and even Melanomas can vanish on their own PSA: don't take medical advice from internet comments
- Noaidi 2mo ago
  [flagged]
  - anonymars 2mo ago
    Your reading comprehension is way off. The article says "Each year in Australia, up to 420 people are diagnosed with acral or mucosal melanomas. They affect people of all ethnic backgrounds, and are the most common forms of melanoma in people with very dark skin." That is a discussion of specific subtypes of melanoma. You've turned that into a general statement about melanoma: > not all skin cancers are caused by sun exposure, and this is more true for Melenoma which occur both more frequently in darker skinned people and in place where there is little sun exposure. These are "Two rare ... forms of melanoma" not "melanoma as a whole." The article does not say melanoma as a whole is more frequent in darker-skinned people and in places with little sun exposure. Those two subtypes are. Let's also quote from https://wasatchdermatology.com/blogs/basal-cell-vs-squamous-vs-melanoma-guide/ https://wasatchdermatology.com/blogs/basal-cell-vs-squamous-... > BCC ... can cause significant local tissue damage if left untreated. Most cases are linked to chronic sun exposure, especially in fair-skinned individuals. > While it often remains localized at first, SCC can invade deeper tissues and, in some cases, metastasize to lymph nodes or other organs. Risk factors include cumulative sun exposure, a history of sunburns, and immunosuppression. > While not all skin cancers can be prevented, effective sun protection and healthy habits can greatly reduce your risk for basal cell carcinoma, squamous cell carcinoma, and melanoma. That does not support "most skin cancers are not a big deal" > Melanomas can vanish on their own Your link does not support that statement https://www.nature.com/articles/s41379-021-00870-2 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41379-021-00870-2 "Whilst some studies reported an association with improved survival ... others did not find any significant association, and some even reported worse outcomes in patients whose tumors showed regression" You seem to have read this as "melanoma just goes away and the problem is gone" rather than "the primary tumor can recede, and in that case survival odds are somewhat better by a few percentage points (but actually worse for Stage III patients!)"

wincy 2mo ago

What’s funny is before the 50s and 60s everyone knew you should cover up and women wore bonnets. That too much sun was bad for you. Laura Ingalls Wilder of Little House fame (I mention this a lot as I read these to my children as an adult, and they’re a fascinating look at 1880s America) has lots of places where her mother says “put on your bonnet! Don’t get too much sun!”. We act like people in the past were ignorant but people in the 50s and 60s were just a very special type of arrogant, all of Chesterton’s fences were torn down during that time period.

hibikir 2mo ago
We developed creams that stopped sunburn, but were still great at getting you cancer. A lot of the ads from 70s and 80s talked about how they stopped UVB but let the tanning UVA through! So yes, they didn't burn, but the long term cancer rates exploded, along with all the skin aging. So it's not that they ignored the all knowledge. I blame most of it on the rather detrimental tech advancement. Like cigarettes with filters: now safer (except you can smoke more now, and the cancer risk is still a disaster)
- dylan604 2mo ago
  > We developed creams that stopped sunburn, but were still great at getting you cancer. I thought you were going to talk about the ingredients in the cream were carcinogenic themself.
- pazimzadeh 2mo ago
  technically UVB is much more tanning than UVA. UVA tans for a short amount of time. UVA penetrates much deeper into the skin though and has few benefits (UVB stimulates Vitamin D synthesis).
ViktorRay 2mo ago
No I think you’re looking at this wrong. They thought too much sun was bad for you because back then tanned skin was considering a mark of being poor and pale skin was a mark of being wealthy since rich people didn’t have to work outside. They also had puritanical Victorian notions of modesty and covering up. There was no knowledge linking sun exposure to cancer or negative health effects. People in the past indeed were ignorant on many things.

paulpauper 2mo ago

melanoma , unlike the others, has a much weaker link to sun exposure. its why melanoma often appear in areas with no sun exposure

addisonl 2mo ago
Misleading comment. From https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ijc.35463 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ijc.35463 > Cutaneous melanoma (CM) accounted for around 331,700 cancer cases globally in 2022 > An estimated 267,353 (95% uncertainty intervals [UI]: 242,818, 278,638) CM cases were UVR attributable globally in 2022 UVR = Ultraviolet radiation Cutaneous melanoma (CM) is the vast majority of melanoma cases in the US at least: > The percentages of melanomas that were cutaneous, ocular, mucosal, and unknown primaries were 91.2%, 5.2%, 1.3%, and 2.2%, from https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9781962/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9781962/ tl;dr ~80% of Cutaneous melanoma cases are attributable to UV exposure.
- bonsai_spool 2mo ago
  Please be careful and charitable in reading others' words, especially as they relate to scientific topics. OP did not say that melanoma has no sun exposure risk but that it is lower than the risks associated with other cutaneous cancers (e.g., SCC and BCC) and it would seem that's true based on the very short search I performed. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5742376/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5742376/
  - HedonicEscal8r 2mo ago
    Yes, but OP said that in response to a comment attributing melanoma to sun exposure, in a conversation where nobody had brought up SCC or BCC. It's still a misleading comment, in my opinion.
    - pessimizer 2mo ago
      > Yes, but OP said that in response to a comment attributing melanoma to sun exposure, in a conversation where nobody had brought up SCC or BCC. In a thread about a trial for a melanoma drug, which has nothing to do with the discussion of sunscreen. Sunscreen was brought up because it is a culture-war topic, the fact that melanomas are not as associated with sun exposure was brought up as the standard opposite-side reply to a culture-war topic. Clearly your unrelated accusation was brought up to silence the other side and accuse them of dishonesty. Your follow-up is to accuse them of some conversational violation (mentioning something that wasn't brought up) which doesn't exist. It's fine to see debate, but this is not debate. At most, consistent daily sunscreen use is associated with a 30-50% reduction in melanoma, and some of the ingredients in US sunscreens are themselves associated with cancer. What would be helpful is a link to a study showing a general reduction in melanomas during a general increase in the use of sunscreen. I'd be able to point that out to friends who questioned me about the efficacy of using it. edit: that one sentence reply is already trying to snowball into a pile on. Now to mention this fact has become "bizarre." Can't wait until it becomes "unhinged."

toephu2 2mo ago

[flagged]

Tangurena2 2mo ago

My parents were nudists. So I spent a bunch of 60s % 70s getting sunburn. I bet that even baby oil would have cut some of that down.

root-parent 2mo ago

>> This is great news... No this is insane news, the world is crazy and dumb. Must be all these LLMs. Stock up more than 150%, based on totally unpublished data and an X post... - The flashy 49% figures are from the old 157 only patient Phase 2, not this Phase 3 trial. The phase 2 was open label, had only 50 controls, and its randomization was disrupted. Meaning 9 patients were reassigned and the final 37 were no longer randomized. Its primary RFS result was p=0.053 two-sided, with the 95% CI crossing 1. It also used an unusually permissive one-sided alpha of 0.10, and much of the later "confirmation" is just longer follow up of those same 157 patients... - This phase 3 news so far is nothing more than a press release. They have not published hazard ratio, or confidence interval, their event counts or survival curves. - They met the endpoint as used in the press release means nothing, until they publish the actual 3 data, so my money is at the end this will be a kind of marginal effect that researchers will struggle to reproduce for years Another type of study that will take 2 to 3 years to validate or dismiss, in the meanwhile stock is up 150%....

eli_gottlieb 2mo ago
For what it's worth, AFAICT Moderna and other such high-tech biopharma stocks are way too sensitive to the news cycle and not nearly enough to scientific fundamentals, so I took the opportunity of having it up 150% to sell mine off.
internetter 2mo ago
the stock is up 150% because if Moderna has indeed cured cancer, the stock is worth many magnitudes more than that. It's presumably based on the probability this report is indeed as promising as it is at face value. If Moderna had announced "we are 100% sure cancer is cured" the stock would've gone up much more
- root-parent 2mo ago
  Nobody is talking about curing cancer here. These are patients who had melanoma surgically removed, and IF the unpublished data of phase 3 turn out to be true... you are looking at having improved survival rates after 2 to 3 years on 5 to 10% plus of the patients. That is ALL this still unknown announcement MIGHT mean.

jimnotgym 2mo ago

My mother always covered up and always made us kids cover up. She still died of melanoma. Sun may increase the risk, but sun cream doesn't make it impossible. Cancer has no friends. Well done to the drug researchers. I have my fingers crossed someone else gets to avoid this

shpx 2mo ago
There's also the effect that sunscreen makes you spend more time in the sun than if you didn't use sunscreen because you think you're "protected".
- anthomtb 2mo ago
  You are saying that, even if you wear sunscreen and avoid sun burn, the UV exposure will still potentially lead to skin cancer? I'd like to see the primary research backing that up. Or be told how I misinterpreted your statement.
  - Cabal 2mo ago
    Yes, 100%. It's the same reason that my kids are able to tan through the same sunscreen application regimen that leaves me pale. Source: My Mohs surgeon. And 3 skin cancer surgeries (so far).
- pazimzadeh 2mo ago
  there is also that anything that blocks UV (sunscreen, windows, etc) by definition blocks UVB first and then UVA, and UVA is the one that penetrates most deeply and has few benefits
pazimzadeh 2mo ago
skin grows/regenerates at a rapid pace, which means mutations (mistakes in DNA replication) are naturally likely to happen there than in slow-growing tissue. skin cells and the immune system are constantly self-surveying and nipping these in the buds, under normal conditions. but there are things that can affect this process. a recent study of 2 million people in ontario showed that both high-sun and low-sun exposed people had higher risk of melanoma than people with moderate exposure. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-026-48477-4 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-026-48477-4 https://imgur.com/a/site-specific-melanoma-risk-by-occupational-uv-exposure-HBp8SnH https://imgur.com/a/site-specific-melanoma-risk-by-occupatio... a possible explanation is that UV light stimulates repair pathways within the skin, which boosts the baseline level of repair. Enhancement of UVB-induced DNA damage repair after a chronic low-dose UVB pre-stimulation https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1568786417301635 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S15687... another explanation is that as much as you can try to cover up, occasionally you may slip up, and going from extreme low-exposure to intense sun is especially bad, because your repair pathways are not primed, skin is untanned, etc.. in conclusion, extreme low or high sun exposure is bad. at the beginning of the summer you should gradually exposure yourself, and then exposure yourself daily but not overly, for the rest of the year.