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Jewish World Review July 6, 2005 / 29 Sivan, 5765 Sunscreen and unaccountable authority By John Stossel
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Did you damage your skin while you were out celebrating our
freedom Monday? You might have been safer if you were freer.
The Declaration of Independence makes many charges against King
George III, including: "He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent
hither Swarms of Officers to harass our People and eat out their Substance."
Our federal government has behaved similarly, expanding its bureaucracy and
empowering swarms of officials to harass us.
By aging our skin, for example.
Let me explain. The sun sends us two kinds of ultraviolet
radiation: UVA and UVB. Our suntan lotions are good at screening out the
sun's UVB rays, so they help us avoid sunburn and skin cancer. But our
sunscreens don't offer much protection against UVA rays, and those are the
rays that eventually make us look like prunes.
"Ultraviolet A light ages your skin," said Dr. Darrell Rigel,
clinical professor of dermatology at New York University. "It's a longer
wavelength, so it can penetrate deeper into the skin, and instead of
attacking the upper layers of the skin where skin cancer often forms, it
attacks the layers that give your skin its tone, its elasticity, as we call
it. ... You get the lines, the wrinkles, all the things associated from
aging."
But there's good news. Lotions that contain the ingredients
Oxybenzone, Titanium Dioxide or Parsol 1789 block out some UVA rays.
Adding a chemical called Mexoryl offers even better protection.
"It produces a product which gives us almost perfect protection
against sunshine," said Dr. Vincent DeLeo, chairman of dermatology at
Columbia University.
People are happily protecting themselves with Mexoryl in South
America, Europe, Australia and Canada, but in the USA you are forbidden to
use it. The FDA won't approve it. It won't even say why.
Dermatologists assume Mexoryl is just stuck in the bureaucracy.
It routinely takes 12 to 15 years for a drug to get approval, and after a
drug — Vioxx, for example — gets bad publicity as a health risk, the FDA
gets particularly cautious.
Common sense says we should use it Mexoryl. All drugs have risks
as well as benefits, and Mexoryl has been in use in other countries for 13
years. It's passed many safety tests. Yet our FDA won't even talk about it?
Although Mexoryl is illegal in the United States, ABC News found
it at some pharmacies. Sometimes it was hidden. You had to ask for it. It
was expensive — $30 to $50.
I don't fault the pharmacists; they're serving their customers.
Big government is the problem. The purpose of government is to
protect our rights. When other people attack us, we need government for
protection.
Nature gives us cold winters and hot summers, so we create
clothing and buildings to keep us from getting too cold or too hot. Nature
gives us ultraviolet radiation, so we develop shades and sunscreens. In each
case, the mind of man produces an invention suited to the challenge — and,
if not stopped, proceeds to invent even better ways to meet the challenge.
But in cases like Mexoryl, our government forbids us to adopt
new ways to meet our challenges. The complaint may sound familiar. It's what
arrogant authorities do: "He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of
immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till
his assent should be obtained; and when so Suspended, he has utterly
neglected to attend to them."
Comparing the FDA to King George may sound like I'm taking
sunscreen too seriously. But as the Founders understood, when it comes to
government, it's the principle that's important; an unaccountable authority
that can force you to accept wrinkles can force you to accept far worse. A
few pence on a box of tea wasn't much either.
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© 2005, by JFS Productions, Inc. Distributed by Creators Syndicate, Inc. |
Mitch Albom | ||||||||||||
