December 2006 monthly follow up: "Is melanoma simply a Vitamin D deficiency cancer?"

TO: All melanoma researchers, doctors, and patients.

Melanoma incidence has been increasing right before our very eyes,
alarmingly affecting much younger ages than in the past, and yet we
still do not know what is causing it. Why not?

It couldn't be from a lack of technology, as microscopes and surgical
techniques have been around for well over a century. Nor could it be
from a lack of data, as libraries are filled beyond capacity with
numerous volumes of wide-ranging studies. And it couldn't even be a
lack of education, as many researchers now sport both MD and PhD
degrees. Indeed, could it actually be our inability to think outside
the box that is preventing us from finally solving the melanoma
mystery?

Scientist and endocrinologist Dr. Hans Selye, who first applied the
concept of stress to medicine in pioneering the general adaptation
syndrome, best explains the foregoing point in his famous book about
"The Stress of Life" with the following passage about discovery:
"There are two ways of detecting something that no one has yet seen:
one is to aim at the finest detail by getting as close as possible with
the best available analyzing instruments; the other is merely to look
at things from a new angle where they show hitherto unexposed facets.
The former requires money and experience; the latter presupposes
neither; indeed, it is actually aided by simplicity, the lack of
prejudice, and the absence of those established habits of thinking
which tend to come after long years of work. The general adaptation
syndrome could have been discovered during the Middle Ages, if not
earlier; its recognition did not depend upon the development of any
complicated pieces of apparatus, new techniques of observation, nor
even upon much training, ingenuity, or intelligence, as far as that
goes, but merely upon an unbiased state of mind, a fresh point of
view."

James Semmel
Albuquerque, New Mexico



reference:
http://www.mpip.org/bb/shtml/361095.shtml
Last month's follow up to the 3rd annual discussion: "Is melanoma
simply a Vitamin D deficiency cancer?"