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- The Guardian view on calls to ban sunbeds: prevention in healthcare raises hard questions about risks | Editorial
The Guardian view on calls to ban sunbeds: prevention in healthcare raises hard questions about risks | Editorial
The call to ban sunbeds in the UK, echoing from the pages of the British Medical Journal, is more than a simple public health recommendation; it is a profound ethical question about how far a society should go to shield its citizens from themselves, a dilemma that sits at the uncomfortable intersection of personal liberty and collective well-being. With skin cancer rates climbing ominously, a direct and brutal consequence of our modern pursuit of a year-round tan, the medical community, led by voices like Professor Paul Lorigan, is issuing a stark warning that can no longer be confined to the fine print on a salon waiver form.The evidence is as clear and damaging as ultraviolet radiation itself: these devices are carcinogenic to humans, classified by the World Health Organization in the same highest-risk category as tobacco and asbestos. Yet, the political response has been a study in hesitation, a familiar dance of caution where clarity and courage are desperately needed.The existing ban on under-18s, implemented in 2010, was a step, but like so many environmental half-measures, it has proven porous, easily flouted, and ultimately insufficient against a rising tide of melanoma, particularly among young women in the deprived northern reaches of England—a demographic tragedy highlighting how health inequalities are often exacerbated by commercial interests. Australia, a nation that knows the sun’s ferocity intimately, has already taken the definitive step of a full commercial ban, a policy born from confronting a public health crisis head-on.The argument for following suit is not just moral but brutally economic; treating advanced melanoma places a staggering, unsustainable burden on the National Health Service, a cost that dwarfs the proposed compensation for the sunbed industry, a sector built on selling a known cancer risk. This is not a niche issue.It is a microcosm of the broader, more difficult conversations we must have about prevention in an era of self-inflicted disease. We regulate asbestos in our buildings, lead in our paint, and set speed limits on our roads because the societal cost of inaction is too high.Why, then, do we treat the deliberate, commercialized irradiation of skin with such political timidity? The sunbed industry markets an aesthetic of health while peddling disease, exploiting insecurities and social pressures for profit. To ban them is not an act of nanny-state overreach but a logical, data-driven extension of the state’s duty to protect its population from clear and present dangers, much like the successful public health campaigns against smoking.The hesitation from ministers and even some cancer charities reflects a deeper societal ambivalence, a reluctance to curtail individual choice even when that choice leads directly to suffering and systemic cost. But as the climate crisis teaches us, we can no longer afford to view environmental and health risks through a lens of short-term convenience.The rising incidence of melanoma is a slow-motion disaster, a preventable wave of cancer we are choosing to let wash over us. The call for a ban is a line in the sand.To ignore it is to be complicit in the consequences, to prioritize a fleeting, artificial glow over the long-term health of the population and the very integrity of our healthcare ecosystem. The science is unequivocal, the human cost is mounting, and the path forward, though politically challenging, is illuminated by the harsh light of evidence.
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