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Could it be that the redoubtable anti-tanning hoard has finally jumped into its last foxhole, with no war chest left to tap, deprived of its war spoils by the unexpected truthfulness of a group of Swedes?
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In his renowned World War I novel, All Quiet On The Western Front, author and former German foot soldier Eric Maria Remarque described the death of the chief character, Private Paul Baumer, as an articulation of relief: “...his face had an expression of calm, as though almost glad the end had come.” Written mostly in the first person as a narrative, this greatest of all war tales honors the triumph of the human spirit, and reminds the reader of just how resilient one person can be in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds. One wonders what extent and duration of torture, whether it be verbal or physical, can a small business owner take before “giving up the ghost”, declaring “enough is enough, already!” or blurting out, “hasta la vista, baby!” As it turns out, quite a bit.

Over the past 2 years, the tanning industry has been the unhappy recipient of a formidable assault from “medical” groups and media personalities, whose shrill and irate tones reached a crescendo late last October with the re-publication of a Swedish study that allegedly linked sunbeds with melanoma. Like the fiery abolitionist, John Brown, the AAD’s Dr. James Spencer was frequently given to under-the-breath gaffes directed at tanning salons that would have made John (“…these guys are the biggest buncha crooks…”) Kerry blush. Reminiscent of Anthony Comstock, the infamous censor of the early 20th century and real-life personage upon whom the silent film character Simon Legree was based, Spencer has demanded that the writings of Doctors Holick and Grant be prohibited for use in public discourse on Vitamin D as a method of preventing various internal cancers.

That neither end of the twained rift between dermatologists and the indoor tanning industry shall ever meet in either agreement nor détente is a given. Admittedly, both sides are equally to blame for inciting and, in some cases, promoting the conflict. Pinocchio noses painted on the cartoon-caricatured faces of researchers appearing on magazine covers; salacious, ratings-induced rhetoric spewing from national morning news shows; heavily Botoxed and spray-tanned actors extolling the virtues of sun exposure between taping episodes of “The Surreal Life”; it’s enough to make you scream. In the middle of it all stands the beleaguered FDA, forced to wear Kevlar vests during command meetings with Doc Spencer, trying to figure out what the Europeans are (never collectively) saying, and doing what it can to fit tanning in with cell phones, Vioxx, and those pesky, cancer-causing CAT-Scanners. Sometimes I feel like I’m stuck in a Zero Mostel rendition of “A Comedy Tonight”.

The waging of any war takes money, time and effort, however; the AAD and AMA have invested somewhere in the zone of $1-1.2 million of association funds over the past couple of years toward fomenting the speedy demise of tanning salons in Canada and the U.S. The Vitamin D research from Holick, they said, was “bunk” because of funding from the Indoor Tanning Association, and therefore couldn’t be credibly applied to offset the skin cancer risks made clear in the Swedish “Karolinska” study. In late January, they set off to seek more money from their membership for employment in a new round of attack ads and greasing the palms of state lobbyists. For a brief time, it’s “all quiet on the tanning front.” Then, like a lighting bolt sent down from Mount Olympus itself, a separate group of scientists at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden – the same establishment that produced the earlier paper linking tanning beds with melanoma – published a study on February 2nd stating that people with melanoma were less likely to die from the disease if they had had lots of sun exposure. Doh!

Since that day, the saber-rattling from the MDs has mysteriously calmed. As of this writing, calls to the AAD public relations department remain unreturned. For the first time in three years, no information seems available on how much money has been allotted for the traditional anti-tanning campaign. Could it be that the redoubtable General Spencer has finally jumped into his last foxhole, with no war chest left to tap, deprived of his spoils by the unexpected truthfulness of the happily neutral Swedes?