Beach bummer New evidence suggests that sunscreens don't prevent skin cancer and may even promote some forms of it. The manufacturers know it.
Some researchers know it.
Michael Castleman Anyone who's ever heard a smoke alarm go off knows how horrid its whine can be. Because a little unpleasantness can prevent injury or death in a fire. But in the last few decades, millions of people who cherish smoke detectors may have disabled one of nature's equally protective, if annoying, alarms. They've rubbed on sunscreen, never thinking that sunburns, like smoke alarms, might prevent a greater harm. Ironically, sunscreen devotees have turned off their dermatological smoke detectors in the name of preventive medicine.