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Comment by lotsofpulp | Hacker News Reader

No? There is nothing surprising about a cancer having more than 1 cause since more than 1 thing can cause damage to DNA.

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There is something surprising about a cancer being caused by a treatment that is intended to prevent that same cancer for occurring though

Oh, I misinterpreted it as the sun not causing skin cancer for anyone, but rather sunscreens.

The irony is people use sunscreen to avoid getting skin cancer, and OP is pointing out it may be causing it instead.

... quite possibly still not as much as if they hadn't used it, though. So maybe not that ironic.

Or quite possibly far more than if they hadn't used it, if we're just going to make things up.

Yeah, the guy I was replying to was making stuff up. I'm making the point that sunscreen has a positive purpose, and you could potentially be doing a lot more harm than good if some trace benzene ends up in you frying to a crisp instead and getting melanoma.

You need to do the risk analysis. Until you do, you can't possibly say it's ironic using sunscreen since it could easily be doing more good than harm.

That’s why you need to look at all-cause mortality. Trying really hard to prevent one cancer may create enough other issues to outweigh your efforts.

The benzene and sunblock ingredients aren’t just absorbing into the skin, but into the whole body. The evidence is good that they prevent skin cancer, but…

The evidence on sunblock improving all-cause mortality isn’t clear.

Here’s one study that didn’t find a mortality difference between daily and discretionary sunblock use:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30885518/

Sure, but skin cancer caused by the very stuff that's supposed to help prevent it? A little too ironic, I really do think.

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