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 S.
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?"