Health: Your Tan Could Kill You

Newsweek, June, 2006 by Jennifer Barrett

Lesley Miller might not have known until it was too late. Five years ago a friend spotted a dark mole on her right shoulder and urged her to get it checked. "The dermatologist took one look and said, 'That has to come off'," remembers Miller, a fair-skinned south Florida resident who'd grown up at the beach. "It was terrifying."

A biopsy confirmed the mole was melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer. Miller, then just 31, had it removed in a procedure that required several stitches and left a scar. The cancer hasn't recurred, but she's had 12 precancerous growths taken off and she scrutinizes her skin for suspicious moles. "People think skin cancer is something that affects people in their 50s or later," says her dermatologist Dr. Alysa Herman. "But that's not the case anymore."

White men older than 50 still comprise the majority ...