Special Report: Skin Cancer

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One Rosenberg technique, used in dozens of U.S. cancer centers, is to extract some of a patient's white blood cells and bathe them in interleukin-2, a hormone that stimulates them, turning them into lymphokine-activated killer, or LAK, cells. Injected back into the bloodstream along with repeated doses of interleukin-2, they attack any foreign cells (including malignant ones) with great vigor. The technique has caused tumors to shrink significantly in a number of advanced melanoma patients and has apparently even effected an occasional cure.

A more advanced technique proposed by Rosenberg involves a human gene that orders production of a tumor-killing chemical. This gene would be inserted into an extracted immune cell called a tumor-infiltrating lymphocyte. Injected back into the body, the engineered TIL cells would specifically seek out and destroy melanoma cells.

Still, whatever progress is made during the next few years in fighting skin cancer, the best therapy will remain prevention, especially in childhood and the teens, when most of the damage is done. To Americans long indoctrinated with the notion that a tan look is a healthy look, this means that instead of worshiping the sun, they had better begin respecting it.