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Here are just two stand-out facts from a major study in the Annals of Epidemiology entitled ‘Vitamin D for Cancer Prevention.’[3] “Women with higher solar UVB exposure had only half the incidence of breast cancer as those with lower solar exposure.” “Men with higher residential solar exposure had only half the incidence rate of fatal prostate cancer.” To put that in simple English, if you spend longer in the sun, you may be far less likely to die of breast and prostate cancer (and lots of other cancers as well, but more on cancer later). But what about the increased risk of dying of skin cancer! I hear you cry. Well, what of it? Around 2,000 people a year die of malignant melanoma in the UK each year. If increased sun exposure were to double this figure, we would have 2,000 more cases. On the other hand, breast cancer kills around 20,000 a year, as does prostate cancer. If we managed to halve the rate of breast and prostate cancer, we would reduce cancer deaths by 20,000 a year. Which is ten times as great any potential increase in deaths from malignant melanoma.
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Malcolm Kendrick (Doctoring Data: How to sort out medical advice from medical nonsense)