Sun Wars: Vitamin D & the History of a Man-Made Epidemic

The modern American public has been caught in the middle of a battle over the sun. The smiling yellow orb that we knew and loved as children had become vilified as a cancer causing, wrinkle inducing, fiend in the public imagination. The story behind this transformation-the paradigm shift in public opinion is as interesting as any that can be told. By trying to save our skins, we may have lost our health by depleting our bodies of vitamin D-creating a man-made epidemic of a myriad number of diseases? Is there a way to fix this? Could something as simple as sitting out in the sun for a few minutes every day ameliorate America’s health care crisis? M.M. Drymon is a historian who specializes in the history of human health, environmental change and public policy. Her articles have appeared in the New York Times and the Farm and Mill Gazette. She is the author of Disguised as the Devil: How Lyme disease Created Witches and Changed History and Scotch Irish Foodways in America. The author lives with her family in Maine.Read more