From
Maui TV News
for the week of November 27, 2008

"There's no such thing as a safe tan." That's the word of renowned dermatologist Dr. George Martin. On an island like Maui, though, it's unlikely that people will be able to stay out of the sun. The result: skin cancers. Lots of them.

But - after a half-century of skin cancer treatments, the newest weapon against the effects of ultraviolet sunlight is light, itself. This week Maui TV News talks with Doctor Martin during one of his "stops" at home during his worldwide quest to spread the word about Photo Dynjamic Therapy.

A complete transcript of the report follows.

J: ONE OF THE MOST COMMON - AND MOST PREVENTABLE FORMS OF CANCER IN THE WORLD IS SKIN CANCER. AND ON AN ISLAND LIKE MAUI - WHERE SUN WORSHIP IS PART OF THE PACKAGE, ONE DERMATOLOGIST IS SHEDDING NEW LIGHT ON THE FIGHT AGAINST SKIN CANCER.

(VO) HOW CAN YOU LIVE ON MAUI AND NOT BE OUT IN THE SUN? AND - WHILE VISITOR NUMBERS MAY BE WAY DOWN IN 2008, STILL THE VAST MAJORITY OF PEOPLE WHO COME TO MAUI MOSTLY COME HERE TO DO THIS. AFTER ALL, HOW CAN YOU GO HOME FROM YOUR MAUI VACATION WITHOUT THE HEALTHY GLOW OF A MAUI SUNTAN.

George Martin, MD, Dermatologist

GM06: "There is no safe tan. And basically when you see a tanned skin, you know that person has been exposed to enough ultraviolet light to cause skin cancer."///

MAUI DERMATOLOGIST DOCTOR GEORGE MARTIN HAS SEEN AND TREATED HIS SHARE OF SKIN CANCERS FOR MANY YEARS. HE WAS DRAWN TO MAUI BY THE ALLURE OF THE SEA, THE SURF AND, BECAUSE OF HIS CHOSEN PROFESSION - THE SUN. AND YOU COMBINE A LOT OF PEOPLE WITH A LOT OF SUN, AND YOU GET A LARGE AT-RISK POPULATION. AT RISK FOR SKIN CANCER AND PRE-CANCERS.

GM04: "Pre-cancers pretty much dominate among fair-skinned individuals who spend a lifetime in the sun. I've seen it in patients as early as their early 20s. "///

AND DOCTOR MARTIN HAS TREATED A MELANOMA PATIENT WHO WAS JUST EIGHT YEARS OLD. IDENTIFYING YOUR RISK FACTOR FOR SKIN CANCER EARLY IS CRUCIAL. CAUGHT EARLY, BASAL CELL CANCERS CAN BE REMOVED WITH AN 80 TO 90 PERCENT RECOVERY RATE. AND DETECTED EARLY, EVEN SQUAMOUS CELL AND MELANOMA - THE DEADLIEST FORM OF SKIN CANCER - CAN BE STOPPED IN THEIR TRACKS.

STILL, PEOPLE WILL TEMPT FATE BECAUSE IT WILL NEVER HAPPEN TO YOU, RIGHT? WELL, IT'S HAPPENING MORE THAN EVER.

GM05: "Yeah, what we've found in the United States - and throughout the world actually among populations of caucasians who live in sunny areas, that the incidence of these actenic keretoses is increasing at the rate of three to five percent over the last decade. That's epidemic.

YES, EPIDEMIC. AND THE INCREASE IN NUMBERS HAS LED DOCTORS TO INCREASE THEIR EFFORTS TOWARD FIGHTING THEM. DOCTORS LIKE MARTIN HAVE RECOGNIZED THAT THERE IS ALMOST NEVER JUST ONE POTENTIALLY CANCEROUS SPOT - BUT USUALLY MANY OF THEM. THE LIQUID NITROGEN TREATMENT DATES BACK TO THE 1950S. AND THE TOPICAL CHEMO THERAPHY HAS BEEN IN USE FOR ABOUT HALF THAT LONG. IT WORKS - BUT THE ISOLATION AND DISCOMFORT ARE JUST NOT PRACTICAL FOR MOST PEOPLE. NOW THERE'S A TREATMENT THAT'S COMPLETELY REVOLUTIONARY AND COMPLETELY GREEN - OR IN THIS CASE - BLUE.

GM01: "We're one of the innovators of a new theaterapy that was introduced in the United States about four or five years ago. It's called PhotoDynamic Therapy. PhotoDynamic Theatery is a treatment where we apply a liquid to the skin to treat pre-cancerous lesions. And we activate that liquid with a special light - a blue light. And it results in the destruction of the pre-cancerous lesions."

BEFORE THIS NON-INVASINCE PROCESS, THERE HAVE BEEN TWO SKIN CANCER TREATMENTS USED AROUND THE WORLD.

GM02: "Here to fore and for decades we've been treating pre-cancerous lesions with nitrogen - liquid nitrogen. And we use a squirt bottle and a Q-tip and we would freeze these little precancers off the face/////

GM02-b "...And, over time, pre-cancers would mount on the face and it became impossible to freeze tens or even hundreds off the face, we started resorting to the use of special creams and these creams were topical chemo-therapeutic agens that you basically apply once or twice a day for a couple of weeks and they would destroy the pre-cancers.///and in doing so, the skin looked pretty...pretty bad.///

BAD ENOUGH THAT MOST PATIENTS WOULD HAVE TO LIMIT OR ELIMINATE BEING SEEN IN PUBLIC UNTIL THE HARSE CHEMICALS DID THEIR JOB - WHICH COULD TAKE UP TO A MONTH. SCIENTISTS LIKE MARTIN KNEW THERE HAD TO BE A BETTER WAY. WHILE RESEARCHING POSSIBLE NEW TREATMENTS, THEY DISCOVERED SOMETHING TROUBLING ABOUT WHAT THEY THOUGHT WERE JUST PRE-CANCEROUS ROUGH SPOTS ON THE SKIN.

GM03: "So what's happened over the past few years that we've recognized that what we calling "pre-cancerous," that actenic keratosis is not a pre-cancer. It's actually the earliest form of squamous cell cancer - which, in ints most invasive form kills about 3,000 people every year in the United States."

AGE HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH IT. REGULAR CHECKUPS AND EARLY DETECTION - AT ANY AGE - OF ANY KIND OF SKIN CANCER ENSURES THE BEST ODDS OF TREATING IT, AND SURVIVING IT. BUT DOCTOR MARTIN ISN'T OUT TO SIMPLY SCARE ANYONE WHO HAS EVER BEEN CAUGHT FOR A MOMENT IN THE SUN - OR EVEN HAD A BAD SUNBURN OR TWO.

GM07: "But that alone is not enough to drive a cell to skin cancer. There has to be constant promotion - or a promoter - that takes that mutated cell - that mutated DNA - and promotes it into a skin cancer."

THE COMMON FACTOR IN ALL THE DECADES OF SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH INTO SKIN CANCER CAUSES AND TREATMENT:

GM07b: "Sunlight is the only carcinogen - and we can think of the sun light as a carcingen - that is both initiator and promoter."

POINT MADE: YOU GET SKIN CANCER FROM THE SUN. WHILE THAT'S NOT A REVELEATION TO MOST PEOPLE, TREATING THE EARLY FORMS OF SKIN WITH LIGHT IS REVOLUTIONARY - AND IT'S ORGANIC. THE LIQUID APPLIED TO THE AFFECTED AREA - KNOWN AS A-L-L, ALREADY EXISTS IN US.

GM08: "It's a naturally occuring molecule. It's found in blood cells in your body and many other cells in your body. We take that molecule and - in high concentrations we apply it to the skin. And we find is that skin absorbs it. And what is most interesting is that precancerous lesions, actenic keretoses and skin cancers absorb it preferentially over normal skin. So, when the skin cancer, or precancerous cells absorbs the ALA, it becomes a very light sensitive molecule. We take advantage of that. We shine a blue light on the molecule and it results in a photo-toxic reaction. It releases free radicals and it blows up the cells which concentrate that liquid. We call it Photo Dynamic Therapy."

IT NOT ONLY ALL HAPPENS WITHIN THE TIME OF AN OFFICE VISIT - BUT, UNLIKE OLDER TREATMENTS - IT DOESN'T LEAVE A MARK.

GM09: "We have never seen a scar with Photo Dynamic Therapy. And when I discuss this with my colleagues around the world, none of us has ever seen scarring as a result of Photo Dynamic Therapy."

AN ORGANIC COMPOUND, TREATMENT IN A SINGLE DAY AND NO SCARRING. IT'S AN IDEA THAT A DERMATOLOGIST DREAMS ABOUT - AND THAT'S WHY DOCTOR MARTIN IS TRAVELLING THE WORLD - TO TELL AS MANY PEOLE AS WILL LISTEN - THAT THIS DREAM HAS COME TRUE.

GM10: "We've been in Korea, we've been in Boston. I'm headed off to Israel to speak and I'm getting to do a road trip across trhe United States lecturing at various universities and teaching centers."

AND THE EFFECTS OF PHOTO DYNAMIC THERAPY ARE WIDE RANGING - AS IT IS NOW BEING USED TO TREAT SEVERE ACNE AND OTHER SKIN CONDITIONS - AGAIN WITH NO HARSH CHEMICALS OR SCARRING. THE P-D-T MACHINE AT DOCTOR MARTIN'S KIHEI CLINIC IS ONE OF TWO ON THE ISLAND. THERE ARE ONE OR TWO ON O'AHU - BUT HIS MISSION IS TO SEE THEM IN USE EVERYWHERE. RIGHT NOW, THERE ARE ABOUT 12 HUNDRED P-D-T UNITS IN USE ACROSS THE NATION.

STILL, PEOPLE LIKELY WON'T STOP WORSHIPPING THE SUN. BUT, DOCTOR MARTIN HOPES - THOSE WHO HAVE SHIED AWAY FROM GETTING A SKIN CHECKUP FOR FEAR OF GOING UNDER THE KNIFE - WILL SEE THE LIGHT.

GM11: "Well, when we were using liquid nitrogen we'd tell our patients that we want to destroy these actenic keretoses, we'd tell them it was better to freeze than to cut. Now what we're telling them is that it's all about the liquid and the light as opposed to the scalpel."

(On-cam tag) IF YOU'RE A PATIENT OF DOCTOR MARTIN - AND MANY OF US ARE - YOU KNOW HE NOT ONLY WORKS AT THE SPEED OF LIGHT, BUT HE'S ALSO EXTREMELY BUSY. ON TOP OF HANDLING A BURGEONING CASELOAD OF PATIENTS, TRAVELLING THE WORLD TO SPEAK ABOUT THE FIGHT AGAINST THE SPREAD OF SKIN CANCER - AND FINDING TIME TO SURF AND ROW EVERY CHANCE HE GETS - HE'S ALSO FOUND THE TIME TO DEVELOP HIS OWN UNIQUE FORMULA OF SUN BLOCK. AND HE'S HOSTING A WORLD DERMATOLOGY SYMPOSIUM IN JANUARY IN WAILEA. TO LEARN MORE ABOUT P-D-T, THE SUNBLOCK AND DOC MARTIN, GO TO MAUI TV NEWS DOT COM AND FOLLOW THE LINK TO THIS WEEK'S STORIES.

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