Interest in the etiology of malignant melanoma has increased enor- mously in the last 10 years, after it was realized that the incidence of the cutaneous form of the disease was rising. Treatment of the disease has not improved dramatically, and our best hope for curtailing the rise in mortality and morbidity from the disease appears to be primarily through early detection and, per- haps in the future, through prevention. It is thus very important for the medical community to be able to recognize individuals and groups at high risk of the disease because of either familial and con-...

Significant progress has been made in recent years in understanding the origins of cutaneous maligant melanoma. Knowledge of the relationship between solar radiation and melanoma has changed and it now appears that both the character and timing of exposure may be more important than total cumulative dose in accounting for risk. The melanoma-sunlight model may prove an instructive heuristic exercise for environmental epidemiology, as we currently tend to restrict ourselves to a search for uniform total dose--response relationships between cancers and suspected environmental carcinogens.
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