Daniel Yarosh likes to describe himself as "tanning challenged." Pale and lightly freckled, with blue eyes and brown hair, he is religious about wearing sunscreen lotion and encourages the same behavior in his children. His goal, he tells them, is to be "the whitest man on the planet."
In the United States, ultraviolet rays cause most of the 1.3 million cases of skin cancer diagnosed every year. Melanomas, the deadliest of these cancers, are on the rise. Photograph by Martin Parr/Magnum Photos.
Yarosh's caution stems in large part from his profession. He is a photobiologist, expert in the precise ways in which solar radiation ravages human skin. As founder of AGI Dermatics, a small biotech firm in Freeport, New York, Yarosh has been working for 25 years on a bold new treatment for sun damage: an after-sun lotion that can reverse the molecular havoc ultraviolet rays wreak within skin cells.
