Skin Cancer Survivor’s Treatment Picture Goes Viral

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A picture that may be hard to look at includes a message that is going viral.

Skin cancer survivor Tawny Willoughby is in both pictures.

The selfie on the right is one she shared on Facebook during her treatment for basal and squamous cell carcinoma.

She wanted to show her face bloodied with scabs and blisters to deter friends and family from using tanning beds and to encourage them to wear sunscreen.

Willoughby was diagnosed at 21 with skin cancer.

She says she used a tanning bed four to five times a week during high school.

Now at 27 and a mother, she hopes her story will save lives.

The picture has been shared nearly 50,000 times on Facebook.

The American Academy of Dermatology says one in five Americans will develop skin cancer in their lifetime.

Exposure to tanning beds increases the risk of melanoma, which is the deadliest form of skin cancer.
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The Food and Drug Administration is proposing relaxing its blood donation guidelines for gay and bisexual men.

Currently, there is a full ban against men who have had sex with men from donating blood.

Under the proposed recommendations, they would be able to donate after abstaining from sex for a year.

The recommendations are now under a 60-day public comment period.

Later on, the FDA will issue its final rules.

The blanket ban has been in place since 1985 which was near the start of the AIDS crisis.

It banned any man who had sex with another man since 1977.

Gay rights advocates have called the ban discriminatory.

Many LGBT advocates have qualms with the new policy because someone in a monogamous gay relationship would still be banned.
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Have you ever wondered why some people who try to quit smoking succeed, while others just can’t seem to break the habit, even though they want to?

A new study suggests that some hopeful quitters are just more mentally equipped to handle the challenge than others.

Researchers looked at the brain activity of a group of 85 heavy smokers using a method called FMRI, or functional magnetic resonance imaging.

They found that people who had stronger connections between two regions of the brain were more likely to be successful at giving up smoking, at least for 10 weeks.

One region of the brain involved in reward, the other in controlling impulsive behavior.