This story is a truly tragic cautionary tale.
A 42-year-old former model in the UK, Debi Gibson, has been given just weeks to live after developing eye cancer that has now spread to her liver.
The shocking prognosis comes after she refused to wear protective goggles while frequently using a solarium in her youth.
Gibson, who once starred in British soap Eastenders, says she wants to use the remainder of her life to campaign for sunbeds to be banned.
“I want something good to come out of my death,” she said, the Huffington Post UK reports.
“All this because I wanted to be brown. I would like sunbeds to be banned.”
She explained that she chose not to wear the goggles because she didn’t want to develop tan lines around her eyes.
“There is this pressure when you are modelling or in the acting profession to be the perfect colour.”
“I saved up the money myself when I was 14 to buy a sunbed and had it at my parent’s house. I used it all the time, back then there weren’t any guidelines around, people thought this was the safest way to tan.”
The mother of one says she is dreading having to leave her daughter behind.
“She (my daughter) knows it all. She doesn’t understand everything, she just knows that mummy is going to go to heaven soon, that mummy has a nasty disease called cancer and it is going to kill her,” she said.
Gibson stopped using solariums in 2005, after hearing stories of the link between solarium tanning and cancer — but she was diagnosed with choroidal melanoma, a form of eye cancer, after suffering blurred vision in 2012.
Surgeons removed the left eye a year later after chemotherapy refused to kill the growth, but she learned the cancer had nevertheless spread to her liver earlier this year.
This is a video made with a 27-year-old Melbourne woman who – in 2007 – lost her battle with skin cancer. Clare’s message – no tan is worth dying for.
If you or someone you love has cancer and needs support, you can visit the Cancer Council here.
Every state in Australia has now banned – or is planning to ban – sunbeds.
Top Comments
She got eye cancer from not wearing goggles in the tanning bed... why not instead require use of goggles? Not a logical jump to ban the beds. Like others have mentioned, tanning beds do have some health benefits, and banning them for all people, including adults who have the right to live their own lives, is an overreach of government power.
For instance, I am not a drug addict, alcoholic or compulsive gambler, but there are many who are, and many drugs, alcohol and lotteries are still legal.
One of my favorite quotes (and I'm paraphrasing here): I'm on a diet, so you're not allowed to eat donuts.
In Dublin (I suppose it's similar in the UK), you can have *unlimited* use of a solarium in a so-called beauty salon for 50 Euro for a week. For some people, there's a melanoma right there in 1 or 2 weeks use, if you go often enough. As a lot of Celts would; the Irish hate that they are so pale & some of them would do anything to quickly tan-up for the summer. Particularly that there is no knowledge or warnings over there about the almost certain damage that a solarium will do to your body at some stage if you use one. One Irish lad even asked me (a nurse) if he was low on Vit D (because of low exposure to the sun) would he be able to get enough Vit D out of the use of a solarium? I told him that the only thing you'll get out of one of those was a melanoma....& went on to explain to him how serious & potentially deadly they are.