If Vitamin D could be patented, it would be the highest-selling drug- Grant podcast May 2026

"The War on the Sun" — Interview with Dr. W. B. Grant

Format: Podcast interview (~2 hours total, including ~11-minute host introduction). The host frames the episode as a challenge to mainstream dermatology messaging on sun exposure, then interviews vitamin D researcher William B. Grant.

Host's Opening Argument (~11 minutes)

The host argues that sunlight is essential to human health and that avoiding it roughly doubles mortality and cancer risk. He grounds this in evolutionary biology: early humans in equatorial Africa lost body hair around 2 million years ago, and natural selection produced dark, melanin-rich skin as built-in protection while allowing UVB to drive vitamin D synthesis. As humans migrated to higher latitudes, lighter skin evolved independently in European, East Asian, and Neanderthal lineages to permit adequate vitamin D production under weaker, more seasonal sunlight. Modern indoor living, heavy clothing, and constant sunscreen use represent a sharp break from this 2-million-year biological partnership.

The host then traces what he calls dermatology's industrial rebrand. In the mid-1980s, the American Academy of Dermatology engaged a New York advertising firm and repositioned the specialty as warriors against skin cancer. Dermatologists moved from a low-status field to one earning 2–4× the average physician salary. The host cites Grandview Research figures showing the US dermatology market at roughly $8.3 billion in 2024, projected to reach about $14.5 billion by 2030, with private equity rolling up practices and emphasizing high-margin procedures.

He compares sunscreen industry growth to melanoma trends. The US sun-products category went from roughly $300 million in 1986 to about $2 billion today (Australia roughly $300 million); the global sunscreen market is now over $15 billion. Yet age-adjusted melanoma incidence roughly doubled in both the US (11.6 → ~22 per 100,000) and Australia (30 → 60+ per 100,000) over the same period. The host credits a Substack editorial by "A Midwestern Doctor" titled Dermatology's Disastrous War Against the Sun (July 2024) for shaping his thinking, particularly its argument about "diagnostic drift" — broadening definitions and inflating diagnoses while ignoring that most diagnosed skin cancers (about 80% basal cell carcinomas) are rarely fatal, and that melanoma deaths are higher among sun-avoiders.

William Grant's Background

Grant holds a PhD in physics from UC Berkeley and spent 30 years in atmospheric science (SRI International, JPL/Caltech, NASA Langley) doing laser remote sensing of ozone and aerosols. He pivoted to health research in 1996, published the first paper linking diet to Alzheimer's risk in 1997, and in 1999 began connecting solar UVB exposure to reduced risk of 13 cancers via vitamin D production (published 2002). After retiring from NASA in 2004 he founded the nonprofit Sunlight Nutrition and Health Research Center in San Francisco. He has 338 PubMed-indexed publications on vitamin D, plus papers on diet (58) and COVID-19 (28), and in 2020 published the first paper proposing vitamin D for COVID-19 prevention and treatment.

Path Into Vitamin D Research

Grant describes how his Alzheimer's paper began with a 1996 newspaper story noting that Japanese-American men in Hawaii had 2.5× the Alzheimer's rate of native Japanese, which led him to suspect dietary factors.

After publishing that ecological study in 1997, he noticed in NASA cancer atlas data that mortality rates for many cancers were higher in the Northeast US than the Southwest — opposite the gradient of solar UVB, which is asymmetric across the country due to westerly winds, surface elevation, and aerosols. F

ollowing a tip from a NASA librarian about Cedric and Frank Garland's work on UVB and colon cancer, he spent 2.5 years on a 500-region analysis showing inverse correlations between UVB and 13 cancer types. The 2002 paper in Cancer eventually accumulated hundreds of citations, but a follow-up controlling for additional confounders was rejected by Cancer and eight other mainstream journals before being published as conference proceedings in Anticancer Research. Grant attributes this resistance to mainstream journals serving as advertising vehicles for pharmaceutical interests, which compete with cheap nutrient interventions.

Methodological Arguments

Grant defends ecological studies against the standard critique that they don't account for confounders or align with RCTs. He notes that adding confounders to his cancer analysis didn't change the UVB signal, though more recent US data show obesity now overshadowing UVB for several cancers (breast, renal, colorectal) because obesity-driven inflammation can outpace what vitamin D can counteract.

His central methodological criticism of vitamin D RCTs: vitamin D is a nutrient, not a drug. Standard pharmaceutical trial design assumes participants start with none of the substance, but everyone has some baseline vitamin D. Properly designed trials should enroll only deficient participants, withhold vitamin D from controls, give doses high enough to actually raise serum levels meaningfully, and analyze by achieved 25(OH)D rather than intention-to-treat.

He singles out the VITAL trial (Harvard/NIH, 25,000 participants) as deliberately designed to fail: 2,000 IU/day was inadequate, controls were permitted up to 600–800 IU/day plus sun exposure, and the New England Journal of Medicine abstract reported only the headline null result while burying findings in supplements. Even so, all participants saw a 25% reduction in cancer mortality (excluding the first 1–2 years), and those with BMI under 25 saw a 25% reduction in cancer incidence.

He contrasts this with two well-designed trials: a Tufts pre-diabetes study using 4,000 IU/day, which initially showed no effect by intention-to-treat but on reanalysis by achieved level showed roughly 75% reduced conversion to diabetes among those reaching ~115 nmol/L versus those under 75 nmol/L; and an Iranian pregnancy trial in two hospitals where supplementation reduced preeclampsia, gestational diabetes, and preterm delivery by 20–40%.

Skin Cancer Distinctions and the Sun-Avoidance Paradox

Grant agrees with the Midwestern Doctor editorial that lumping skin cancers together is misleading. Squamous cell carcinoma is UVB-driven and surface-level; basal cell carcinoma involves both UVA and UVB; melanoma is primarily UVA-driven and tends to occur on body parts that get intermittent rather than regular exposure.

He cites Pelle Lindqvist's Swedish work showing that women with the highest sun avoidance had mortality 10–30% higher than those with the most sun exposure — comparable in magnitude to smoking. Gradual tanning can build a natural SPF of roughly 2–4 in people who tan well, though redheads with pheomelanin have less protective capacity.

Recommendations and Logistics

Grant favors daily vitamin D3 dosing (sourced from sheep wool lanolin), arguing patented vitamin D2 (ergocalciferol — he names DeLuca and the University of Wisconsin) is less effective and more expensive.

He targets serum 25(OH)D of roughly 100–150 nmol/L for optimal health, well above the Institute of Medicine's 2010–2011 threshold of about 50 nmol/L (which he argues was based on a flawed bone-health interpretation). The Endocrine Society's 2024 update he considers a step backward because it relied on the same flawed RCTs. His January 2025 response paper, now the most-cited 2025 vitamin D paper, draws on observational evidence linking higher vitamin D to reduced risk for 8 of the top 10 US causes of death.

Practical guidance: 2,000 IU/day baseline for everyone, 4,000–5,000 IU/day for those overweight or in winter, with periodic 25(OH)D testing (dried-blood-spot finger-prick tests are reasonably accurate).

To rapidly raise low levels, he suggests a 100,000–200,000 IU loading dose over a week or two before maintenance. Toxicity is rare and signaled by hypercalcemia symptoms; he recounts a case where a manufacturer confused micrograms and milligrams and produced 1,000,000 IU/day capsules, eventually corrected.

Structural Incentives

Grant argues the medical system is built to treat disease rather than prevent it, with financial structures that disfavor cheap, unpatentable nutrients. He cites Vioxx (50,000 cardiovascular deaths after passing standard RCTs) and the suppression of ivermectin during COVID as parallels to vitamin D's marginalization. He references the recent reversal in a Texas physician's case over ivermectin censorship and a Supreme Court decision restraining government suppression of physician speech. He also mentions a claim that Bill Gates funded mass-media campaigns favoring vaccines over vitamin D during COVID.

Australia Specifically

On the Australian paradox (high UV, high vitamin D deficiency), Grant blames overprotective public health messaging — recommendations of only 10–15 minutes of sun exposure and a 50 nmol/L sufficiency threshold. Latitudinal gradients within Australia confirm vitamin D's role:

multiple sclerosis is more common in Tasmania than Queensland, and
esophageal, pancreatic, and ovarian cancers follow the same pattern.

He would advise Australian authorities to raise the sufficiency target, account for skin-type variation (especially for the half of Australians with British/Irish ancestry versus darker-skinned immigrants and Aboriginal populations), and introduce food fortification along the lines of Finland's program from roughly a decade ago. He also references work by Rebecca Mason showing muscle stores 25(OH)D and releases it back into circulation when serum levels drop, helping maintain status through winter.

Closing

Grant's stated motivation: a long-standing commitment, formed at Berkeley in the 1960s, to use scientific ability for public benefit. His financial independence (NASA pension) freed him to pursue unpopular questions. Best contact: Google Scholar, where his papers list his email. The host closes by reframing the episode as an argument for working with biology rather than around it — sunscreen is appropriate for genuinely intense exposure (he uses zinc-based products on long bike rides), but daily blanket use overrides evolutionary signals at significant hidden cost.

Related in VitaminDWiki (58 pages have Grant in the title)

Not Dr. Grant