Everybody knows the effective calorie count of ice cream consumed while standing in front of an open refrigerator is zero.

That's supposed to be funny because it's such a blatant rationalization.

But admit it: It would be so nice if it were true that, every now and then, for just a minute or two, you can manage to pretend that it is. Standing there in front of the fridge contemplating a pint of Haagen-Dazs Dulce de Leche, you achieve the mental state the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge called willing suspension of disbelief. Mmmmmm.

This poetic faith in the impossible is a fine thing when it allows you to hope, while watching "Pretty Woman," that Julia Roberts and Richard Gere will fall truly and deeply in love and live happily ever after. But ignoring the facts whenever you feel like it — aka wishful thinking — can get to be a problem.

Consider tanning. It's the time of year when aspirant prom queens notice how pale and goose-pimply their shoulders look in their strapless prom gowns. And white women of every age, wriggling into bathing suits under the unforgiving greenish fluorescent light of store dressing rooms, are reminded — as any number of bloggers testify — that tan fat looks better than blotchy pinkish-whitish fat. (It's why the white circle on the black background looks bigger than the black circle on the white background.)

But have they been noticing the upheavals in the tanning world over the last couple of years?

• Last year the World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer upgraded ultraviolet light (the kind produced by tanning beds and by the sun) to its highest class of human carcinogens after an analysis of 20-plus epidemiological studies found increased melanoma risk for sun bed users of all ages, and a 75 percent increased risk for those who use tanning devices before age 30.

• In December the U.S. Senate dropped a proposed 5 percent tax on cosmetic surgery — the "Botax" — from its health care bill and replaced it with a 10 percent tax on indoor tanning at the suggestion of the American Academy of Dermatology, which would like to see tanning beds and sunlamps banned outright because of the cancer risk. The new tax puts indoor tanning right up there with cigarettes, alcohol and gambling as officially Bad For You.

• On Jan. 26, to prevent cancer caused by ultraviolet tanning lamps, U.S. Reps. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) and Charlie Dent (R-Pa.) introduced H.R. 4520, The Tanning Bed Cancer Control Act of 2010. Announcing the bill at a press conference the previous day, where they were joined by Cosmopolitan magazine editor Kate White and melanoma survivor and former Miss Maryland Brittany Lietz Cicala, Maloney called tanning beds "the cigarettes of our time: cancer-causing and poorly regulated."

• Also on Jan. 26, the Indoor Tanning Association agreed to a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission that bars it from "further deception." The FTC charged the trade group, which represents tanning facilities and suppliers of tanning equipment, with portraying the use of tanning beds as safe and beneficial. The ad campaign that got the FTC's attention denied the skin cancer risks of tanning and claimed that indoor tanning is approved by the government and is safer than tanning outdoors. It claimed that "the risks of not getting enough ultraviolet light far outweigh the hypothetical risk of skin cancer."

• On March 25, the Food and Drug Administration's General and Plastic Surgery Devices Panel heard additional testimony from scientists and others, and recommended that the FDA reclassify tanning beds and tighten regulations on their use. (Currently, like tongue depressors and rubber gloves, they're Class I medical devices assumed to pose minimal risk.)

So it's pretty much unanimous: Lying in the sun, or in a sun bed, long enough to turn your skin tan is nuts. You could get melanoma, which could kill you. (Its incidence is on the rise and it's the most common form of cancer for young adults 25-29 years old.) Or you could get basal cell or squamous cell cancer, which is less likely to kill you, but quite likely to require that you have bits of your face surgically removed every few months or years as you age until you look like a patchwork quilt, only not as pretty. And you can be sure of getting lines and wrinkles and splotches and sags and bags before your time.

Still, 25 million people in the U.S. use sun beds each year, and a million or two use them as often as 100 times a year. Maybe they're betting they won't get the cancer and, by the time they get the wrinkles, they won't mind.

Or maybe they're addicted. A study published last month in the Archives of Dermatology found that 90 of 229 university students who had used indoor tanning facilities met certain criteria for addiction to indoor tanning and reported greater symptoms of anxiety and greater use of alcohol, marijuana and other substances than those who didn't meet such criteria.

Or maybe they're just not paying attention.

Meanwhile, despite the Indoor Tanning Association's promise to the FTC to fess up about the hazards of UV, the tanning salon websites I checked, as well as the Tanning Association's own site, tend to portray all this scary talk about cancer as either a plot by the makers of sunscreen to sell more lotion or a plot by dermatologists to portray themselves as serious cancer-fighting doctors, not just dabblers who deal with dry skin. Or else it's a plot to deprive Americans of the many wonderful health benefits of artificial sunshine, including the vitamin D they need to prevent osteoporosis and colon cancer.

Write to Patricia McLaughlin c/o Universal Uclick, 1130 Walnut St., Kansas City, MO 64106 or patsy.mcl@verizon.net.