President Cautions Other ‘Sun Worshipers’ : Spot on Reagan’s Nose Was Mild Cancer

Advising fellow sun worshipers to “give up their dreams of a good tan,” President Reagan announced Monday that the tissue removed from his nose last week was a sun-induced skin cancer.

The President, answering questions from a handful of reporters in the Oval Office, identified the tiny lump as a basal cell carcinoma, the least dangerous and most common form of cancer among whites.

No Threat to Life

Dr. Stephen Katz, chief of dermatology at the National Cancer Institute, said in an interview that such a cancer “presents no threat to Ronald Reagan’s or anyone else’s life” and has no relation to the cancerous growth removed from the President’s colon on July 13. The biggest threat from a basal cell carcinoma is disfigurement, the doctor said.

Nevertheless, Reagan said that it was “a little heartbreaking” to learn of his skin cancer “because all my life I’ve lived with a coat of tan, dating back to my lifeguard days (as a college student). That’s why I didn’t have to wear makeup when I was in the movies. But now I’m told that I must not expose myself to the sun anymore.”

Reagan, 74, whose fair skin comes from Irish ancestry, recalled that he has spent much of his life in the Southern California sun. And he said he hopes other sun worshipers will learn a lesson from what has happened to him.

‘Stop Broiling’

“I don’t mind telling you all this,” he said of the skin cancer, “because I know that medicine has been waging a great campaign to try and convince people to stop broiling themselves in the sun . . . . So, if I can contribute any by saying: ‘Here I am, a veteran (of tanning) all my life, and it took a long time for it to finally have an effect, but for others to give up their dreams of a good tan, because evidently this is what causes (skin cancer).’ ”

Reagan was in good spirits during his first session with a group of reporters since his abdominal surgery. And, by the look of his unusually pale skin, the President has been following his doctors’ advice to stay out of the sun.

Reagan said, however, that he still plans to resume riding horses--presumably under the shade of a large cowboy hat--when he begins a three-week vacation at his Santa Barbara ranch Sunday.

‘Violated All the Rules’

The President referred to his cancerous bump as “for want of a better word, a ‘pimple.’ ” He added: “I violated all the rules. I picked at it, and I ‘squoze’ it and so forth, and messed myself up a little bit.” He said that the lump seemed to be healing, until he was hospitalized and it was covered by tape that held a tube in his nose.

When the tape was taken off, he said, the lump “was quite swollen and inflamed . . . . Then my little friend that I had played with began to come back. I went over to the doctors for my weekly allergy shot, called attention to this matter and it was snipped off.”

Reagan said that he had not learned until last weekend at the presidential retreat at Camp David, Md., that the removed lump had been a basal cell carcinoma.