Should we or shouldn't we?
Almost everywhere you look there is controversy over whether breast self examination (BSE) really works as a cancer detection method or not. WIXT (News channel 9 in Syracuse) actually had a segment devoted to promoting the practice a few years ago. They still have many guides on how to do BSE and why every woman by age 20 should be doing it (Bluestreak Media np). Hundreds of newspaper and magazine articles have been written about the subject, but how many people, men included, actually have all of the necessary information? Pro-BSE doctors and scientists claim that many lives have been saved. But anti-BSE doctors and scientists say that there is no evidence at all to support BSE in its effectiveness of detecting breast cancer. Yet there is another point of view, in which it is believed that even though BSE is not helpful in detecting cancer, it is still important to do (The Associated Press A5). This is because a woman should know her body well enough to be able to know when something is not normal. They believe BSE to be a way of making a woman feel better about herself and to feel in control (DeNoon np). Most lumps though, are found doing every-day petty jobs like washing the dishes or scrubbing the toilet, and not by
Why should we feel guilty for not doing something, if in reality, it does not help. When something is so lacking in evidence, it should be up to the woman to decide whether to comply or not. Who is really needed is a surgeon, because as Doctor Love says, they have "educated fingers" and can usually feel when something is wrong (318-319). This method tries to discover cancer cells before they actually turn into cancer. A little card that is posted in the shower is not going to show you how to do this. If BSE does save lives then are all the other things that are done really more important than your life?Women also do not perform BSE because they do not believe they can do it correctly. The extracted fluid is then taken to a lab and analyzed, to be sure if the cells were indeed cancer. "Thirty percent of all precancers will ever become cancers. A procedure called "Ductal Lavage" founded by Dr. Sure they can feel a lump just as the women herself can, but they usually cannot say if it is a normal lump or not. If efficient BSE can help in the early detection of breast cancer, why aren't women being taught how to do them correctly? The whole goal of BSE is not to find cancer; it is to know what is normal and what is not. The facts are that not enough evidence has been shown to prove that BSE save lives; what evidence we do have shows that those you do perform BSE have a higher percentage of benign biopsies (Willis 2). Since more fast growing tumors show up in younger women, it would appear to make more sense for those women to be screened more often, or, at least, just as often as the older women. There is light at the end of the tunnel though, because there has been a new method just recently added to the list of early detectors.
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Acceptance Essays
