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 doing a mandatory ceremony every month (Love 317). Besides if you do find a lump it's nothing but apprehension and anxiety while the next steps are taken, such as a mammogram, and sometimes, not all ways, followed by a biopsy (Zuger F1).
             And this fear is exactly why many women don't comply with the recommendation, simply because they are afraid of what they will find (Love 317). If you don't have cancer, that's just fine; but if you do it will only get worse as time goes on. Still, there are also women who have a high risk of getting the disease and are so worked up about the fact that their mother had cancer, and their grandmother had cancer, and so on and so forth, that sometimes ...