CARNAL NATION

ABC television affiliate WJLA in Washington, DC ran a four-part series about breast cancer last week that went where no one—except perhaps Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake—has gone before. As part of the series, the station showed two women performing self-exams with their breasts completely uncovered. The report coincided with both the end of National Cancer Month and sweeps week. Many people, such as Wendy Wright of the Concerned Women for America, found the latter event more significant. "It could be done on a model or mannequin," Wright said. "It can be done through diagrams. … This is exploiting women in order to exploit the audience. It's pretty clear that there's one point in doing this, and that is to try and increase their ratings."

The station denies that the segments, which aired on their 5pm and 11pm broadcasts, were merely a ratings play. "We don't think we're going too far," reporter Julie Parker said on Good Morning America. "We are proud of what we have done. There's nothing sexy about this. It's a breast self-exam." On that last point, Parker is exactly right. If you watch either of the segments where the women demonstrate the self-exam technique, they're extremely detatched and clinical, and only marginally more interesting than watching one of the mannequins that Wright would have preferred. In other words, very much a medical procedure, rather than an erotic experience. Susan Brown, director of health education at Susan G. Komen For the Cure, endorsed the broadcast, saying that "Providing these clear-cut instructions, along with more information about breast self-awareness, can also help a woman later during a more private time when she's better able to focus."

Unlike the "wardrobe malfunction" at the 2004 Super Bowl performance by Janet Jackson and Justin Timeberlake, WJLA will likely not be subject to discipline by the FCC; news reports are not subject to the indecency standards that govern other broadcast content.

However, although WJLA emphasizes breast self-exams as a critical part of women's health, they are no longer considered to be as important as they once were, and some medical professionals think that in some cases they may do more harm than good. Last year, the Cochrane Collaboration, which does meta-analyses of medical research, looked at studies covering 400,000 Chinese and Russian women and found no difference in mortality rates between women who did self-exams and those who didn't. Based on those results, the report concluded that "Data from two large trials do not suggest a beneficial effect of screening by (BSE) but do suggest harm in terms of increased numbers of benign lesions identified and an increased number of biopsies performed."