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Belinda Stronach is the latest in a long line of women who say breast self-exams saved their lives by catching their cancer early.

There's only one problem with that inspirational story: Breast self-exams don't work.

According to several long-term studies, including a 10-year study of 267,000 women, there is absolutely no difference in survival rates between women who perform regular self-exams and those who don't.

In the case of breast cancer, scientific truth runs smack into the personal truth of Ms. Stronach and countless other cancer survivors who firmly believe in the importance of self-exams.

"You get one case like this, and that one story will trump 20 years of scientific studies," says Barron Lerner, a medical professor at Columbia University in New York and author of The Breast Cancer Wars. "Scientific evidence says doing breast self-examinations makes no sense. ... It's really a cultural phenomenon more than a medical phenomenon."

Toronto doctor Nancy Baxter published the groundbreaking 2001 article challenging breast self-exams in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.

Dr. Baxter reviewed the available research, including the Seattle-based Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center's study of 267,000 Chinese women. Half the women got extensive training on how to examine their own breasts, and follow-up lessons and reminders.

After 10 years, the women in the self-exam group had the same rate of cancer detection and cancer deaths as the control group.

Other studies in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Russia and Finland also found no evidence that breast self-exams save lives.

The problem is that by the time a lump is large enough to detect during a self-exam, the cancer is already pretty advanced, says Dr. Baxter, a surgeon and assistant professor at St. Michael's Hospital.

Whether a woman notices a lump during a self-exam or finds it a couple of months later while she's getting dressed, her chances for survival are not improved, she says.

Dr. Baxter stresses that women shouldn't ignore lumps or changes to their breasts. Go to your family doctor if you find a lump, she says. But understand, she adds, that regular self-exams simply don't help your chances of surviving that lump if it turns out to be cancer.

Six years after her article was published, Dr. Baxter is still perplexed at the vehement reaction it provoked. People, especially breast cancer survivors, felt betrayed by the notion that self-exams don't help.

"Breast self-examination is really part of some cancer survivors' narrative," she said in an interview yesterday. "To tell them it doesn't work is a direct threat to their narrative, and that leads to people reacting very negatively."

Giving up self-exams seems to some women a bit like giving in to cancer. For women under 50 who don't get routine mammograms, says Diana Ermel, president of the Canadian Breast Cancer Network, self-exams are really the only screening tool aside from yearly doctors' check-ups.

"There is no other alternative, so in our minds, it's a no-brainer," says Ms. Ermel. She discovered an invasive tumour that was just 1.5 centimetres in diameter while doing a breast self-exam 14 years ago; after surgery, radiation and treatment with tamoxifen she is now cancer-free.

The benefits to possibly finding cancer early, in her mind, clearly outweigh the potential downside of unnecessary biopsies associated with self-exams.

"Women should learn to do breast self-exams," Ms. Ermel says.

Canadian doctors seem to agree.

A 2005 study published in Canadian Family Physician found that while 88 per cent of doctors knew about the research showing breast self-exams don't affect mortality rates, only 16 per cent had stopped telling women to do regular self-exams.

And Dr. Lerner doesn't expect that to change any time soon.

Even if breast self-exams confer a false feeling of empowerment, he says, many women and their doctors figure that's better than nothing.