Celebrity Prostate Exams Too Much Reality TV?

Sept. 4, 2008— -- Forget strapping on a plastic wristband or plastering a ribbon sticker on his car. Actor Brad Garrett of "Everybody Loves Raymond" is going all the way to raise cancer awareness.

Tomorrow evening, audiences can see Garrett bend over and get a rectal prostate exam during the multi-network celebrity extravaganza "Stand Up For Cancer."

"Well, how do you not play a part in something so crucial as the battle against cancer?" Garrett told ABCNews.com. "I was honored to be asked to participate, and a humorous skit about a prostate exam to heighten awareness and prevention was right up my alley. No pun intended."

It was director Laura Ziskin who reached out to Garrett to demonstrate the screening, according to Lynn Padilla, Ziskin's office manager. Typically, the exam involves a patient bending over and a doctor probing the rectum with a finger to feel for abnormalities in the prostate gland.

Ziskin's office is keeping the details of what exactly the cameras will show on national TV a surprise, but promises "It will be funny."

Despite the humor, Padilla said the goal is to raise awareness about the exam among middle-aged men.

"That's what we're hoping, and while that segment is on, we'll also show a lot of information about prostate cancer," said Padilla. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's latest statistics, 189,075 men in this country were diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2004, and 29,002 men died of the disease. Only lung cancer causes more cancer deaths in men.

Garrett's prostate "exam" may be the first in network news, but he's not the first to use celebrity to raise cancer-screening awareness. In 2000, Katie Couric underwent a full colonoscopy to raise awareness of colon cancer, and many doctors noticed a "Couric effect" boom in cancer screenings afterward.

"There is no doubt that publicity about celebrities coming down with cancer or other serious illnesses often leads many people to come in for screening and testing," said Dr. J. Jacques Carter, assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School in Boston.

Carter remembers the mammogram boom after news of first lady Betty Ford's breast cancer broke in 1973, and his colleagues at Harvard honored Katie Couric for her colon cancer prevention work.

"I would love to see the "Garrett Effect" show up a few years down the line," said Carter. "However, whether Brad Garrett's DRE [digital rectal exam] will do for prostate cancer screening what Katie Couric's colonoscopy did for colon cancer screening cannot be predicted."