WASHINGTON -- Two days after she disclosed her private battle with cancer, U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz began championing legislation that calls for spending $45 million over the next five years to boost awareness of breast cancer risks among younger women.

''It is my hope that by sharing my story, we will pass the [bill] and further reduce the death rate of young women diagnosed with breast cancer,'' the Weston lawmaker said at the time, surrounded by breast-cancer treatment and research activists.

But the effort has attracted surprising criticism: A leading breast cancer prevention researcher and the National Breast Cancer Coalition have panned the legislation as unnecessary and even potentially harmful. The coalition wrote to Wasserman Schultz that the bill ``presumes we know what to tell these women about prevention, risk reduction and early detection. We do not.''

And in a letter this week to the bill's Senate sponsor, the director of the Division of Cancer Etiology at the City of Hope Comprehensive Cancer Center, Leslie Bernstein, warns the bill ``does too much HARM!''

''It sounds wonderful on the surface,'' wrote Bernstein, a 2007 recipient of the Komen for the Cure Brinker Award, ``but cannot help reduce the burden of breast cancer in young women.''

She added that science has ''NO EVIDENCE-BASED methods to lower young women's risk'' and that the bill could provide women with ``a false sense of control.''

Marcia Stein, the chief executive officer of the Young Survival Coalition, which was involved in drafting the bill, contends the legislation will help young women better protect themselves.

''The intent of the legislation has been lost,'' Stein said of the criticism. ``The intent is to teach women good breast health and allow them to be better advocates for themselves.''

CALLED `MISGUIDED'

The controversy appeared in the April 10 edition of The Cancer Letter, an influential cancer newsletter, which highlighted opposition to the bill, quoting researchers including Donald Berry, chairman of the Biostatics Department at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, who called the legislation ``misguided.''

Berry said in a telephone interview Friday that he worries the legislation could spark fear. He notes that breast cancer in women under 40 is very rare and that most studies indicate that beyond quitting smoking, there are no steps to take to reduce risk.

''I buy into exercising and eating well and not becoming obese, but the evidence associated with it for reducing risk of cancer is really quite slim,'' Berry said. ``What bothers me is going out into the masses and getting them to worry about something that just may not be worth worrying about.''

Bernstein wrote that the bill's emphasis on breast self-examinations is also misplaced, noting that all young women have bumps in their breasts and ``recommending breast self-exam will cause fear, false-positive results of various screenings, unneeded biopsies, and mistrust of the medical establishment.''

A spokesman for Wasserman Schultz, however, said the national education campaign proposed in the bill would be created by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other experts in the field.

`WHAT GETS SAID'

''Their concern is that we don't know what to say to young women. Well, we're not going to be dictating what gets said,'' said spokesman Jonathan Beeton, who said the legislation was developed after consulting with a number of breast-cancer organizations. ``It's going to be the CDC and cancer experts determining what information should be distributed and targeted to young women.''

Beeton noted that Wasserman Schultz, who had both breasts removed after detecting a lump through a self-examination, ''believes strongly from her own personal experience'' that many physicians and young women don't realize that young women can be diagnosed with breast cancer.

''At the end of the day,'' Wasserman Schultz wrote on her website publicizing the bill, ``The old saying rings true: Knowledge is power.''