Day 039 - 20 Oct 94 - Page 19
1 A. Indeed I am not. Those are his adumbrations on the
2 text.
3
4 Q. Is there anything in No. 10 or No. 11 which you feel it is
5 important to point the court at? Obviously, the English
6 translation would be the most helpful bit.
7 A. Indeed. The English translation of 10 is at the bottom
8 of page 64 continuing over on page 65, and in the Shtenberg
9 and Gavrilenko paper it is in the centre of page 73
10 translated into English.
11
12 Q. There is nothing that adds to what you have already said?
13 A. Not in those documents. All I would add is that one of
14 the continuing issues of discussion have been the extent to
15 which the Amaranth used in the Russian tests was chemically
16 pure or whether there may have been impurities and whether
17 those impurities might have been responsible for the
18 adverse effects.
19
20 My colleague, who is now in Russia, has, as far as I can
21 establish, attempted to find out from the Russian archives
22 the precise specifications of the material that was tested,
23 but has not managed to do so.
24
25 Q. The conclusion on No. 10 at the very last line
26 is: "Chemically pure Amaranth produces carcinogenous
27 effect of moderate intensity" -----?
28 A. "... whereas [other compounds] are mildly
29 carcinogenous." That is right. As you observe, Adrianova
30 has repeatedly stated -- I mean, she states there and she
31 has subsequently repeated that the Amaranth she used was
32 chemically pure. She has not ever provided West European
33 or North American scientists with a sample of the material
34 upon which the tests were conducted.
35
36 I suspect that fact alone is being used as grounds for the
37 continued suggestion, the allegation that it was not pure,
38 but that is not a suggestion that Adrianova has ever
39 herself been willing to accept.
40
41 MR. JUSTICE BELL: They could not get hold of a specimen of it,
42 could they? They tried. There may be various reasons for
43 that, but you could not have an independent check that it
44 was pure?
45 A. No. This was during the Cold War. There was precious
46 little co-operation in those days across the iron curtain
47 in these matters.
48
49 MR. MORRIS: Amaranth has been banned in USA, USSR, Yugoslavia,
50 Norway, Sweden, Finland and Austria. Have those countries
51 banned Amaranth on the strength of the tests which you have
52 referred to?
53 A. The USA and the then Soviet Union, yes, well, the
54 Soviet Union banned it by reference to Adrianova's results
55 and those of Shtenberg and Gavrilenko. The US took the
56 Russian data into account, but also their own studies,
57 particularly the study by Collins and others, then working
58 at the Food and Drug Administration.
59
60 But the ban in Scandinavia was primarily -- well, is part
