Day 254 - 22 May 96 - Page 10


     
     1        studies have been conducted, there is a greater body of
     2        evidence available that we can look at to say:  Is there a
     3        relationship or is there not a relationship?  In fact, what
     4        we have now as a body of evidence is more inconsistency,
     5        not greater consistency.
     6
     7   Q.   So when is it that you are referring to that the kind of
     8        scientific community as a whole, as opposed to one or two,
     9        well more than that, but it being just a few people who
    10        were arguing against the general view of a causal
    11        relationship?
    12        A.  I think that scientists have always felt that if you
    13        are going to prove that there is a relationship between A
    14        and B, you need to carry out studies which themselves
    15        confirm that relationship in a consistent fashion.  This
    16        was certainly done following the British Doctors Study with
    17        cigarette smoking and lung cancer.
    18
    19        In fact, as an aside, we now know that the relationship
    20        between disease as a whole and cigarette smoking is much
    21        more complex than was appreciated at that time.  But if we
    22        go back to that time, there was this clear cut relationship
    23        and ----
    24
    25   Q.   There were studies to the contrary on that as well; were
    26        there not?
    27        A.  There were literally one or two and they were not very
    28        scientifically valid studies that were carried out.  It was
    29        certainly with the same enthusiasm that people believed
    30        there was the same relationship as there was between
    31        cigarette smoking and lung cancer as fat and cancer, and
    32        the scientific community set about trying to establish
    33        whether this relationship was indeed valid.
    34
    35        That is when the inconsistencies began to appear, that it
    36        was very difficult in looking at case control studies, even
    37        animal studies, and certainly later on when people began to
    38        do the prospective studies, where one established the
    39        nature of diet and the beginning of the study and then
    40        followed the population of people through.  These studies,
    41        obviously, took time to develop, so they only became
    42        available, information from them only became available, in
    43        the mid to late 1980s, that is correct.  People really
    44        began to question this relationship which had appeared to
    45        be so strong in the 1960s and 1970s.
    46
    47   Q.   So you are saying it was in the mid to late 1980s that the
    48        medical scientific communities decided, or their general
    49        view swung away from there being a causal relationship
    50        between diet and cancer to ---- 
    51        A.  No, I am not saying that. 
    52 
    53   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  That is not what he has just said now.
    54
    55   MS. STEEL:  I am just trying to understand what he is saying;
    56        I cannot follow it.
    57
    58   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  You started by saying "so" as if that is what
    59        he has just said.  He said, "In the mid to late 1980s" ----
    60

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