Day 269 - 25 Jun 96 - Page 36


     
     1        friends might take objection to that.
     2
     3   Q.   I am going to put to it you that you are probably about
     4        right?
     5        A.  Yes.
     6
     7   Q.   It does mean this, does it not, that so far as the
     8        relationship between diet and cancer is concerned, anything
     9        like confidence is something like 40 years away, if that is
    10        right?
    11        A.  Could you please repeat that?
    12
    13   Q.   Anything like certainty or confidence about a causative
    14        relationship, if there be one, between diet and cancer is
    15        something like 40 years in the future?
    16        A.   No, I do not agree with that, Mr. Rampton.  I think in
    17        1953 there was a body of people who were convinced that
    18        saturated fats were a major cause of heart disease and
    19        several of them had been writing previous to that and
    20        indeed experiments were being done with cholesterol in the
    21        1920's on diet and heart disease.  I think there was -- the
    22        beginnings -- what I really meant by saying that the cancer
    23        research corresponds to that sort of date, is that there
    24        was very strong epidemiological evidence at that time,
    25        namely the seven country studies which is well-known, and
    26        there was the beginnings of mechanistic explanations from
    27        the experimental laboratory.
    28
    29        What we have with cancer of the breast, colon and prostate
    30        is very strong epidemiological evidence, in my view, and
    31        the beginning of experimental explanations for that
    32        epidemiological contrast from country to country.  That
    33        actually leads to quite a degree of confidence.
    34
    35   Q.   I will not say, Professor, that you are a voice crying in
    36        the wilderness because one sincerely hopes that you are
    37        right and people take preventive measures, but what you are
    38        saying is not, for example, what the WHO says about these
    39        topics, is it?  It does not make so confident a prediction
    40        for the future, does it?
    41        A.   I actually submitted in my evidence in-chief, I think,
    42        the statement from the Scottish Department of Health, if
    43        that is their correct name, in which they actually gave
    44        figures which they felt that reduction in diet would --
    45        reduction in dietary fats and particularly saturated fats,
    46        they actually put figures on the proportions of cancer
    47        deaths that would be saved by reducing to the numbers that
    48        they recommend.
    49
    50        Now, the World Health Organisation, with respect, has a
    51        very similar view, although they did not put numbers on it,
    52        and I think the reason why the Scottish put numbers on it
    53        is because Scotland has a far higher mortality than we do
    54        down in the south-east, and I think if you read the World
    55        Health Organisation document it does actually make
    56        statements.   I do not have it in front of me and I cannot
    57        remember it in detail.  But I do believe that their final
    58        recommendations, although it may be qualified on the way to
    59        those final recommendations, that the final recommendations
    60        do say that there is sufficient evidence for a reduction in

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