Day 030 - 03 Oct 94 - Page 50
1 and the previous one before him. It is cited in the
2 Health Education Authority booklet by Sheila Bingham on
3 diet and cancer. It is referred to all the time. No-one
4 else has repeated Doll and Peto's work, although Doll
5 himself remains interested in the field and, as indicated
6 in this document here, the WCRF document, has slightly
7 narrowed the range, he himself would now say between 20
8 and 60, rather than ten and 70.
9
10 I think the relevance of mentioning this is that although
11 it is a very wide range, I think policy makers need to
12 know what kind of significance one is referring to here.
13
14 I mean, if you were the scientist, Mr. Morris, if you were
15 a scientist trying to convince of a diet and cancer link
16 and I was the minister, and you said diet and cancer are
17 causally linked, I would say, bearing in my mind my other
18 preoccupations: "That may be but to what extent? Give me
19 a figure". If the figure is going to be 35 per cent, or
20 if the figure is going to be ten and 70 per cent, and I
21 believe that figure -- and Richard Doll is regarded as an
22 exceptional and credible person in this field -- then I
23 might well want to base public policy on that because of
24 the implications of that to the health of the nation and,
25 indeed, to the Exchequer.
26
27 Q. Shall we move on to the next -- is there anything else in
28 that World Cancer Research Fund document?
29 A. No.
30
31 Q. The next one is The Surgeon General's Report which
32 I believe you have a copy of there with about 1500 pages
33 in it. Is there anything in the extracts which you have
34 asked us to refer to which you would like to bring out?
35 A. I think what is interesting in this document, as I
36 have mentioned more than once already, is that this is a
37 document which, as published, is not to but from
38 government. If you like, it is the combination of a COMA
39 Report plus a statement from the relevant ministers. In
40 the sense that it has been taken on board by the American
41 government, if you turn to Roman figure V, hopefully, is
42 that there?
43
44 Q. These are the ones you asked me to copy?
45 A. Yes.
46
47 Q. Which page are we on?
48 A. Yes, this is Dr. Otis Bowen, the Secretary of the
49 Department of Health and Human Services which again -- it
50 is almost a little wearisome now -- repeats the statement
51 that have been made several times already including in my
52 own statement. It says generally, talking about diet and
53 health as a whole: "The evidence presented here indicates
54 the convergence of similar dietary recommendations that
55 apply to prevention of multiple chronic diseases. The
56 recommendation to reduce dietary fat, for example, aims to
57 reduce the risk for coronary heart disease, diabetes,
58 obesity, and some types of cancer. This advice is not
59 new. But it is now substantiated by a large body of
60 evidence derived from many different kinds of research - a
