Day 037 - 14 Oct 94 - Page 65
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2 THE WITNESS: Can I finish making a point here?
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4 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Yes, finish what you wanted to say.
5 A. Well, in view of the, to use Walter Willett's words
6 here, the hypothesis that greater fat intake increases
7 breast cancer risk, which is supported by many animal
8 studies, I feel it would have been negligent of me to
9 write that greater meat intake, which he also cites here
10 specifically, does not increase cancer risk, specifically
11 breast cancer risk. It would have been negligent of me to
12 do that.
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14 MR. RAMPTON: Would it, Mr. Cox, be responsible to say to the
15 public: There is evidence which suggests an association
16 between high-fat or high in meat intake, particularly high
17 animal fat intake, and breast cancer, some of this is
18 international correlational evidence, some of it comes
19 from animal experiments whose extrapolation to the human
20 condition is unreliable; on the other hand, there is
21 evidence to suggest that there may be no association.
22 Would that not have been the writing of a responsible
23 person?
24 A. Not at all. That would have been completely useless
25 writing. It would not have informed anybody. I think what
26 we have to take into account here is that I am not a
27 medical specialist. What I am doing is writing for people
28 like me, and as far as I am concerned, I want to mow about
29 the risks and the benefits. Now what are the risks of
30 changing to a meat-free way of living? Very few. What
31 are the benefits? Very many. Decreasing breast cancer
32 risk is, perhaps, not so well established as other risks,
33 such as coronary heart disease, but cancers in total have
34 been shown to be reduced very considerably by a shift
35 towards a healthier eating pattern. I would cite a study
36 that I do not believe I did have the opportunity to
37 include in the encyclopaedia, which has been published
38 very recently, which is the Oxford study which shows a
39 decrease in all forms of cancers amongst vegetarians by a
40 huge 40 per cent; 40 per cent decrease in cancer
41 mortality.
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43 As an ordinary person I want to know about this sort of
44 evidence. I do not want to have the sort of statement
45 read out to me or to read the sort of statement that
46 Mr. Rampton has made because that is not helpful.
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48 Q. You as an ordinary person, somebody who is not an expert
49 in nutrition, would naturally infer that the existence of
50 suggested evidence naturally implies the existence of a
51 causal association, do you not? That is what you are
52 telling your readers in this book, is it not?
53 A. No. That is really a dreadful distortion of what my
54 point of view is.
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56 Q. I am just wondering about what you are saying in this
57 book, you see. You are telling people, as Dr. Barnard is
58 in his book if you have read it, you are telling people:
59 "Stay away from fat, it will probably kill you", are you
60 not?
