Day 254 - 22 May 96 - Page 23
1 so it probably was not the best time to read it, but
2 I could not actually work out when they said clearly that
3 the follow-up was, in 1995 or 1994, whenever it was, as
4 oppose to them talking about the follow-up that was done in
5 the original study.
6
7 MR. MORRIS: The chart implies it is the original study.
8
9 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Can I understand it? They did not find
10 medical records in relation to the people who had been
11 considered in the original studies, dealing with what had
12 happened to those people since the original studies, as
13 I understand it -- or did they?
14 A. My understanding, my Lord, is that they did.
15
16 Q. Can you try and find that because I think what Mr. Morris
17 is just querying is, I understand what you say about
18 ignoring the conclusions from the original studies and just
19 going back to what the actual findings were in the studies
20 and then taking those findings from all the studies,
21 applying a uniform method of analysis to them, but did they
22 also, for instance, see, make inquiries, as to what numbers
23 of the women who had not developed cancer at the time of a
24 particular earlier study had done so since, or anything of
25 that kind? I think that is the distinction you are being
26 asked about.
27 A. In some of the studies it looks as though they may have
28 gone back to the original design, for example the
29 Netherlands Cohort Studies.
30
31 Q. What are you looking at now?
32 A. This is page 357, top right-hand little bit. They
33 identified a cohort within the study and their dietary and
34 other exposures were compared with those of a sub-cohort of
35 1,812 women randomly sampled at the baseline. In other
36 words, at the time of the original study.
37
38 Q. Baseline means at the time of the original study; is that
39 right?
40 A. Indeed, yes.
41
42 Q. Is there an indication that in relation to some studies
43 they may have looked to see what happened to any of the
44 subjects since the time of the study?
45 A. No, I think basically what they are doing is they were
46 using these sub-cohorts, if I may use that phrase, to try
47 to verify that the information that was present in the
48 original studies was actually valid.
49
50 MS. STEEL: So they are reevaluating the old data?
51 A. Yes, basically. No, they have not, actually. I know
52 it is a difficult one this one, but they have tried to
53 ignore the data which were published at that time, they
54 have gone back to the original information which was
55 obtained from the women included in those studies, and they
56 then reanalysed the data in this standardised fashion.
57 What they have tried to do is to verify the validity of the
58 methods which were employed in the original studies by
59 taking select groups of patients to see whether the data
60 really do marry up, as it were.
