Day 033 - 10 Oct 94 - Page 46


     
     1
     2   Q.   McDonald's do not sell beans and nuts, do they?
     3        A.  Not to my knowledge.
     4
     5   Q.   You said on page 17, virtually the last point, I will not
     6        touch on the very last point:  "An accurate description of
     7        the effects of meat consumption would note its links to
     8        heart disease, cancer (particularly colon and prostate
     9        cancer)".  Can you just summarise that sentence, just
    10        embellish a little bit, a summary of your position?
    11        A.  Well, my feeling was that if McDonald's wanted to
    12        provide accurate information to children, that rather than
    13        suggest to them that by consuming items from the meat
    14        group with regularity, not just with an individual meal
    15        but twice a day, that these items be consumed, that
    16        McDonald's ought to be describing the genuine effects of
    17        these foods, particularly heart disease and cancer.
    18
    19        Now, I mentioned specifically colon and prostate cancer
    20        because of the links with meat there.  If we are talking
    21        high fat generally, we would probably want to add breast
    22        cancer as well as obesity and other health problems.  My
    23        reference here was simply to McDonald's misleading
    24        advertising campaign.
    25
    26   Q.   This is not a summary of your general case on the link
    27        between diet and disease?
    28        A.  No.
    29
    30   Q.   Just regarding that ad?
    31        A.  This is targeted to -- yes, this relates to the ad.
    32
    33   Q.   We have reached the end of that statement for the moment.
    34        We will go on to your supplementary statement.  Then we
    35        will look at some documents following that.  In some ways
    36        this is not the best way of doing things.
    37
    38   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  You do it that way anyway.
    39
    40   MR. MORRIS:  You have said in the first page of your
    41        supplementary statement that there are some people who say
    42        it is impossible to draw any conclusions about the role of
    43        foods and the causation of illness.  Would you like to
    44        elaborate on that?
    45        A.  Well, we have seen this with virtually every serious
    46        risk factor that has emerged in research where a certain
    47        amount of evidence comes forth.  Sometimes it takes a
    48        substantial amount of time for evidence to be adduced.  As
    49        that process goes on, it takes a certain amount of
    50        evidence before the great majority of researchers and 
    51        physicians are convinced that, indeed, there are risks 
    52        from certain exposures such as tobacco, various 
    53        carcinogens or dietary factors.
    54
    55        When the links between tobacco and lung cancer were first
    56        suspected, only a minority of physicians thought that
    57        those links were of sufficient magnitude that it was worth
    58        advising the patient to curtail their use of cigarettes.
    59        In fact, in an editorial, in more than one editorial
    60        actually, in medical journals appearing in the early 60s,

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