Day 017 - 25 Jul 94 - Page 28
1 meant on one to three days each week (64 deaths) or those
who did so more often (41 deaths) (Phillips and Snowdon,
2 1983). Recently Willett and his colleagues (1987) reported
details of a prospective study of more than 89,000 US
3 nurses who provided details of their consumption of fat,
calories, saturated fat, linoleic acid and cholesterol.
4 Of these, 60 developed breast cancer during a four-year
follow-up period. Among those in the highest quintile of
5 calorie-adjusted total fat intake (44% calories from fat),
there was no increased incidence compared with women in
6 the lowest quintile with 30% calories derived from fat
(relative risk 0.82), the relative risk for saturated fat
7 being 0.88".
8 Can we turn over the page, please, Dr. Arnott, and look at
table 2 where we see the results of these studies set out
9 in tabular form. The Hirayama results. The important
sections are the three right-hand columns, Breast cancers
10 by consumption categories, this is consumption of fat or
meat, is it not?
11 A. Yes.
12 Q. Hirayama's criterion was meat; the lowest meat eaters had
125 and the highest had 14. In the Hiroshima sample, the
13 lowest had two; the intermediate had 17 and the highest
11. But when we come to the Adventists in California, we
14 see 81 for the lowest; 64 intermediate and highest 41,
which is a downward slope, is it not?
15 A. Yes.
16 MR. JUSTICE BELL: These are terribly small numbers, 60 out of
89,000. Would it be stupid to suggest you might quite
17 easily get 60 out of 89,000 for any sort of reason
whatsoever? Is it statistically significant?
18 A. I do not think it is. I think one of the problems at
the time this particular paper was written was that the
19 nurses had been followed up for a relatively short period
of time.
20
Q. Yes and that then ------
21 A. There are other publications which, in fact, followed
them up for longer periods of time, we are seeing more
22 numbers of breast cancer.
23 MR. RAMPTON: We will be looking at Willett's follow up study
in a moment, Dr. Arnott. That was published in 1992. We
24 see just looking at that table that there appears,
although perhaps you would not draw any conclusion from
25 it, in fact, to be an inverse relationship in that case
between the consumption of a large amount of fat and the
26 incidence of cancer, does there not?
A. It does.
27
Q. But you would tell me that is a nonsense looked at as a
28 scientific -----
A. No, I would say that what this is showing is the lack
29 of consistency in all of the findings in the published
work. It shows that one cannot say that there is a
30 relationship between fat intake and breast cancer. The
nurses' study, for example, is a large study and, you
