Day 254 - 22 May 96 - Page 24


     
     1
     2   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  I think you are using 'data' in a different
     3        way to Ms. Steel and, I have to say, in a different way to
     4        the way I would use it.  I had understood the data are the
     5        facts which you are given, that is what data means?
     6        A.  Basically, what they have done in that is to ignore the
     7        conclusions of the original studies.
     8
     9   Q.   I think that is what Ms. Steel is putting to you?
    10        A.  Yes.
    11
    12   Q.   What she is saying is that they use the data which appears
    13        in the studies, that is, to give a rather simplistic
    14        example, 'how many people developed cancer'?
    15        A.  What they were doing was, they were using the raw
    16        information rather than the analysed information.
    17
    18   Q.   Yes.
    19
    20   MS. STEEL:   The years of the studies that are given there, in
    21        the chart in table 1?
    22        A.  Yes.
    23
    24   Q.   The longest one seems to be 7 years, and most of them are
    25        five or 6 years.  There is one that is 3 years.  That is
    26        actually not a very long time in terms of a cancer being
    27        initiated in developing is it?
    28        A.  Certainly not.  In fact if you actually look at it more
    29        carefully the Nurses Health Study was divided into two
    30        specifically to try to have similar periods of times of
    31        analysis between all of the studies.  That is a sort of,
    32        I suspect, statistical ploy to try to render the data more
    33        uniform throughout all of the studies.
    34
    35   Q.   Right.  Well, apart from I think they excluded all the
    36        nurses in the second study that had cancer at the start of
    37        the time of the second lot follow-up?
    38        A.  Did they?
    39
    40   Q.   It seems they have.
    41        A.  They excluded people who had cancers other than skin
    42        cancer because that, obviously, could modify the diet that
    43        these people might take and obviously would influence the
    44        results of the study.
    45
    46   Q.   Yes, but all I mean is that effectively in their reanalysis
    47        of the original raw data the way they have done it is
    48        effectively like doing two separate studies, and so again
    49        it is still only a period of five or 6 years?
    50        A.  In fact this has been a criticism which has been made 
    51        of such studies, that they are only measuring a certain 
    52        period of time in the gestation of cancer. 
    53
    54   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  It is not only a limited period of time, it
    55        is well on into life if one looks at the age range at
    56        baseline?
    57        A.  Yes, my Lord, it is true.
    58
    59   Q.   I cannot help noticing that the one which starts youngest
    60        also goes on to very nearly the oldest as well.  The bulk

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