Day 030 - 03 Oct 94 - Page 30
1 diet and cancer, then you would have to be looking at
2 research where the hard copies of that research would be
3 halfway up to the roof.
4
5 Furthermore, as I have mentioned, if you are dealing with
6 cancer, what you are dealing with is a large number of
7 distinct disease entities. It is really more appropriate
8 to talk about cancers than cancer. Also there is,
9 I think, literally a multitude of scientific disciplines
10 which is relevant to the subject. So, if you take that
11 approach and believe that the task is to come to an
12 independent view from scratch on all the scientific
13 literature -- indeed, if the court here felt that was an
14 appropriate thing to do as a central part of its case --
15 you would be here well into the next millenium. In that
16 sense it is complex.
17
18 If, however, which is the view I take, it is accepted that
19 actually the task is altogether more simple and that what
20 you are seeking to do is to find out what is the consensus
21 of scientific opinion, happily there is a simple mechanism
22 to do that, which is to go to the reports which form the
23 basis of my book "Food and Health: The Experts Agree",
24 which are the export reports which have an appropriate
25 scientific status.
26
27 In that case, as I said in my statement, the task is
28 relatively simple and the conclusion is relatively simple,
29 because the reports are there in sufficient number and all
30 point in the same direction and overall they come to the
31 same conclusion.
32
33 Q. Just moving ahead, I think you have covered a lot of the
34 points.
35
36 MR. JUSTICE BELL: You only need pick on the matters where you
37 either think that there is something to be usefully added
38 or where you are not sure what Mr. Cannon means, so far as
39 his statement is concerned, and then you can go to the
40 extracts from his book.
41
42 MR. MORRIS: Yes. Just moving on to page 5, where you talk
43 about cause, that there is some confusion about what
44 constitutes cause. Would you like to expand upon that?
45 A. Yes, in this context. Clearly, this can be quite an
46 emotional issue, because if it is alleged that a specific
47 product which may be high in fat or sugar, for example,
48 causes disease, then that view would be clearly contested
49 by the interested party, and understandably so.
50
51 If, however, the statement is that a national food supply
52 which is high in fat and saturated fat increases the risk
53 in that population of cardiovascular disease and certain
54 cancers, that is a different matter. If you go down from
55 that and say a diet eaten habitually throughout life
56 increases the risk in that individual person, the answer
57 is, yes.
58
59 If then you get down to saying: Would a specific diet
60 eaten in a week increase that disease or a meal increase
