Day 017 - 25 Jul 94 - Page 62
1 A. No. Yes, thank you.
2 Q. I assume that in one way or another, Dr. Arnott, leaving
aside any refinements of genetics or anything like that,
3 all of us are to a greater or lesser degree candidates for
getting cancer of breast -- not so much men -- or the
4 bowel, are we?
A. We are indeed, yes.
5
Q. Assume for the moment that all of us -- it may not apply
6 to everybody in this court -- that most of us are also
candidates for eating from time to time or even regularly
7 at McDonald's?
A. Yes.
8
Q. Can you make those assumptions?
9 A. Yes.
10 Q. Then tell us, please, how you rate this as advice to the
intending McDonald's consumer.
11 A. In fact, much of the advice that they recommend here
is advice that I was saying this morning, and I think this
12 is very good, sensible advice to non-medical people who
may go into a restaurant to eat a meal.
13
Q. This is my final thing that I want to ask you about,
14 Dr. Arnott: You, no doubt, see a lot of people who have
recently learned they have been diagnosed as having cancer
15 of one kind or another?
A. Yes, indeed.
16
Q. Fortunately, so far as colon cancer is concerned, you are
17 in happy position of being able to cure quite a lot of
them, are you not?
18 A. Yes.
19 Q. When a person has first been diagnosed as having cancer,
be they male or female, young or old, can you give us a
20 broad picture -- not in many words -- of the kind of
impact that has on them?
21 A. Right. Obviously, people are devastated. There are
well defined emotional states through which people go.
22 First of all, there is usually a phase of anger in which
they say: "Why me? Why should I get this illness?" But
23 then subsequent to that there is a feeling of guilt, and
this is a real problem in managing patients. The guilt
24 comes from the feeling, you know, what I have done? What
is it that I have done which has given me this illness?
25
We are knowing increasingly that patients having a
26 positive attitude is important in terms of response to
treatment. This is why in modern cancer centres now we do
27 not just have treatment of the disease, but we have
treatment of the patient with counselling, things like
28 aromatherapy, relaxation, massage and so on, trying to
help the patients get through this very stressful part of
29 their illness, so that they may in turn become positive
and, hopefully, therefore, respond better to their
30 treatment.
