Day 254 - 22 May 96 - Page 24
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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.
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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.
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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
