Day 052 - 21 Nov 94 - Page 38
1 I would hope to persuade your Lordship by reference to the
2 cross-examination of Dr. Arnott in a minute that, in fact,
3 it would serve no useful purpose whatsoever, since
4 Defendants put every single question under the sun about
5 causation which could possibly be put), I would perfectly
6 willing to recall Dr. Arnott, if it would help.
7
8 Your Lordship may remember one thing that Professor
9 Crawford said, which was a qualification on his evidence;
10 that whilst in his view the state of knowledge about diet
11 and cancer was about the same as it had been for diet and
12 heart in the 1970s or mid 1970s, he did say that he thought
13 that the cancer people might take a different view.
14
15 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Yes.
16
17 MR. RAMPTON: I do believe that Dr. Arnott has, in fact, already
18 given a different view because I think I asked him: Has
19 the sum of knowledge advanced much in the last few years?
20 I think he said, no, he did not think it had; in fact, he
21 thought the picture had got even cloudier than it had been
22 in the late 1980s. If it would help -- I say this in
23 advance of a submission I will eventually make, I hope not
24 much further on down the road -- that is one means by which
25 any disadvantage which your Lordship thought the Defendants
26 might have suffered by this amendment might be cured.
27 Because there is no question in my mind that there is an
28 elasticity in this case -- your Lordship may disagree --
29 which would allow Dr. Arnott to be presented for further
30 cross-examination, possibly also evidence in-chief,
31 following the reappearance of Professor Crawford or even,
32 if your Lordship pleased, in advance of him, I really do
33 not mind.
34
35 My Lord, I pass from Professor Wheelock which shows, as
36 I submit, two things; your Lordship telling the Defendants
37 what the issue might actually be and an appreciation by the
38 Defendants of what the issue actually was. I pass from
39 that to Dr. Arnott who gave evidence-in-chief on the next
40 day, 25th July -- there must have been intervening weekend,
41 -- which is day 17.
42
43 All of this, I remind your Lordship, is before the six week
44 vacation which shortly followed. My Lord, I start (and
45 I am not going to go through the whole of this; I am going
46 to make a submission which your Lordship will be able to
47 verify by reference to the transcript in due course) at
48 page 3, after having asked Dr. Arnott for his professional
49 history. At line 22 I asked him this: "We were going to
50 come upon it later on. Tell us what is meant by the word
51 'aetiology' in relation to your field of medicine?"
52 "Aetiology is basically", this is the answer, "what we
53 believe to be the causes of cancer and this can take a
54 variety of different forms and includes things like genetic
55 predisposition, biological causes such as viral infections,
56 possibly chemical induction, and physical causes such as
57 radiation exposure." Me: "We will have to look at this
58 topic in a good deal more detail later on. Before we do
59 that, Dr. Arnott, have you written articles about colon
60 rectal cancer?"
