Day 030 - 03 Oct 94 - Page 48


     
     1        A.  Yes.  This is the page labelled Grant Review
     2        Procedures which at the bottom in a box lists the panel
     3        that review not only the applications for research grants,
     4        but also who reviewed this document itself.
     5
     6   MR. MORRIS:  So, really this document shows that the
     7        organisation you work for are involved not only in
     8        assessing the state of evidence as it is but in
     9        encouraging research to get further evidence?
    10        A.  Yes, but I think the relevance of pointing out the
    11        status of this document now is simply to say the
    12        statements on page 3 which really, I think, quite simply
    13        repeat what I said this morning and have said in my own
    14        statement, these statements are ratified by the Research
    15        Grant Review Panel whose chair is Catherine Geissler who
    16        is head of the department of Nutrition and dietetics at
    17        Kings College, London, and then the Review Committee
    18        including Paul Ciclitira of St. Thomas's Hospital,
    19        Professor Paul Ciclitira, Dr. John Hunter of Addenbrookes,
    20        Timothy Key of the Imperial Cancer Research Fund, Cancer
    21        Epidemiology Unit, Professor Anthony Nias who is an
    22        Emritus Professor of Cancer Research and Professor David
    23        Southgate who is best known as coeditor of the standard
    24        government document, Composition of Foods, sometimes known
    25        as McCance and Widdowson.
    26
    27   Q.   Can we move on to the next document which is a summary of
    28        the work of the World Cancer Research Fund.  Are there any
    29        particular pages you want to refer the court to or points?
    30        A.  I think one value of having this document is that,
    31        unlike some of the others, it is written in, I was going
    32        to say, decent English, because it incorporates the annual
    33        report of the World Cancer Research Fund.  It is designed
    34        to be seen by opinion formers and also by any interested
    35        party.
    36
    37        So that if, for example, you look on pages 3 and 4, that
    38        is the first -- that is the second spread, those pages
    39        again give a summary, I think, in plain language of the
    40        development of the state of science and scientific opinion
    41        on diet and cancer since 1982.
    42
    43   Q.   There is one point I did not bring up before.  I was
    44        trying to estimate the percentage.  If you look on page 3
    45        on the right column, it quotes Sir Richard Doll:  "In 1981
    46        Professor Sir Richard Doll estimated that on average 35%
    47        of fatal cancers are linked to diet.  He currently
    48        estimates that between 20-60% of fatal cancers might be
    49        reducible by practical dietary means".  Is this a feature
    50        of cancer research, trying to estimate what percentage of 
    51        cancers may be reducible by dietary changes? 
    52        A.  Not many people are trying to do this.  The document 
    53        you are referring to or, rather, the document originally
    54        referred to here, is a long paper that was commissioned by
    55        the US Congress in the late 70s from Doll and Peto --
    56        Professor Richard Peto who was already mentioned this
    57        morning -- and politicians sometimes get to the point, and
    58        the concern of the US government following originally the
    59        Nixon anticancer initiative was to identify to what extent
    60        diet played a role in cancer, hence Doll and Peto's

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