Day 035 - 12 Oct 94 - Page 31


     
     1        report, that there are clear cut mechanisms whereby a high
     2        calorie intake which is associated with a high-fat diet
     3        affects oestrogen metabolism which, in turn, affects the
     4        risk of breast cancer.  These links, apparently, did not
     5        make their way into the passages you have read.  I am not
     6        sure if they were considered by the Surgeon General at
     7        all, but they are important in looking at what the links,
     8        and indeed causal links, may be between diet and
     9        cancer.
    10
    11        Those people who simply choose to look at overall evidence
    12        trying to directly relate fat and cancer without any
    13        reference to nailing down the specific cause-and-effect
    14        relationship, the mechanisms by which one leads to the
    15        other are only going to be accessing a portion of the data
    16        and may have to interpret it cautiously with that in mind.
    17
    18   Q.   We will come to obesity and breast cancer in due course,
    19        Dr. Barnard, but you would agree that as recommendations
    20        to the general public of America on its health in 1988,
    21        the Surgeon General was a very great deal more cautious
    22        than you have been in this court and in your book, has he
    23        not?
    24        A.  I do not know that I am able to say that based on what
    25        I have read here.
    26
    27   Q.   Very well.  I will leave this now.  There are some
    28        passages about -- how do you pronounce that word
    29        carotenoids, have I got it wrong?
    30        A.  No, that is correct.  One says carotenoids.
    31
    32   Q.   Derived from Beta-carotene; is that right?
    33        A.  Beta-carotene is one carotenoid.
    34
    35   Q.   So I have it the wrong way round.  Can we then turn to
    36        another document?  Can you put that book down now,
    37        please?  You have spent many hours, days, weeks, months,
    38        years, perhaps, studying these matters, Dr. Barnard; what,
    39        in your view, is the status of Sir Richard Doll as an
    40        epidemiologist in the study of the aetiology of cancer?
    41        A.  He is well respected.
    42
    43   Q.   Does the same go for Walter Willett of Harvard?
    44        A.  Dr. Willett is a respected and controversial figure.
    45
    46   Q.   Let us have a look, first of all, at some words of Sir
    47        Richard Doll again in 1988.  I would ask you, if you can,
    48        to lay hands on volume IV, orange, labelled "Nutrition"
    49        with "Professor Walker" and "Dr. Arnott" on it.  You
    50        should, if you are lucky, find it in the shelves behind 
    51        you. 
    52 
    53        In that file, Dr. Barnard, you will find two sections.  If
    54        you could pass straight to the second section you will
    55        find a whole lot of subnumbers from 1 to about 26,
    56        I think.  I would like you to turn in the second section
    57        to tab 16.  This is an article from the Cancer Research
    58        and Clinical Oncology published in 1988 by the German
    59        scientific publisher Springer Verlag.  Do you see that in
    60        the right-hand corner?

Prev Next Index