Day 269 - 25 Jun 96 - Page 57
1
2 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Yes, thank you.
3
4 MR. RAMPTON: Can we then pass, Professor, to the third page of
5 the third statement, what I call the present or current
6 statement?
7 A. Yes.
8
9 Q. And there is a heading "Meals Eaten Per Week", 2.1, and you
10 quote some statistics from the British Heart Foundation and
11 then you say this:
12
13 "There is a similar socio-economic stratification for
14 cancer."
15 A. Yes.
16
17 Q. Where does that come from? I do not have those figures.
18 A. They come from -- if they are not in the Heart
19 Foundation's publication, they will be in the Black report,
20 which discusses the inequality of health.
21
22 Q. "Black report". It is not, in any event, right, is it, so
23 far as breast cancer is concerned, that the prevalence is
24 within the lower socio-economic?
25 A. Prevalence is more general with breast cancer, yes.
26
27 Q. Indeed it may be that it is higher?
28 A. It may be.
29
30 Q. In groups 1 and 2?
31 A. Yes.
32
33 Q. And the reasons for that would be social largely, would
34 they not?
35 A. It is difficult to say, Mr. Rampton, because I find
36 the evidence with breast cancer, in view of the -- we have
37 had a changing socio-economic contrast in terms of disease
38 patterns and I would really want to have an expert who knew
39 something about the cell doubling times to discuss that
40 particular question, because what I am told by the Imperial
41 Cancer Research Fund, as I mentioned earlier, that the cell
42 doubling time for breast cancer is somewhere in the region
43 of about 20-30 years. So we are looking at something which
44 is occurring at a different time from the time that we are
45 looking at today.
46
47 Q. One of the factors, which is in a sense --
48
49 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Can I check why Professor Crawford says
50 that? Why are you looking at a different time from the
51 time we are looking at today, if it is 20 or 30 years? You
52 touched on this earlier.
53 A. Yes, I mean, it does seem as though the actual event
54 which makes a cell malignant occurs at a very long distance
55 in time, so far as breast cancer, from the time at which
56 you can palpate a tumour in the breast.
57
58 Q. Yes, I understand that.
59 A. So what I am really saying is that the socio-economic
60 conditions 30 years ago are different to today, and the
