Day 033 - 10 Oct 94 - Page 16


     
     1        An additional link or association or area of research has
     2        been on vitamins and minerals that play a role in
     3        protecting against breast cancer.  Gladys Block, for
     4        example, who is a very well known and well respected
     5        cancer researcher in the United States, has reviewed the
     6        literature on vitamin C and has reported that breast
     7        cancer occurs less frequently in women who consume diets
     8        that are high in vitamin C.  Vitamin C is found in
     9        vegetables and fruits.  There is no vitamin C in meat
    10        products or in animal products in general.
    11
    12        Walter Willett, who is a researcher whose name has,
    13        undoubtedly, arisen in connection with this case, a
    14        researcher affiliated with Harvard University and in
    15        charge of the nurses' study, has shown that women whose
    16        diets are low in vitamin A, which is produced in the body
    17        primarily from Beta-carotene but it can also come from
    18        vitamin A in the diet, their risk of breast cancer is also
    19        higher; those women who have diets that are quite low in
    20        vitamin A.
    21
    22        Meat based diets tend to be low, particularly in
    23        Beta-carotene.  Beta-carotene is bio-chemically two
    24        molecules of vitamin A joined together and it supplies the
    25        body's needs of vitamin A.
    26
    27        So, if you put all these lines of evidence together -- and
    28        I have not spoken, for example, about animal studies,
    29        which are similarly consistent -- from the animal studies
    30        to international comparisons to within country comparisons
    31        that helped to rule out genetic factors, migrant studies,
    32        cohort studies, the survival studies of cancer patients,
    33        the mechanisms particularly relating to hormones, which
    34        are no longer controversial and are quite well
    35        established, in fact, as well as the studies of vitamins
    36        and minerals, we have a very, very compelling body of
    37        evidence showing not simply that there is an association
    38        between fat and cancer, but that diets that are high in
    39        fat and low in fibre and low in vitamins and minerals play
    40        a causative role in breast cancer, as well as other forms
    41        of cancer.  This has led all major research bodies in the
    42        United States to recommend reductions in dietary fat.
    43
    44   MR. MORRIS:  Moving on to the bottom of page 7, you touch upon
    45        uterine cancer, ovarian cancer; those two particularly.
    46
    47   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Before you ask the next question,
    48        Mr. Morris, as far as you are concerned diets that are
    49        high in fat and low in fibre and low in vitamins and
    50        minerals play a causative role in breast cancer as well as 
    51        other forms of cancer.  It is not just a link by 
    52        association?  You go much further in and you are more 
    53        positive about that.  Is that fair?
    54        A.  Yes, that would be fair, because many many converging
    55        lines of research have shown that as well as mechanisms
    56        that explain how that works.  In addition, there are
    57        studies (which I did not mention) but showing that one's
    58        risk of breast cancer can be modified by dietary changes,
    59        by changing the mechanisms that I described.
    60

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