Day 030 - 03 Oct 94 - Page 67
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2 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I wanted to know whether it started then or
3 it was before then.
4
5 THE WITNESS: Indeed.
6
7 MR. RAMPTON: Can I come back to the flat earth proposition,
8 Mr. Cannon? It was widely held at one time, we can agree
9 perhaps, that the world was flat, was it not?
10 A. Yes.
11
12 Q. Certain people were persecuted for holding that maybe that
13 view was wrong?
14 A. Yes.
15
16 Q. It turned out that the people who were persecuted were
17 right, did it not?
18 A. You mean Gallileo, for example, was right?
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20 Q. Yes.
21 A. Indeed so.
22
23 Q. The world is not flat, is it?
24 A. It is generally agreed that the world is round, indeed
25 so, yes.
26
27 Q. It was proposed for a very long time on the basis of the
28 study originally conducted by Sir Richard Doll (as he now
29 is) and Dr. Peto based on the review of the habits of a
30 sample of British doctors that smoking cigarettes was a
31 cause of lung cancer, was it not?
32 A. Yes, but if I can expand on the answer -- that
33 conclusion was not based on that study. The point of that
34 study was that partly because of Doll's own eminence and
35 partly because of the nature of the study, it was regarded
36 as the point when the evidence which was massive already
37 was conclusive, because it was a so-called intervention
38 trial which was reliably undertaken and well designed.
39
40 Q. So far as smoking cigarettes as a habit and not one
41 cigarette as you rightly pointed out this morning, smoking
42 cigarettes as a habit and the incidence of lung cancer is
43 concerned, nobody has since disputed that the earth is
44 flat, have they? That is an accepted proposition, is it
45 not?
46 A. Could you rephrase the question?
47
48 Q. Sorry, it was badly phrased. Everybody of any respectable
49 scientific reputation accepts that cigarette smoking as a
50 habit is a cause of lung cancer?
51 A. Well, further I would say far and away the predominant
52 cause of lung cancer, and that view would be held, I would
53 dare say, for all practical purposes universally apart
54 from medically qualified people employed by the tobacco
55 industry, yes.
56
57 Q. Virtually every respectable medical man would now accept,
58 perhaps you would agree, that there is a causal
59 relationship -- I stress the word "causal" -- between a
60 diet high in fat and, particularly, saturated fat and the
