Day 023 - 13 Sep 94 - Page 31
1
2 Q. I understood you to have told Mr. Morris a moment ago
3 that, in fact, the state of knowledge now is perhaps less
4 suspicious of particular dietary substances than it was
5 then?
6 A. Indeed, yes.
7
8 Q. Is that right?
9 A. Yes.
10
11 Q. Then under "Fibre. It now seems that food containing
12 fibre (roughage) may actually protect against cancer of
13 the bowel". Then they recite a summary, I think, of
14 Dennis Burkett's work; is that right.
15 A. Indeed, yes.
16
17 Q. Tell us, please, was that right in 1989?
18 A. That is what people believed at that particular time.
19
20 Q. Has the role of fibre as a possible protective agent been
21 enhanced or discredited to any significant extent since
22 1989?
23 A. The role of fibre has certainly been questioned since
24 1989.
25
26 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I have also read the left hand margin, the
27 bottom column.
28
29 MR. RAMPTON: Yes, I was not going to ask -----
30
31 MR. JUSTICE BELL: No, just so that everyone knows I have
32 actually read that.
33
34 MR. RAMPTON: About the vegetarians?
35
36 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Yes.
37
38 MR. RAMPTON: Can you go over the page, Dr. Arnott, the first
39 complete sentence under the photographs: "Similarly,
40 there is much less bowel cancer in rural Finland than in
41 Copenhagen in Denmark. Both communities have much the
42 same eating habits, and both eat a lot of animals fats.
43 One key difference may be that the Finns also eat a lot of
44 unrefined rye bread, which has high fibre content. So
45 some researchers think the fibre in the Finnish diet may
46 help to protect them from this form of cancer". Are we
47 able to be any less guarded than the authors of this
48 document nowadays?
49 A. I do not think so.
50
51 Q. Then finally if we go to the back of the document, page
52 27, which Mr. Morris was asking you about, this graph or
53 diagram is based, it appears at any rate, on some work of
54 Sir Richard Doll and Dr. Peto. Dr. Peto was a
55 statistician, was he not?
56 A. He is a statistician in Oxford.
57
58 Q. "Getting prevention in proportion. We do not know how to
59 prevented some cancers, largely because we do not know
60 what causes them. Some causes, such as smoking, are
