Day 023 - 13 Sep 94 - Page 05
1 A. Yes.
2
3 MS. STEEL: Is it not true that there have been quite a number
4 of experiments on animals where, after being fed a high
5 fat or a high energy diet, the animals have developed
6 cancers?
7 A. Yes, that is absolutely true. I have never denied
8 that. In fact, I quoted it in my evidence.
9
10 Q. Right. Other types of studies which support the link
11 between smoking and lung cancer, does that include all the
12 types of studies we were talking about yesterday,
13 population studies and prospective studies?
14 A. The way the research in cigarette smoking developed,
15 it was actually difficult to do population studies because
16 it became quite clear after the first study that was done
17 which looked at British doctors in this country by Richard
18 Doll and Hill, that it was not relevant, in fact, to look
19 at population studies, though there were studies which
20 indicated that people who did not smoke got lung cancer
21 very rarely. I mean, lung cancer, you know, -- you are
22 maybe too young to appreciate the difference -- the
23 relationship between cigarette smoking and lung cancer was
24 not known until the 60s, 50s, 60s, and cigarette smoking
25 is a relatively new phenomenon in the world. One has been
26 able to follow the development of lung cancer, which is
27 now the commonest single cancer killing us in this
28 country, and that parallels quite graphically the increase
29 in the rate of smoking.
30
31 What we are seeing now with changes in the patterns of
32 smoking habits, for example, men are tending to give up
33 cigarette smoking. Lung cancer deaths in men have begun
34 to plateau or even fall; whereas more women are smoking,
35 and we are seeing now a substantial increase in lung
36 cancer death rates among women. It is these sorts of
37 pieces of evidence which are more convincing about
38 cigarette smoking, and why it was not really appropriate
39 to do population experiments that have been necessary in
40 other forms of illness, like cardiovascular disease or
41 bowel cancer and breast cancer. When you have an obvious
42 factor -----
43
44 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Leave it there. You will be asked another
45 question.
46
47 MS. STEEL: Just so this is clear in my mind, I want to know
48 the type of studies that you are saying point at lung
49 cancer from smoking; animal studies you have said?
50 A. There are some animal studies; there are studies which
51 have looked at groups of people and tried to compare
52 people who were similar in many respects, but the
53 difference was that one group smoked and the other group
54 did not.
55
56 Q. So case-control studies?
57 A. Some were case-control studies in that sense, but like
58 the British doctor study (which is the classical one)
59 which looked at a group of people who were doctors, so
60 they were not necessarily typical of the population as a
