Day 269 - 25 Jun 96 - Page 30
1 puts to Mr. Crawford. What I wanted to avoid was counsel's
2 comment on articles which had not been dealt with by his
3 own witnesses and upon which Professor Crawford relied
4 without actually challenging Professor Crawford on the
5 basis of the articles.
6
7 MS. STEEL: Yes.
8
9 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I cannot force Mr. Rampton, nor can you, to
10 take one line or the other.
11
12 MS. STEEL: No, but I thought that was the reason Mr. Rampton
13 was recalling the witness.
14
15 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Maybe he has had second thoughts about it, I
16 do not know, but some more water has gone under the bridge
17 since I made my comment. I am not resiling from my
18 comment, in that we have had evidence from Professor
19 Naismith, Dr. Arnott and now we have had quite a long
20 detailed further report from Professor Crawford.
21
22 MR. RAMPTON: Yes, my Lord, what I undertake I certainly will
23 not do is to refer your Lordship to any scientific paper
24 which has not been put to my witnesses or relied upon by
25 them or put in cross-examination to one of the defendant's
26 witnesses. We have already had a vast number and I do not
27 propose to go through all the previous papers which your
28 Lordship has seen and which have been spoken to by the
29 various witnesses to date because then Professor Crawford
30 would be here until the end of tomorrow, and I personally
31 want to try and finish him today, if I can.
32
33 MR. JUSTICE BELL: You must take your own course. What I am not
34 prepared to do is look at a medical paper and be led to
35 attempt to analyze it myself when I have not had any
36 assistance on it from a witness I treat as being an expert
37 witness from the witness box.
38
39 MR. RAMPTON: No, I quite agree, and I would not so rash myself
40 as to attempt it.
41
42 MR. JUSTICE BELL: It was because I was concerned that you might
43 have it in mind to do that, that I said what I did on a
44 previous occasion.
45
46 MR. RAMPTON: I know. Professor Crawford, insofar as -- put it
47 this way, does this recent report really subsume everything
48 you told us in your previous report?
49 A. Mr. Rampton, I do not believe it subsumes anything. I
50 believe it is sort of complementary to, if you like.
51
52 Q. I am going to concentrate on this one, if I may. I want to
53 start, if I may, with a comment you made a moment ago to
54 the effect that food which is high in saturated fat and low
55 in fibre and so on and so forth is unhealthy and to ask you
56 what you mean by that?
57 A. Well, I mean that it poses a risk if taken regularly.
58 It poses a risk to health which the risk to health can be
59 identified, I think, at the least coronary heart disease.
60
