Day 254 - 22 May 96 - Page 46


     
     1        taxes medical science as to why certain organs should be
     2        preferential sites of secondary deposits and, in fact, how
     3        the secondary deposits actually arise.
     4
     5   Q.   There has been a lot of research in it?
     6        A.  A great deal of research.
     7
     8   Q.   Just pause a moment.  Yes?
     9
    10   MS. STEEL:  What has the research found?
    11        A.  Well ----
    12
    13   Q.   Has it not found anything?
    14        A.  The research has not come up with any answers to that
    15        particular question.
    16
    17   Q.   Right.  I should have said when I was asking you about
    18        attaching themselves to the lymphatic system, that it is
    19        the lining of the lymphatic system but that would not alter
    20        your answers?
    21        A.  It would not.
    22
    23   Q.   No.
    24
    25   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  It would be a break-through, would it not?
    26        A.  It would indeed.
    27
    28   Q.   Especially in women of a certain age.  As I understand it,
    29        this is the very great danger.  Because of their very
    30        active lymphatic systems at a certain stage, means that the
    31        mortality is greater than if the cancer had progressed much
    32        later in life for instance.  Is that a misunderstanding?
    33        A.  It is difficult one.  We certainly see -- for example,
    34        in younger women there is a greater tendency for the
    35        tumours to spread at an early stage than in older women,
    36        for example, in breast cancer. But exactly the mechanisms
    37        by which this should happen, there are theories but no real
    38        knowledge about why it, in fact, should take place in this
    39        different way.
    40
    41        Again, these are only very general rules, that cancers tend
    42        to be less aggressive in older people.  It is easy to
    43        suggest that this may be the general metabolism of the body
    44        in an elder person is less active, and that the
    45        circulation, and including the lymphatics, as you say, in a
    46        younger person are more active, but whether that is the
    47        whole ----
    48
    49   Q.   I should disabuse myself of the notion I have just
    50        delivered it seems? 
    51        A.  People certainly are intrigued by this difference, but 
    52        I do not think we actually know the answer to the 
    53        difference.  It is not just straightforward.
    54
    55   MS. STEEL:  To your knowledge, has, for example, whether or not
    56        cancer cells become more sticky with a high saturated fat
    57        diet ever been investigated in relation to whether that
    58        makes it easier for the spread of cancer?
    59        A.  I do not know the answer to that but, as I have said to
    60        you already, in some respects you do not particularly want

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