Day 031 - 05 Oct 94 - Page 56


     
     1        of your copy.
     2
     3   MR. MORRIS:  Yes.
     4
     5   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Then they can decide whether it needs
     6        photocopying any further.
     7
     8   MR. RAMPTON:  I doubt very much I will copy the whole thing.
     9
    10   MR. MORRIS:  Then they will give those two copies back to us.
    11
    12   MR. RAMPTON:  In due course, yes.   Finally, Professor
    13        Crawford, before you leave.  Again this is a request for
    14        illumination, on page 9 starting at line 10 there is a
    15        passage about the parallels between diet and cancer and
    16        diet and heart disease.
    17        A.  Yes.
    18
    19   Q.   You say:  "The evidence on diet and cancer is less well
    20        formulated", and so on, "than data on cancer approximates
    21        and its contents, the data on heart disease available in
    22        the 1970s".  Then you say this, which is where I would
    23        like some help:  "Nonetheless, if lines are drawn
    24        laterally between the parallel evidences of heart disease
    25        and cancer, there is, in my view, enough evidence to make
    26        it difficult to reject the hypothesis", so on and so
    27        forth.
    28
    29        Do you mean to say that if one, as it were, hypothetically
    30        goes back to 1970 and draws a straight line through heart
    31        disease, you expect that if you did the same thing with
    32        cancer from now the lines would remain parallel?
    33        A.  Yes.
    34
    35   Q.   It is a prediction; is that right?
    36        A.  It is a prediction.  It is also an ambiguous one.  I
    37        can see what you are getting at.
    38
    39   Q.   I am little bit confused by it.
    40        A.  What I am trying to say are two things:  First, that
    41        the evidence that we have in relation to cancer is not as
    42        comprehensive as it is in relation to heart disease.  The
    43        evidence in cancer, this is purely a personal opinion, you
    44        need to understand, that in my view, the cancer people
    45        might well object to this statement but, in my view, the
    46        quantity and coverage of evidence they have in relation to
    47        cancer is roughly about the same sort of level as we had
    48        it in the 1970s.  We have much more detail since the 1970s
    49        so far as heart disease is concerned.
    50 
    51        Really, what I am trying to say here is that I think there 
    52        is enough of it, because in the 1970s we were pretty 
    53        convinced, we had the Royal College of Physicians
    54        presenting their report in 1976, we were pretty convinced
    55        about the relationship between dietary fat and,
    56        particularly, saturated fats and heart disease.  I think
    57        that today in 1994, or actually round about the end of the
    58        80s, really, we had reached that sort of stage, the same
    59        degree of conviction about cancer and diet.
    60

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