Day 052 - 21 Nov 94 - Page 41


     
     1        drawn between the evidential basis for proposing a causal
     2        link between lung smoking and cancer on the one hand and
     3        diet and cancer of the colon and breast on the other hand
     4        which was, of course, entirely in conformity with what
     5        Dr. Barnard had said in his second report.
     6
     7   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Do you have a reference for that part?
     8
     9   MR. RAMPTON:  For that part of cross-examination, my Lord,
    10        I will find it.  What, in effect, Ms. Steel was putting was
    11        that since the dogs or the beagles had not got lung cancer
    12        when they were made to smoke cigarettes, the evidence for
    13        the assertion which Dr. Arnott, your Lordship will
    14        remember, put in black at the very top of my league table,
    15        No. 10, as being a certainty of a causal relationship, the
    16        evidence for that proposition was really no better than it
    17        was for the relationship between diet and cancer of the
    18        bowel and breast.
    19
    20        My Lord, I will try to find the reference that I had.  That
    21        is re-examination; I am just going to make a short
    22        reference to that in a minute.  My Lord, it starts at line
    23        35 on page 7.  I think it is still Ms. Steel -- yes, it is.
    24
    25   MS. STEEL:  What day are we on?
    26
    27   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  This is still 12th September.
    28
    29   MR. RAMPTON:  Start of cross-examination, 12th September.  My
    30        Lord, it runs through to line 14 on page 9.  There is,
    31        certainly, one passage.  I have a belief that there was
    32        another passage; it may not matter.  My Lord, the whole
    33        thread of the cross-examination, the whole thrust of it, on
    34        the part of both Defendants (and it is not confined to
    35        Ms. Steel) was that, really, Dr. Arnott was being far too
    36        cautious in denying a causal association between diet and
    37        the cancers with which your Lordship is concerned in this
    38        case.  They attacked his refusal to see population studies
    39        as more than suggestive.  They were unhappy about his
    40        reliance on cohort or prospective studies and about his
    41        caution in relation to animal studies.
    42
    43        They suggested to him that the consensus of scientific
    44        opinion (which is a slightly different question) was that
    45        there was, indeed, a causal association between diet and
    46        these cancers.  I refer, in particular, to page 53, the
    47        whole of it.  I think that is Mr. Morris -- yes, it is.
    48        One comes back to the relationship between smoking and lung
    49        cancer on page 54, this time through Mr. Morris.
    50 
    51        My Lord, I would just, if I may, give your Lordship one 
    52        reference from the re-examination by me on 13th September. 
    53        I may have given the wrong date -- it is 12th September.
    54
    55   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Yes.  You have been referring to
    56        12th September.
    57
    58   MR. RAMPTON:  All along until now.
    59
    60   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Yes.

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