Day 035 - 12 Oct 94 - Page 64


     
     1   Q.   Many of those minerals, if not all, are to be found in
     2        meat, whether that is a reason for eating meat is not the
     3        question, but that is true?
     4        A.  They are also found at the bottom of a lake but ....
     5
     6   Q.   Indeed so, and I dare say in certain parts of the
     7        furniture in this courtroom.  The sentence I had my eye
     8        on, Dr. Barnard, is the one immediately following the one
     9        which you read out, we have covered that.  What I was
    10        interested in was your response to the next sentence:  "In
    11        general, we are talking about all of the data.
    12        The data suggests that if this association is real
    13        saturated rather than unsaturated fatty acids are
    14        responsible.  A responsible body of scientists, to put it
    15        that way, must mean, Dr. Barnard, must it not, they did
    16        not think that the data suggested that the association was
    17        real?
    18        A.  No, that is not my interpretation at all.  They were
    19        giving, in my reading, a great deal of credence to the
    20        possibility and that it is real.  Again, they are not
    21        suggesting that there is clear and equivocal evidence
    22        showing that dietary fat or saturated fat causes colon
    23        cancer.
    24
    25        What they are suggesting is that the two have been linked
    26        over and over and over again, the 16 studies they have
    27        described, and you could certainly fill a page with more
    28        references, and the implication they have is that, or at
    29        least -- well, anyway, I guess that is what I am taking
    30        from that.
    31
    32   Q.   Let us turn over and have a look at breast cancer.  Again,
    33        I do not want to be thought I am trying to trick you or
    34        catch you out.  I would like you to look at the text under
    35        Breast Cancer all the way down to the heading Endometrial
    36        Cancer. Page 598.
    37        A.  Yes, thank you.
    38
    39   Q.   There are only two small points about this, Dr. Barnard.
    40        I am not going to argue with you about the meaning of the
    41        last summary paragraph; we can all make up our minds about
    42        it.  Before I go back a little way in the text of this
    43        passage, I do ask you a question about that summary,
    44        however.  Do you agree that it conveys a somewhat more
    45        emphatic conclusion than does the summary in relation to
    46        colon cancer on the previous page 596?
    47        A.  I do not read it as being less emphatic.
    48
    49   Q.   Perhaps I can ask you a supplementary question:  Do you
    50        agree that from the standpoint of 1994, in fact, the 
    51        evidence implicating diet as a factor in breast cancer is 
    52        somewhat directly, at least, somewhat weaker, in fact, 
    53        than it is in relation to colon cancer?
    54        A.  Many people have alleged that and I have no particular
    55        reason to disagree, although there is a substantial body
    56        of evidence in both cases.
    57
    58   Q.   I draw your attention to this, but not really for your
    59        benefit but for his Lordship's, because I knew I had seen
    60        it somewhere.  In the previous paragraph we see this:

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