Day 256 - 04 Jun 96 - Page 42
1 A. Right.
2
3 Q. Perhaps we can look at that later. Before I ask you
4 another question about this paper and one other question
5 about your chapter, do I understand your general thesis
6 correctly -- I hope that I do -- it is this, that it is not
7 futile but perhaps misdirected to spend a lot of time and
8 money looking at individual dietary elements or ingredients
9 either for prevention or for cause; rather, one should look
10 at the whole diet and see what conclusions may be drawn?
11 A. We should do both.
12
13 Q. Yes.
14 A. And, in actual fact, what has unfortunately been
15 happening in this field too often is that people do look at
16 individual things in great detail and then make no attempt
17 to see how they interact and aggregate with each other, on
18 the one hand; or you get some other folks who are looking
19 at the big broad picture and taking little note of the
20 details.
21
22 Q. Of course one must do both, because hypotheses drawn from
23 what one think of as an overview must be tested ---
24 A. Right.
25
26 Q. -- must they not, to see if they can be validated? Do
27 I understand you to say this, that there is, in your view,
28 a relationship between diet and the onset of these diseases
29 which lies in the balance in the diet between animal
30 products and plant products?
31 A. Yes.
32
33 Q. But I do not understand you to say -- and you will correct
34 me if I am wrong -- that you can with confidence say which,
35 as it were (if either or both) is the influential or
36 dominant consideration in that balance?
37 A. No, not quite. We can say with considerable confidence
38 which particular component of the diet is related to each
39 kind of cancer or each kind of heart disease. Often times
40 it turns out that the component chiefly responsible for
41 causing diseases in different tissues is probably or,
42 rather, certainly rather different. For example, the
43 tissues that are bathed with oxygen, such as the lung
44 tissue, obviously is more susceptible to the pro-oxidant
45 activity; therefore, they are more prone to be prevented by
46 antioxidant -- you know, that sort of thing, and the
47 (inaudible) that has to do with the components most
48 involved in that kind of physiology. So, we can say with
49 considerable confidence which part of the diet acts here
50 and which parts acts there, in a sense. I am not sure
51 where this -----
52
53 Q. I tell you where it takes one. It takes one to page 1158S
54 of your first paper.
55 A. Right.
56
57 Q. I want to start with breast cancer, which is at the
58 penultimate paragraph in the left-hand column, where you
59 say: "As already mentioned" -- have you got that?
60 A. Yes, I do.
