Day 254 - 22 May 96 - Page 10
1 studies have been conducted, there is a greater body of
2 evidence available that we can look at to say: Is there a
3 relationship or is there not a relationship? In fact, what
4 we have now as a body of evidence is more inconsistency,
5 not greater consistency.
6
7 Q. So when is it that you are referring to that the kind of
8 scientific community as a whole, as opposed to one or two,
9 well more than that, but it being just a few people who
10 were arguing against the general view of a causal
11 relationship?
12 A. I think that scientists have always felt that if you
13 are going to prove that there is a relationship between A
14 and B, you need to carry out studies which themselves
15 confirm that relationship in a consistent fashion. This
16 was certainly done following the British Doctors Study with
17 cigarette smoking and lung cancer.
18
19 In fact, as an aside, we now know that the relationship
20 between disease as a whole and cigarette smoking is much
21 more complex than was appreciated at that time. But if we
22 go back to that time, there was this clear cut relationship
23 and ----
24
25 Q. There were studies to the contrary on that as well; were
26 there not?
27 A. There were literally one or two and they were not very
28 scientifically valid studies that were carried out. It was
29 certainly with the same enthusiasm that people believed
30 there was the same relationship as there was between
31 cigarette smoking and lung cancer as fat and cancer, and
32 the scientific community set about trying to establish
33 whether this relationship was indeed valid.
34
35 That is when the inconsistencies began to appear, that it
36 was very difficult in looking at case control studies, even
37 animal studies, and certainly later on when people began to
38 do the prospective studies, where one established the
39 nature of diet and the beginning of the study and then
40 followed the population of people through. These studies,
41 obviously, took time to develop, so they only became
42 available, information from them only became available, in
43 the mid to late 1980s, that is correct. People really
44 began to question this relationship which had appeared to
45 be so strong in the 1960s and 1970s.
46
47 Q. So you are saying it was in the mid to late 1980s that the
48 medical scientific communities decided, or their general
49 view swung away from there being a causal relationship
50 between diet and cancer to ----
51 A. No, I am not saying that.
52
53 MR. JUSTICE BELL: That is not what he has just said now.
54
55 MS. STEEL: I am just trying to understand what he is saying;
56 I cannot follow it.
57
58 MR. JUSTICE BELL: You started by saying "so" as if that is what
59 he has just said. He said, "In the mid to late 1980s" ----
60
