Day 256 - 04 Jun 96 - Page 36
1 which describes the nature of the study, which basically
2 also includes a comparison of the intakes and exposures of
3 these subjects in China versus the UK or the US; and so
4 there is some -- there is simply not a lot of -- I know the
5 point of your question. Your question really is, I think,
6 you know, whether this book includes all the
7 interpretations and discussions there from, and that sort
8 of thing. It does not include that.
9
10 Q. Does it include any interpretations and discussions?
11 A. Just a small amount, yes.
12
13 MR. RAMPTON: One question, you see, I was going to ask: it is
14 very difficult for us, whether one reads the chapter in the
15 book that was a follow-up to your paper in American Journal
16 of Clinical Nutrition, or whether one reads the original
17 paper, it is very difficult for us to see what the data
18 actually are, because they are not in -- they are
19 summarised, but they are not either in the chapter or in
20 the paper, are they, to a large extent?
21 A. They never are. Almost no scientific publications have
22 the original data; all you ever get is, basically, the
23 summaries of those data.
24
25 Q. I do not mean the raw data, no. But what you have not got
26 in either of those places to any great extent are the sorts
27 of tables and graphs that we see when we look at other
28 pieces of research? I accept that this is a summary and it
29 is not, as it were, a single study.
30 A. Right.
31
32 Q. That is right. But if I want to know, for example, what
33 proportion of the female population in the 65 counties
34 smoked cigarettes to any extent, I cannot find it, can I?
35 A. No. There are two ways you can get those data. You
36 cannot get it out of the summary paper, because the
37 summaries papers do not do that kind of thing, or very few
38 summaries papers do that any place. You have to go back to
39 the original papers. In our case, I would suggest that our
40 data from the China project is more accessible than almost
41 any studies ever been published. So, I really would take
42 exception to, I think, the direction of your question.
43
44 Q. No, no, I have no sinister purpose at all, none at all, be
45 assured. It is mere ignorance. Can you answer this
46 question from memory: do you happen to remember what
47 proportion of females studied in your study smoked
48 cigarettes heavily?
49 A. Yes -- about 11 per cent.
50
51 Q. Is that higher or lower than it is in the United States,
52 for example?
53 A. Lower.
54
55 Q. Well, what about consumption of alcohol amongst women in
56 China?
57 A. Amongst women?
58
59 Q. Yes.
60 A. Very low.
