Day 037 - 14 Oct 94 - Page 57
1 the New England Journal of Medicine. It is at the top of
2 page 161, footnote 91. Is that right?
3 A. Yes, I am with you, yes.
4
5 Q. You write in the book on page 124: "Over 88,000 women
6 aged between thirty-four and fifty-nine were recruited for
7 the study (none of them had a history of cancer or bowel
8 disease). Their health was tracked for six years, and it
9 was found that women who ate beef, pork, or lamb as a main
10 dish every day were two-and-a-half times more likely to
11 contract colon cancer when compared to those who ate meat
12 less than once a month. What this study clearly
13 demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt was this - meat in
14 itself was a major risk factor. It wasn't that the
15 meat-eaters were deficient in other nutrients - fibre, for
16 example. The more meat they ate, the greater the risk.
17
18 The leader of the team of scientists commented: 'Reducing
19 red meat consumption is likely to reduce the risk. There
20 is no cut-off point so, really, less is better. All by
21 itself, this study well and truly puts paid to the myth
22 that 'meat is part of a healthy diet'. " You do not give
23 a reference for that particular quote, "meat is part of a
24 healthy diet", but it may not matter, Mr. Cox.
25
26 Can you turn then, please, now back a page to 123 where we
27 see the black capital letters "Meat and Breast Cancer".
28 You write: "More and more evidence was starting to
29 accumulate. In Alberta, Canada, researchers compared the
30 diets of women with breast cancer to a control group
31 without the disease. Was there any food, or types of
32 foods, which might be linked to the development of breast
33 cancer? Indeed there was. The results were, in the
34 scientists own words, 'consistent with the notion that
35 breast cancer risk is affected by certain dietary
36 patterns, especially those related to the consumption of
37 beef and pork. In fact", this is you now, not the authors
38 of the report, "the strongest association of all was with
39 pork consumption - chart 7 illustrates how the relative
40 risk of breast cancer rose with the frequency of pork
41 eating. For beef, anything more than consumption on one
42 day a week was also associated with an increase in
43 relative risk of breast cancer. Yet more disturbing
44 evidence that a meat-dominated diet might indeed be a real
45 health risk".
46
47 Then you cite in the next column a study in Hawaii which
48 is probably one we have already looked at, and you say:
49 "Significant associations were established between:
50 Breast cancer and all forms of fat and animal protein;
51 cancer of the uterus and all forms of fat and animal
52 protein; prostate cancer and fat and animal protein. The
53 positive correlations between various forms of food and
54 breast cancer are shown in the next chart". Mr. Cox,
55 unless you want me to, I will not read on.
56
57 My question is this, when you wrote those two sections,
58 one on breast cancer and one on colon cancer, had you read
59 the paper by Dr. Willett from 1990?
60 A. Which paper do you mean?
