Day 030 - 03 Oct 94 - Page 29
1 specifically on diet and cancer.
2
3 Q. Just to go back to your statement, moving on a little bit
4 ----
5
6 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Can we put that volume away?
7
8 MR. MORRIS: Yes. Just to go back to the point about the
9 recommendations. You say in your statement:
10 "Recommendations by all these bodies are harmonious and
11 consistent with those on heart disease". Do you want to
12 just briefly expand on that?
13 A. Well, you notice, of course, that the word -- the term
14 used is not "identical" or some such term; "harmonious",
15 "consistent" I think are the correct terms. In the case,
16 for example, of diet and cancer compared with diet and
17 cardiovascular disease, the advice, for example, on fat is
18 not identical but is harmonious, in that for
19 cardiovascular disease, generally speaking, the advice is
20 to cut down on fat but, in particular, to cut down on
21 saturated fat.
22
23 If you look again at the government white paper, "The
24 Health of the Nation", you will see the recommendation is
25 to cut fat by a certain percentage, but to cut saturated
26 fat much more than that. The evidence on cancer is not
27 specifically to do with saturated fat. Again, wishing to
28 avoid a small lecture on the subject, the evidence on
29 cancer points at fat generally, not saturated fat in
30 particular. But when you translate those different
31 strands of evidence into a public health policy, it is
32 evident that the kind of advice you would give as a matter
33 of public health policy to the general public on both
34 these major diseases is going to be similar.
35
36 Q. The UK government accepted the recommendations
37 specifically on diet and cardiovascular disease in 1984,
38 was it?
39 A. Well, the first COMA report which was rather equivocal
40 was in 1974; the first COMA report that was unequivocal,
41 or pretty much unequivocal, was 1984. There is a further
42 report which is due to come out next month, but in between
43 times there was the document Mr. Rampton has been looking
44 at, I think, which is the grey COMA Report, not
45 specifically on diet and cardiovascular disease but on
46 diet and western diseases generally, the so-called DRV
47 report, which came out in 1990.
48
49 MR. RAMPTON: 1991.
50
51 THE WITNESS: Thank you.
52
53 MR. MORRIS: Move over in your statement to page 4, you make a
54 point here about the complexity. You say that the science
55 of the links between diet and cancer is complex and that
56 the judgment based on the evidence is straightforward. Do
57 you just want to elaborate a little on that?
58 A. It goes back to what has been mentioned in court
59 already earlier today, which is that if the task is to
60 review all relevant and reliable scientific research on
