Day 256 - 04 Jun 96 - Page 55
1 the same sort of diet throughout one's life. This is the
2 point
3
4 Q. I follow that. As you heard at the beginning, I agree with
5 you, that age of menarche is diet related unlike parity and
6 age of first birth.
7
8 Can I ask you to look at the penultimate page of this
9 paper, and towards the bottom of the right-hand column.
10 I think the page number is 1357, there is a paragraph which
11 begins, "Recent prospective studies of breast cancer". Do
12 you have that?
13 A. Yes.
14
15 Q. "Recent prospective studies of breast cancer have cast
16 doubt on earlier observations based on case control design
17 of a positive association between dietary fat and cancer
18 (Hunter and Willett 1993).
19
20 Our data are compatible with the null hypothesis" -- and
21 this is an explanation of what the null hypothesis is
22 -- "(None of the dietary fat/breast cancer associations
23 after adjustment for energy intake and confounding factors
24 was statistically significant) but could be interpreted to
25 support a weak positive association between fat intake and
26 breast cancer within the range of exposure study ranging
27 from a mean 15 per cent of total calorie intake among
28 Shanghai women in the lowest quartile category to a mean of
29 35 per cent among Tianjin women in the highest quartile
30 group."
31
32 I am going to read on, Professor, I am not stopping there,
33 but I want to ask you a couple of questions there. Those
34 findings are more or less in line with what you found or
35 stated you found in your paper that we just looked at, are
36 they not?
37 A. Yes, they are.
38
39 Q. The fat range is slightly higher than the one you studied?
40 A. Yes, quite a bit.
41
42 Q. Do you think it is significantly higher?
43 A. Yes.
44
45 Q. 15 to 35?
46 A. Right because these are cohorts in Shanghai and
47 Tianjin, which of course are the city areas. We worked in
48 the rural areas. In fact we intentionally excluded
49 Shanghai and Tianjin, so there are significant differences.
50
51 MR. JUSTICE BELL: But the 15 per cent mean is not a million
52 miles away from yours. Was yours a mean or an average, that
53 14.8?
54 A. That was a mean part. We went down to 6 or so.
55
56 Q. That is about the same. The Tianjin women is 35 per cent
57 and you were you asking if that is significant different.
58
59 MR. RAMPTON: There is a difference between, I think 24 was your
60 top mean, was it not?
