Day 035 - 12 Oct 94 - Page 64
1 Q. Many of those minerals, if not all, are to be found in
2 meat, whether that is a reason for eating meat is not the
3 question, but that is true?
4 A. They are also found at the bottom of a lake but ....
5
6 Q. Indeed so, and I dare say in certain parts of the
7 furniture in this courtroom. The sentence I had my eye
8 on, Dr. Barnard, is the one immediately following the one
9 which you read out, we have covered that. What I was
10 interested in was your response to the next sentence: "In
11 general, we are talking about all of the data.
12 The data suggests that if this association is real
13 saturated rather than unsaturated fatty acids are
14 responsible. A responsible body of scientists, to put it
15 that way, must mean, Dr. Barnard, must it not, they did
16 not think that the data suggested that the association was
17 real?
18 A. No, that is not my interpretation at all. They were
19 giving, in my reading, a great deal of credence to the
20 possibility and that it is real. Again, they are not
21 suggesting that there is clear and equivocal evidence
22 showing that dietary fat or saturated fat causes colon
23 cancer.
24
25 What they are suggesting is that the two have been linked
26 over and over and over again, the 16 studies they have
27 described, and you could certainly fill a page with more
28 references, and the implication they have is that, or at
29 least -- well, anyway, I guess that is what I am taking
30 from that.
31
32 Q. Let us turn over and have a look at breast cancer. Again,
33 I do not want to be thought I am trying to trick you or
34 catch you out. I would like you to look at the text under
35 Breast Cancer all the way down to the heading Endometrial
36 Cancer. Page 598.
37 A. Yes, thank you.
38
39 Q. There are only two small points about this, Dr. Barnard.
40 I am not going to argue with you about the meaning of the
41 last summary paragraph; we can all make up our minds about
42 it. Before I go back a little way in the text of this
43 passage, I do ask you a question about that summary,
44 however. Do you agree that it conveys a somewhat more
45 emphatic conclusion than does the summary in relation to
46 colon cancer on the previous page 596?
47 A. I do not read it as being less emphatic.
48
49 Q. Perhaps I can ask you a supplementary question: Do you
50 agree that from the standpoint of 1994, in fact, the
51 evidence implicating diet as a factor in breast cancer is
52 somewhat directly, at least, somewhat weaker, in fact,
53 than it is in relation to colon cancer?
54 A. Many people have alleged that and I have no particular
55 reason to disagree, although there is a substantial body
56 of evidence in both cases.
57
58 Q. I draw your attention to this, but not really for your
59 benefit but for his Lordship's, because I knew I had seen
60 it somewhere. In the previous paragraph we see this:
