Day 254 - 22 May 96 - Page 46
1 taxes medical science as to why certain organs should be
2 preferential sites of secondary deposits and, in fact, how
3 the secondary deposits actually arise.
4
5 Q. There has been a lot of research in it?
6 A. A great deal of research.
7
8 Q. Just pause a moment. Yes?
9
10 MS. STEEL: What has the research found?
11 A. Well ----
12
13 Q. Has it not found anything?
14 A. The research has not come up with any answers to that
15 particular question.
16
17 Q. Right. I should have said when I was asking you about
18 attaching themselves to the lymphatic system, that it is
19 the lining of the lymphatic system but that would not alter
20 your answers?
21 A. It would not.
22
23 Q. No.
24
25 MR. JUSTICE BELL: It would be a break-through, would it not?
26 A. It would indeed.
27
28 Q. Especially in women of a certain age. As I understand it,
29 this is the very great danger. Because of their very
30 active lymphatic systems at a certain stage, means that the
31 mortality is greater than if the cancer had progressed much
32 later in life for instance. Is that a misunderstanding?
33 A. It is difficult one. We certainly see -- for example,
34 in younger women there is a greater tendency for the
35 tumours to spread at an early stage than in older women,
36 for example, in breast cancer. But exactly the mechanisms
37 by which this should happen, there are theories but no real
38 knowledge about why it, in fact, should take place in this
39 different way.
40
41 Again, these are only very general rules, that cancers tend
42 to be less aggressive in older people. It is easy to
43 suggest that this may be the general metabolism of the body
44 in an elder person is less active, and that the
45 circulation, and including the lymphatics, as you say, in a
46 younger person are more active, but whether that is the
47 whole ----
48
49 Q. I should disabuse myself of the notion I have just
50 delivered it seems?
51 A. People certainly are intrigued by this difference, but
52 I do not think we actually know the answer to the
53 difference. It is not just straightforward.
54
55 MS. STEEL: To your knowledge, has, for example, whether or not
56 cancer cells become more sticky with a high saturated fat
57 diet ever been investigated in relation to whether that
58 makes it easier for the spread of cancer?
59 A. I do not know the answer to that but, as I have said to
60 you already, in some respects you do not particularly want
