Day 269 - 25 Jun 96 - Page 50


     
     1
     2        And it so happens that some of the more recent evidence is
     3        beginning to suggest that meat itself may have a role to
     4        play, and one of the reasons for suggesting this is because
     5        of the mutagens and various other potentially cancer
     6        producing agents which are produced when you cook meat.
     7        Not a conclusion that I tend to favour, but it is what has
     8        been talked about.
     9
    10   Q.   I do not mean to be disrespectful, but it is pretty old
    11        learning?
    12        A.   Yes.
    13
    14   Q.   There is quite a lot of old stuff about, is there not,
    15        about the effect of barbecuing meat?
    16        A.   Yes, and smoking as well, the smoking of food.
    17
    18   Q.   And the smoking of food?
    19        A.   These are sources, my Lord, of chemicals which can
    20        actually damage the DNA.
    21
    22   Q.   Are they called creatinines or something like that?
    23        A.   Well, whatever.
    24
    25   Q.   What I am suggesting, you see, is that one of features of a
    26        holistic approach is that it is, whilst beneficial overall,
    27        perhaps to human health?
    28        A.   Yes.
    29
    30   Q.   It does deliberately, perhaps, prevent the identification
    31        or the incrimination of particular agents in the etiology
    32        of cancer?
    33        A.   Well, I do not agree.  I think that we have had
    34        reasonable successes with identifying agents such as in
    35        tobacco smoke.
    36
    37   Q.   No, I am talking about diet.  Do not go on to tobacco.
    38        A.   I mean, even going back to Sir Richard Dhol's thesis
    39        where he was the first to identify the risk of cigarette
    40        smoking.
    41
    42   Q.   Yes?
    43        A.  And it was actually a point that he made in his thesis
    44        which was ignored until very recently, and this is one of
    45        the reasons why the cancer field has lagged so far behind,
    46        he actually put figures on it that the discrepancy of
    47        cancer, types of cancer from country to country, led him to
    48        the view that you could explain the discrepancy between 30
    49        and 70 per cent to diet.
    50
    51        And this was more or less ignored for a long time, and I
    52        think what has happened now is that we have now got a much
    53        more clearer understanding of the biological mechanisms as
    54        to how this could take place.  There is, for example, a
    55        recent paper, '93, for argument's sake, on smoking and lung
    56        cancer which shows that the risk of high saturated fat
    57        intake in non-smokers increases lung cancer 11 fold.
    58
    59        So I think that the evidence since this paper has come in
    60        has given us a much clearer understanding of what is at

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