Day 034 - 11 Oct 94 - Page 44
1 of serious illness.
2
3 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Just pause there, please. Why do you draw
4 that conclusion? Somewhere else when I was looking at
5 various papers overnight, I saw a quote about people's
6 reluctance to change their diet which may just be a fact
7 of life, even if there is a risk, and it explained to you
8 that people will shrug and say: "I am prepared to carry
9 on eating what I want to eat"?
10 A. Yes. I think there are two different factors. The
11 first is: Does a person even have awareness of the links
12 between what they eat and their subsequent health risk?
13 The second question is: Are they motivated to actually
14 take advantage of that information? This series of
15 questions that I described simply went to the first of
16 those points, that in this sample of American women, which
17 we believed was a representative sample, taken at that
18 time showed that American women were not even aware that
19 there would be any benefit or even a potential benefit
20 from reducing their fat intake with regards to their
21 subsequent risk of breast cancer. So, they did not even
22 have the luxury of deciding to take advantage of it or to
23 ignore that information.
24
25 MR. JUSTICE BELL: What I asked was directed at your follow-up
26 question, the answers to it and the conclusion you drew
27 from that. Can you remember what you said?
28 A. What I was intending to say was that, according to our
29 survey results, this group of women did not have the
30 information that they might need to even make an informed
31 decision regarding diet. So, they were unable -- so the
32 question of motivation could not even be addressed.
33
34 MR. MORRIS: Sorry, the second question you asked. I just
35 want to outline that again?
36
37 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Let me read back what we have. "We also
38 then asked a follow-up question prompting the women who
39 were telephoned in a randomly generated list: Were they
40 aware that reducing fat in the diet might reduce the risk
41 of breast cancer? And even with that degree of prompting,
42 simply asking them to say 'yes' or 'no', still only about
43 half were able to respond positively to that statement."
44 A. Yes. Let me make sure that I am clear. We were not
45 asking them if they wanted to change their diets or if
46 they thought that their children should change their
47 diets, or if they thought it was advisable. We were
48 simply asking them if they were aware that reducing the
49 fat intake of the diet might reduce breast cancer risk.
50
51 But you are quite right, my Lord, that there can be or
52 there is, quite often, natural reluctance to modify the
53 diet even if there may be health benefits. Much of the
54 research I have been conducting has identified specific
55 factors that facilitate that sort of change. We have
56 identified specific factors that make dietary change
57 something that people are much more likely to take
58 advantage of. In fact, the article I mentioned which is
59 going to be published in a November publication of the
60 American Medical Association called The Archives of Family
