Day 033 - 10 Oct 94 - Page 06


     
     1        spontaneously report that there was a link between dietary
     2        fat and cancer when asked an open-ended question about
     3        that, indicating to us that, perhaps, 80 per cent of women
     4        had never even heard there might be a link, suggesting
     5        that they were unable to make any informed decision about
     6        what risks they might care to take.
     7
     8        That suggested that perhaps physicians and others, the
     9        food industry, advertisers, might do well to get the word
    10        out a bit more strongly, not so that people are forced to
    11        one type of diet or another, but so that people have
    12        information to make their own choices.  Obviously,
    13        everyone's diet will be a little bit different.  Even
    14        vegetarian diets, while they are quite helpful, they can
    15        be dangerous or they could be poorly designed if one chose
    16        quite an aberrant diet, but people need to have
    17        information to make these choices.  That was the goal of
    18        that study.
    19
    20   Q.   Just a couple more questions:  You have made various
    21        presentations to medical bodies.  Do you want to
    22        particularly inform us about the one you made to the
    23        American Public Health Association?
    24        A.  Yes.  The American Public Health Association, I was
    25        invited by them to give a talk related to what federal
    26        nutrition guidelines ought to be.  I was asked to make a
    27        presentation and also to convene a panel of other experts
    28        to give their opinions, and did so.  The American Public
    29        Health Association is the leading public health body in
    30        the United States.
    31
    32   Q.   Are you a member of any task forces currently?
    33        A.  The American Institute on Cancer Research (which is a
    34        very large non-profit cancer research sponsoring body in
    35        the United States) asked me to serve on a task force to
    36        define what the role of prevention of cancer might be in
    37        health care.  I served on that panel and helped draft its
    38        report.
    39
    40   Q.   Can you briefly say what the Physicians Committee for
    41        Responsible Medicine is, when it was formed?
    42        A.  It is a non-profit organisation that was formed in
    43        1985 to address the issue of preventing chronic disease,
    44        which makes particular reference to diet, but also other
    45        factors such as tobacco.  Secondly, we have dealt with
    46        research issues, ethical issues, in both human research
    47        and animal research.  We have looked also at medical
    48        care.  There are problems of provision of medical care in
    49        the United States and we have addressed those to a degree
    50        as well.  The original intention -- well, my original 
    51        intention with the Physicians Committee was to have a 
    52        small group of physicians, rather like a think tank, if 
    53        I may use that term, that would review the literature and
    54        devise materials that might be helpful to the public or
    55        might be influential.
    56
    57        However, we grew a bit larger than I had anticipated
    58        initially.  We now have over 3,000 physicians who belong.
    59        We have also had considerable interest from the lay public
    60        who have asked to subscribe to our materials.  We publish

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