Day 298 - 11 Nov 96 - Page 10
1 sort of consensus of opinion, that virtually everyone could
2 agree to, and bearing in mind that there would be, I think,
3 food industry people, or connections between food industry,
4 that that might water it down. That is not Professor
5 Campbell's words. That is my kind of summing up of what he
6 was saying.
7
8 On page 84, Professor Campbell says, and this is clearly
9 stated, that there is a direct relationship which is a
10 causal relationship between fat and breast cancer and
11 between fat and colon cancer, and that that was especially
12 true for animal products, that there was a direct causal
13 relationship. I think he gave some figures that the
14 chances of a high fat diet including animal products not
15 being causal of cancer of the breast or bowel is one in
16 1,000. That was the same page, page 84 at the bottom from
17 line 55.
18
19 He explained that that was not -- he gave further
20 explanation about that, that he was not saying that it was
21 high fat as the sole cause, and he went on to say that the
22 "high intake of the fat coming from animal products tends
23 to displace the consumption of foods of plant origin, so
24 those kinds of food being displaced are going to allow for
25 an increased risk as well."
26
27 Then on to the point which we were on last week, he said
28 that he was absolutely convinced that there was going to be
29 a cluster of genes for every single disease known to human
30 kind. In his view, everybody had genetic susceptibility.
31
32 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Just let me make a note of this.
33
34 MS. STEEL: Page 85, as well, line 27. He said it is not the
35 genes that actually establish the risk; it is really the
36 factors that actually allow the expression of these genes
37 that lead to the disease and that those factors were
38 largely dietary in origin.
39
40 He referred to a couple of studies, one by Doll and Peto,
41 which came to a conclusion that not more than two to three
42 percent of all cancers were genetically based. A second
43 study, which was carried out in America on twins, where you
44 would have expected the second member of the identical
45 twins to get the same cancers as the first member, because
46 they had the same genes, but that that turned out not to be
47 the case. He said that so even though we have a genetic
48 susceptibility for getting these diseases, and that was
49 everybody for some disease, the fact of the matter is that
50 that is not what really leads to the disease. It was
51 basically diet, that was where diet came into play, and
52 that he considered that the role of diet in the disease
53 process was substantial.
54
55 At the bottom of page 86, he went on to -- well, you asked
56 him about whether he was saying that we all had a genetic
57 propensity to develop cancer, and he said, "and other kinds
58 of diseases as well".
59
60 I think that is it for Campbell.
