Day 254 - 22 May 96 - Page 23


     
     1        so it probably was not the best time to read it, but
     2        I could not actually work out when they said clearly that
     3        the follow-up was, in 1995 or 1994, whenever it was, as
     4        oppose to them talking about the follow-up that was done in
     5        the original study.
     6
     7   MR. MORRIS:  The chart implies it is the original study.
     8
     9   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Can I understand it?  They did not find
    10        medical records in relation to the people who had been
    11        considered in the original studies, dealing with what had
    12        happened to those people since the original studies, as
    13        I understand it -- or did they?
    14        A.  My understanding, my Lord, is that they did.
    15
    16   Q.   Can you try and find that because I think what Mr. Morris
    17        is just querying is, I understand what you say about
    18        ignoring the conclusions from the original studies and just
    19        going back to what the actual findings were in the studies
    20        and then taking those findings from all the studies,
    21        applying a uniform method of analysis to them, but did they
    22        also, for instance, see, make inquiries, as to what numbers
    23        of the women who had not developed cancer at the time of a
    24        particular earlier study had done so since, or anything of
    25        that kind?  I think that is the distinction you are being
    26        asked about.
    27        A.  In some of the studies it looks as though they may have
    28        gone back to the original design, for example the
    29        Netherlands Cohort Studies.
    30
    31   Q.   What are you looking at now?
    32        A.  This is page 357, top right-hand little bit.  They
    33        identified a cohort within the study and their dietary and
    34        other exposures were compared with those of a sub-cohort of
    35        1,812 women randomly sampled at the baseline.  In other
    36        words, at the time of the original study.
    37
    38   Q.   Baseline means at the time of the original study; is that
    39        right?
    40        A.  Indeed, yes.
    41
    42   Q.   Is there an indication that in relation to some studies
    43        they may have looked to see what happened to any of the
    44        subjects since the time of the study?
    45        A.  No, I think basically what they are doing is they were
    46        using these sub-cohorts, if I may use that phrase, to try
    47        to verify that the information that was present in the
    48        original studies was actually valid.
    49
    50   MS. STEEL:   So they are reevaluating the old data? 
    51        A.  Yes, basically.  No, they have not, actually.  I know 
    52        it is a difficult one this one, but they have tried to 
    53        ignore the data which were published at that time, they
    54        have gone back to the original information which was
    55        obtained from the women included in those studies, and they
    56        then reanalysed the data in this standardised fashion.
    57        What they have tried to do is to verify the validity of the
    58        methods which were employed in the original studies by
    59        taking select groups of patients to see whether the data
    60        really do marry up, as it were.

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