Day 030 - 03 Oct 94 - Page 32


     
     1   MR. RAMPTON:  I can, perhaps, help to some extent.  One of them
     2        is "smoking kills"; another is "smoking causes heart
     3        disease"; another is "tobacco seriously damages health",
     4        which is, of course, a slander on tobacco.  You have to
     5        smoke it first.
     6
     7   THE WITNESS:  I think Mr. Rampton to some extent is making the
     8        point I was trying to make there too:  I think the
     9        reasonable construction on those statements, which
    10        obviously must have been considered carefully by the
    11        Department of Health before they were put out in
    12        advertisements and on cigarette packets, is that it is not
    13        claimed that smoking one cigarette is going to doom you to
    14        lung cancer.  The point by analogy is made about fat or
    15        about fatty food.  It is not -- no-one has ever seriously
    16        proposed that consuming one item of fatty food is going to
    17        be of significance one way or another to the diet.  The
    18        relevant point is the contribution that food or that meal
    19        or those series of meals makes to the general diet in an
    20        individual or a population.
    21
    22   MR. MORRIS:  So in the same way would it be fair to say that
    23        you could say a diet, for example, high in fat causes
    24        cancer in one way, but not strictly -----
    25
    26   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  You have to let the witness give his own
    27        evidence.  If you want to ask him how he would express it,
    28        then please do.
    29
    30   MR. MORRIS:  What I am trying to say is that ----
    31        A.  I think I would be a little bit pernickity about
    32        that.  As I have already indicated in the case of smoking
    33        and cancer -- I think in the case of smoking and cancer,
    34        what the government has chosen to do is to make really
    35        rather highly coloured statements which can be attacked in
    36        the secure knowledge that they will be not attacked by the
    37        cigarette manufacturers in the general climate of opinion
    38        now.
    39
    40        But I myself (and possibly Mr. Rampton too) is not
    41        entirely happy with the statement saying "smoking kills".
    42        You can see the argument against that.  A child could have
    43        one cigarette and be terrified that they will die as a
    44        result.  I would prefer a less dramatic statement in the
    45        case of diet and heart disease and diet and cancer as
    46        well.
    47
    48   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Take a moment to think about it, Mr. Cannon,
    49        and then see if you think you can helpfully express what
    50        you see to be the consensus with regard to diet of the 
    51        kind you have described and cancer of the breast and bowel 
    52        and colon, which is what I am mostly concerned about. 
    53        A.  What I would like to do, my Lord, in my position, as
    54        chronicler here rather than as a research scientist, is
    55        read out a statement which was agreed recently by all the
    56        United Nations members present at the Rome International
    57        Conference on Nutrition.
    58
    59   Q.   Is that the one we have at the end of your statement?
    60        A.  Yes, it is.

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