Day 035 - 12 Oct 94 - Page 31
1 report, that there are clear cut mechanisms whereby a high
2 calorie intake which is associated with a high-fat diet
3 affects oestrogen metabolism which, in turn, affects the
4 risk of breast cancer. These links, apparently, did not
5 make their way into the passages you have read. I am not
6 sure if they were considered by the Surgeon General at
7 all, but they are important in looking at what the links,
8 and indeed causal links, may be between diet and
9 cancer.
10
11 Those people who simply choose to look at overall evidence
12 trying to directly relate fat and cancer without any
13 reference to nailing down the specific cause-and-effect
14 relationship, the mechanisms by which one leads to the
15 other are only going to be accessing a portion of the data
16 and may have to interpret it cautiously with that in mind.
17
18 Q. We will come to obesity and breast cancer in due course,
19 Dr. Barnard, but you would agree that as recommendations
20 to the general public of America on its health in 1988,
21 the Surgeon General was a very great deal more cautious
22 than you have been in this court and in your book, has he
23 not?
24 A. I do not know that I am able to say that based on what
25 I have read here.
26
27 Q. Very well. I will leave this now. There are some
28 passages about -- how do you pronounce that word
29 carotenoids, have I got it wrong?
30 A. No, that is correct. One says carotenoids.
31
32 Q. Derived from Beta-carotene; is that right?
33 A. Beta-carotene is one carotenoid.
34
35 Q. So I have it the wrong way round. Can we then turn to
36 another document? Can you put that book down now,
37 please? You have spent many hours, days, weeks, months,
38 years, perhaps, studying these matters, Dr. Barnard; what,
39 in your view, is the status of Sir Richard Doll as an
40 epidemiologist in the study of the aetiology of cancer?
41 A. He is well respected.
42
43 Q. Does the same go for Walter Willett of Harvard?
44 A. Dr. Willett is a respected and controversial figure.
45
46 Q. Let us have a look, first of all, at some words of Sir
47 Richard Doll again in 1988. I would ask you, if you can,
48 to lay hands on volume IV, orange, labelled "Nutrition"
49 with "Professor Walker" and "Dr. Arnott" on it. You
50 should, if you are lucky, find it in the shelves behind
51 you.
52
53 In that file, Dr. Barnard, you will find two sections. If
54 you could pass straight to the second section you will
55 find a whole lot of subnumbers from 1 to about 26,
56 I think. I would like you to turn in the second section
57 to tab 16. This is an article from the Cancer Research
58 and Clinical Oncology published in 1988 by the German
59 scientific publisher Springer Verlag. Do you see that in
60 the right-hand corner?
