Day 037 - 14 Oct 94 - Page 65


     
     1
     2   THE WITNESS:  Can I finish making a point here?
     3
     4   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Yes, finish what you wanted to say.
     5        A.  Well, in view of the, to use Walter Willett's words
     6        here, the hypothesis that greater fat intake increases
     7        breast cancer risk, which is supported by many animal
     8        studies, I feel it would have been negligent of me to
     9        write that greater meat intake, which he also cites here
    10        specifically, does not increase cancer risk, specifically
    11        breast cancer risk.  It would have been negligent of me to
    12        do that.
    13
    14   MR. RAMPTON:  Would it, Mr. Cox, be responsible to say to the
    15        public: There is evidence which suggests an association
    16        between high-fat or high in meat intake, particularly high
    17        animal fat intake, and breast cancer, some of this is
    18        international correlational evidence, some of it comes
    19        from animal experiments whose extrapolation to the human
    20        condition is unreliable; on the other hand, there is
    21        evidence to suggest that there may be no association.
    22        Would that not have been the writing of a responsible
    23        person?
    24        A.  Not at all.  That would have been completely useless
    25        writing.  It would not have informed anybody. I think what
    26        we have to take into account here is that I am not a
    27        medical specialist. What I am doing is writing for people
    28        like me, and as far as I am concerned, I want to mow about
    29        the risks and the benefits.  Now what are the risks of
    30        changing to a meat-free way of living?  Very few.  What
    31        are the benefits?  Very many.  Decreasing breast cancer
    32        risk is, perhaps, not so well established as other risks,
    33        such as coronary heart disease, but cancers in total have
    34        been shown to be reduced very considerably by a shift
    35        towards a healthier eating pattern.  I would cite a study
    36        that I do not believe I did have the opportunity to
    37        include in the encyclopaedia, which has been published
    38        very recently, which is the Oxford study which shows a
    39        decrease in all forms of cancers amongst vegetarians by a
    40        huge 40 per cent; 40 per cent decrease in cancer
    41        mortality.
    42
    43        As an ordinary person I want to know about this sort of
    44        evidence.  I do not want to have the sort of statement
    45        read out to me or to read the sort of statement that
    46        Mr. Rampton has made because that is not helpful.
    47
    48   Q.   You as an ordinary person, somebody who is not an expert
    49        in nutrition, would naturally infer that the existence of
    50        suggested evidence naturally implies the existence of a 
    51        causal association, do you not?  That is what you are 
    52        telling your readers in this book, is it not? 
    53        A.  No.  That is really a dreadful distortion of what my
    54        point of view is.
    55
    56   Q.   I am just wondering about what you are saying in this
    57        book, you see.  You are telling people, as Dr. Barnard is
    58        in his book if you have read it, you are telling people:
    59        "Stay away from fat, it will probably kill you", are you
    60        not?

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