Day 017 - 25 Jul 94 - Page 03

     
     1        hospital?
              A.  Yes, I am.
     2
         Q.   How long have you been at Barts?
     3        A.  Nine and a half years.
 
     4   Q.   Oncology is the branch of medicine which is concerned with
              cancer?
     5        A.  Yes.  It basically is a name given to the study of all
              aspects of cancer, including its development and
     6        treatment.
 
     7   Q.   When you say "development and treatment", do you exclude
              cause?
     8        A.  No, I was including cause in that.
 
     9   Q.   So can we go to cause, development and treatment?
              A.  Cause, development and treatment.
    10
         Q.   Before you went to Barts were you at Edinburgh?
         A.  Yes, I was senior lecturer in clinical oncology in
              Edinburgh.  I was appointed there in 1974.  The remit of
    12        that particular appointment was to conduct research into a
              variety of treatments of cancer, including what was at
    13        that time a novel treatment which was neutron therapy.
 
    14   Q.   Radiotherapy is the treatment of cancer by means of
              X-rays; is that right?
    15        A.  Not only X-rays, but radio active substances which may
              be inserted into the tumour.
    16
         Q.   Was your time at Edinburgh taken up with academic work and
    17        research or did you get a chance to treat patients?
              A.  It was a combination.  There was obviously a lot of
    18        academic work conducted, but also a lot of the research we
              were carrying out was into the treatment of patients, so
    19        there was a certain clinical component.
 
    20   Q.   Your work now, how does that differ from Edinburgh?
              A.  There is more treatment patient orientated work than
         research.  The research I am doing now is entirely patient
              orientated.
    22
         Q.   We were going to come upon it later on.  Tell us what is
    23        meant by the word "aetiology" in relation to your field of
              medicine?
    24        A.  Aetiology is basically what we believe to be the
              causes of cancer and this can take a variety of different
    25        forms and includes things like genetic predisposition,
              biological causes such as viral infections, possibly 
    26        chemical induction, and physical causes such as radiation 
              exposure. 
    27
         Q.   We will have to look at this topic in a good deal more
    28        detail later on.  Before we do that, Dr. Arnott, have you
              written articles about colon rectal cancer?
    29        A.  Yes, I have written a number of articles about colon
              rectal cancer in a variety of journals, also in text
    30        books.