Day 022 - 12 Sep 94 - Page 37
1 A. Yes. In fairness though, that is actually quite a
2 complex phenomenon and, you know, it is not only diet
3 which changes when people move or one aspect of their diet
4 which changes, lots of other things change when people
5 move from an undeveloped country to a developed country.
6
7 Q. But, for example, in the immediate, in the short term, it
8 would not have any implications for genetic ---
9 A. It certainly would not.
10
11 Q. -- links to cancer so that would be an advantage over
12 genetic?
13 A. But you would have to take into the account the fact
14 that many factors were changing, and you would need to
15 know what the interplay of all these changing factors was.
16
17 Q. Yes. I am not an academic, or whatever, but I presume
18 that people do their studies responsibly and take into
19 account various -----
20 A. Yes, I agree. These are worthwhile studies and it is
21 very important to look at migrating populations.
22
23 Q. Before I move on from populations studies, you have said
24 if they are very strongly correlated, then their evidence
25 would be more important. If something is so strong, then
26 it seems to leave ----
27 A. Well, I personally believe that the information that
28 you get from a population study should direct you along
29 avenues of research. It is the pointer to the direction
30 that you should be trying to look at to try to establish a
31 relationship between the observed effect and possible
32 causation.
33
34 Q. Would you say that the correlations for links between diet
35 and cancer in the population studies are very high?
36 A. Yes.
37
38 Q. Very high. Are they as high as, I do not know, smoking
39 and cancer?
40 A. No, but it has been suggested if you just look at
41 population studies and the differences that one sees in
42 them ---
43
44 Q. You would be convinced?
45 A. -- diet would account for perhaps 80 per cent of
46 cancer incidence.
47
48 Q. Right.
49 A. I think we have actually discussed this already.
50
51 Q. Yes. If we deal with other ones: You said there are
52 problems with animal experimentation. Do you want to say
53 any more about that, what are the strengths and
54 weaknesses?
55 A. Again, I think animal work does give you guidelines to
56 conduct further research. One of the difficulties always
57 with animal research is knowing whether what you are doing
58 to the animal is actually the same in the human subject.
59 It is important to remember that a lot of these
60 experiments are conducted on mice, for example, or rats
