Day 031 - 05 Oct 94 - Page 04
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2 MS. STEEL: OK, I will go into some of them anyway.
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4 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Yes, very well.
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6 MS. STEEL: Is it right that since 1960 you have done a great
7 deal of research focusing on the relationship between
8 nutrition and disease?
9 A. Yes, that is correct. That has been the main subject
10 of my academic life.
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12 Q. Is it right that you have published over 200 scientific
13 communications?
14 A. Yes.
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16 Q. What were they concerning, just to give a range?
17 A. They start off with the work in Africa which concerned
18 the different distribution of disease amongst different
19 people, different tribal communities, which was related,
20 in our view, very much to the different diets and styles
21 of living that these people had. From then I became
22 interested in the contrast between the disease patterns of
23 Africa which were so totally different, with breast
24 cancer, colon cancer, coronary heart disease being more or
25 less absent but a wide variety of other diseases being
26 prevalent, but unheard of in Europe. I was very much
27 interested in the contrast between disease patterns in
28 Africa and the disease patterns in Europe.
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30 From that point on, we became particularly interested in
31 the role of dietary fats because that seemed to be one of
32 the major contrasts in the way that people ate in this
33 country compared to Africa, and I would say that the bulk
34 of the rest of the work, starting from the beginning of
35 the 70s, was concerned with the role of dietary fats and
36 human nutrition and particularly the essential fatty
37 acids.
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39 As the brain is the most outstanding development in the
40 human species, our work very much became focused on the
41 brain, not only because of its outstanding aspect in human
42 biology compared with other species, but also because 60
43 per cent of its structural material is made of fat; that
44 is where we became particularly interested in the
45 essential fats that you have to have in the diet and
46 cannot make yourself.
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48 Q. Is it right that you were the World Health Organisation
49 consultant to the FAO, WHO, expert consultation on the
50 role of dietary fats and oils in human nutrition?
51 A. Yes, that was a consultation called by both the Food
52 and Agriculture Organisation and the World Health
53 Organisation in the mid-70s to discuss the evidence at
54 that time on the relationships between diet and health.
55 Sorry, if I may amplify that, your Honour, dietary fats
56 and health.
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58 Q. Were heart disease and cancer part of the things that you
59 looked into?
60 A. One of the main concerns was the question of the
