Day 031 - 05 Oct 94 - Page 24
1 breast and colon cancer, because I would have thought that
2 -- please disabuse me -- if you are carrying on a lot of
3 research into the causes or promoters of various cancers,
4 and some of the people carrying on the research have a
5 qualification in what I will just called general medicine
6 and do not have total tunnel vision, if they suspect a
7 cause is one such as you canvassed in your report, then
8 they are automatically going to know that it has something
9 in common with a cause of heart disease. They do not have
10 to be approaching it from, "Is there a common
11 denominator", but merely approaching it from what might
12 the cause be is going to steer them towards a common
13 denominator. Do you understand what I am saying?
14 A. Yes, I do, your Lordship. I regret to say that -----
15
16 Q. We have spent a lot of time (or many people do) in this
17 country contributing in one way or another to charities to
18 do with cancer research. One assumes, whether or not
19 central government puts enough money into it, that a lot
20 of money is being spent on it and a lot of energy is going
21 into it?
22 A. Absolutely. Tragically, we still do not have a cure
23 for either, despite the many billions that have been going
24 into it since the end of the last war. I do not -- I may
25 have missed something, but I do not know and I have not
26 read of late of any research group which has tried to look
27 at, side by side, the causes of these types of cancer and
28 heart disease.
29
30 Q. Do you know of any research group who has gone along the
31 lines which you were canvassing at the foot of page 8 and
32 the top of page 9?
33 A. Yes. There are several research groups that are
34 individually going along the lines of what is the cause of
35 the metastesis and several research groups going along the
36 lines in terms of cardiovascular diseases, what is the
37 cause of the thrombosis, and the cause of the thrombosis
38 has been well worked out. There is a lot of evidence in
39 the cause of the metastesis. But I have to say that it is
40 -- because people work in cancer research institutes and
41 people work in institutes concerned with the
42 cardiovascular system, they are separate in their
43 localities and in their disciplines. There has been,
44 unfortunately, little cross fertilization. I think there
45 should, perhaps, have been more cross fertilization.
46
47 I refer to a Berzelius Symposium where this question did
48 come up in about 1986 where the Swedish Medical Society
49 asked if the diet proposed for the prevention of heart
50 disease and cancer would be different, and that was a very
51 interesting discussion.
52
53 It got very close to what I am talking about here, but, as
54 far as I know, there is -- I may be quite wrong about this
55 -- no research group that is actually trying to put these
56 two principles together.
57
58 MS. STEEL: Is that in terms of mechanism?
59 A. Yes.
60
