Day 031 - 05 Oct 94 - Page 27
1 between the parallel evidences of heart disease and
2 cancer, there is in my view enough evidence to make it
3 difficult to reject the hypothesis that a high fat and
4 high meat fat diet is not similarly related to the risks
5 of breast and colon cancer". When you are talking about
6 the evidence there, you were not including your
7 hypothesis?
8 A. No, that is not evidence.
9
10 Q. What was the evidence you were referring to?
11 A. I was referring to what I have below somewhat
12 arbitrarily set out, namely, that I consider that the
13 epidemiological evidence between heart disease is strong
14 in relation to dietary fats, and I think the same applies
15 to the epidemiological evidence for cancer. I think the
16 migrant data for heart disease is strong and is a very
17 close parallel with heart disease and cancer.
18
19 Experimental evidence is also strong in relation to heart
20 disease in terms of, particularly, saturated fats. And so
21 far as cancer is concerned, I think most people would
22 accept it is not as strong as heart disease because there
23 is less of it, and there are some confounding factors, as
24 I mentioned lower down, in the experimental evidence on
25 cancer but, nonetheless, it has led several authors to
26 conclude that in experimental situations high fat diets
27 will promote cancer and, importantly, that diets rich in
28 n-3 fatty acids will protect against it. That is true
29 also of heart disease.
30
31 The data on individuals is moderate, I think. There is
32 some conflicting individual data for heart disease for the
33 reasons I have tried to explain, and it is -- I think I
34 may be wrong in making this judgment, but I think it is
35 much weaker in relation to cancer. Again there is much
36 less of it. The intervention trials in heart disease give
37 us -- I think if you follow the Richard Peto's group, that
38 is, Sir Richard Doll's research group in Oxford, I think
39 they would say that the intervention trials consistently,
40 if all put together, show that you can get, if you reduce
41 blood cholesterol level, you can benefit with regard to
42 mortality from heart disease, particularly in the
43 Norwegian trial. But we have not, as yet, had any
44 intervention studies in cancer.
45
46 MR. JUSTICE BELL: It is going to be difficult to do them, is
47 it not, because if your intervention studies have shown
48 that there is a significant risk of cardiovascular
49 disease, for the reason you gave earlier, you are not
50 going to be allowed to do them just to discover where it
51 affects cancer and take the risk of killing people of
52 cardiovascular disease along the way?
53 A. Yes, I think that is correct. The studies that have
54 been planned at the moment are not intervention studies
55 but long term follow up studies of cohort populations.
56
57 Q. You have already chosen their diet, as it were?
58 A. Yes, that is correct.
59
60 Q. So you are not urging them to take more of what is bad for
