Day 040 - 21 Oct 94 - Page 02

     
     1                                      Friday 21st October 1994.
     2
     3   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  I know I was hoping to discuss it later in
     4        the day, the topic that was raised yesterday afternoon
     5        about the extent to which scientific papers should be put
     6        in cross-examination.  I am not seeking to make a final
     7        decision now, but I thought about it overnight.  I thought
     8        I ought to raise my thoughts while cross-examination of
     9        Dr. Millstone is going on, although I think it is
    10        particularly pertinent in a case of cross-examination of a
    11        witness who has particular scientific or medical expertise
    12        in the area (and that certainly applies to Professor
    13        Crawford who is a biochemist and nutritionist, a professor
    14        of biochemistry and nutrition).
    15
    16        The difficulty, it seems to me, with the course you took
    17        with Professor Crawford (and I appreciate that it was taken
    18        in an attempt to save time in a case which is lasting a
    19        very long time) is this:  Really what it seems to me is
    20        proposed that I should be referred to articles after the
    21        evidence is finished with a view to drawing the conclusion
    22        that they contradict or diminish the strength of the
    23        evidence -- we will stick with Professor Crawford for the
    24        moment -- yet he has not been given an opportunity to deal
    25        with the criticism or deflect it or give evidence which
    26        might modify it.
    27
    28        Firstly, in my view, he ought to be given that
    29        opportunity.  If one can personalise it, one can imagine
    30        sitting in one's room writing the judgment and reminding
    31        oneself that Professor Crawford had said such and such, but
    32        then I had been referred to a scientific paper which
    33        contradicted that.  It seems to me there is very great
    34        difficulty then in saying that the paper should be
    35        preferred to Professor Crawford or that knowing whether
    36        Professor Crawford might have had an answer to that
    37        apparent criticism.  We are in a specialist field there.
    38
    39   MR. RAMPTON:  Yes, that is true.
    40
    MR. JUSTICE BELL:  I know from my own experience that one thinks
    42        one may have mastered a particular area of medicine
    43        sufficiently for the purpose of the case and then you meet
    44        an expert in the field who says:  "You can get Black's
    45        Medical Dictionary or encyclopedia or the Atlas of Anatomy
    46        you have looked at because they are all wrong; the real
    47        position is this".
    48
    49   MR. RAMPTON:  In relation to Professor Crawford, of course,
    50        I take the point.  I presently think I would disavow any 
    51        such words as "criticism" or "contradiction".  I would be 
    52        looking to "explanation" and, perhaps, "modification". 
    53        Nothing more than that, if I have understood his evidence
    54        correctly.
    55
    56        So far as other witnesses are concerned, I hope that I did
    57        what your Lordship is indicating insofar as Dr. Barnard is
    58        concerned.  That being so, the problem seems to me this:
    59        In the course of cross-examining Dr. Barnard, I did canvass
    60        a good deal of material.  It seems to me, and it may have