Day 040 - 21 Oct 94 - Page 14

     
     1        same category as Mr. Cannon, what one might call an
     2        educated layman, so far as this is concerned,
     3        notwithstanding which he has held forth for some
     4        considerable time in this court as though he were a
     5        qualified toxicologist or other scientist, well qualified
     6        to criticise the basis on which these committees recommend
     7        acceptable daily intakes of these substances and in
     8        consequence of the levels at which those substances are
     9        allowed to be included in our food.
    10
    11        My submission at the end of this case, it will be perfectly
    12        apparent, is that your Lordship should place no reliance
    13        whatever on anything that Dr. Millstone has said because
    14        (a) he is quite plainly not an expert and (b) because he is
    15        coming from what one might call a perfectly apparent angle.
    16
    17   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  That is another aspect.  Dr. Millstone may
    18        have something to say.  I do not know whether you purport
    19        to be an expert in that field and, if you are an expert,
    20        what the basis for it is.  I think I must know.  I do not
         know what I will make of it at the end of the day, but it
    22        is something which may be relevant.  Would you like to tell
    23        me yourself, Dr. Millstone?
    24        A.  Yes, indeed.  Firstly, can I start from the particular
    25        wording that I used in response to the previous question?
    26        Because when I said "toxicologist" or "a group of
    27        toxicologists", I was not in that context trying to
    28        differentiate myself from toxicologists, but rather
    29        indicating the kinds of questions I would have expected the
    30        Scientific Committee for Food to ask of this particular
    31        evidence.
    32
    33        But, coming then to the broad question, to what extent I am
    34        or am not a toxicologist, I am happy to address that
    35        directly.
    36
    37        If a toxicologist is and only is someone who conducts
    38        laboratory experiments, I am not a toxicologist.  I have
    39        not conducted any experiments in toxicology.  I have
    40        conducted very few experiments since completing my physics
         degree.  Clearly, my scientific training in the first place
    42        was not in the biological sciences.
    43
    44        On the broader question of whether or not I count myself a
    45        toxicologist, my response is this:  I do not have a formal
    46        training in toxicology of the sort which Professor Walker
    47        has and Professor Walker provides in his department at the
    48        University of Surrey.  However, it is also the case that
    49        the vast majority of people working in the United Kingdom
    50        as professional toxicologists do not have formal academic 
    51        training in toxicology.  Until a few years ago there were 
    52        no undergraduate courses in toxicology at all.  There are 
    53        now a few of them.  There were, I believe, only two masters
    54        courses in toxicology; one at Surrey and one, I believe, at
    55        Leeds University.  I did not take either of those.
    56
    57        Most professional toxicologists in the United Kingdom have
    58        acquired their expertise through what one would call
    59        learning by doing on the job training.
    60