Day 040 - 21 Oct 94 - Page 42
1
2 Q. They seem to be convinced of the evidence on that at least?
3 A. Yes.
4
5 Q. Is your opinion that Amaranth is a more convincing case
6 than Sunset Yellow?
7 A. Perhaps than Sunset Yellow but very similar to
8 Tartrazine.
9
10 Q. Maybe it was your case on hyperactivity that Amaranth was
11 ----
12 A. If was very frequently cited by parents. One of the
13 reasons that people are able to pick out Amaranth as a
14 compound triggering adverse reactions, is that it is used
15 in some bright red and pink toothpastes but, obviously, not
16 in white toothpastes. Quite a few parents have claimed
17 that their children's behaviour improved markedly when they
18 shifted from the coloured to the plain white toothpaste
19 where the coloured toothpaste was typically coloured with
20 Amaranth.
21
22 Q. On Amaranth there was a whole thing which we will not have
23 time to go into, and I do not want to really, the long
24 document which Mr. Rampton went through which you wanted to
25 make a number of observations about; do you remember?
26 A. I certainly could have done so, yes.
27
28 Q. Is there any particular observation you want to make, maybe
29 from memory, from that document?
30 A. One that struck that I do recall was that there was a
31 phrase somewhere in the document saying something like
32 there were no dose related effects. That usually means
33 that there was an effect but it did not rise monotonically
34 with dose. That I took to be one example where evidence at
35 moderate dose is disregarded because it does not arise at
36 high dose, or arises to a lesser extent at high dose. In
37 the document I prepared I included some remarks by
38 Dr. Jacqueline Verrett criticising the practice of
39 disregarding such evidence.
40
41 Q. You made a point that maybe it is worth re-emphasising,
42 that the low dose, if you remember, that was referred to
43 that was not statistically significant. It is worth
44 emphasising, presumably, that the other doses higher than
45 that figure did have a statistically significant effect?
46 A. That seems to be the clear implication from the way the
47 report is written. That is why I think it would have been
48 more appropriate if the figures had been provided.
49
50 Q. In that document, this is actually document at tab E of
51 Professor Walker, Mr. Rampton did not ask you about the
52 conclusions about calcification?
53 A. Yes.
54
55 Q. Renal calcification. What from your memory, very briefly,
56 was the evidence there that seem to come out of that
57 document?
58 A. From my memory is that there was evidence of renal
59 calcification at higher doses.
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