Day 030 - 03 Oct 94 - Page 22
1 diet and health in 1989, which rereviewed the scientific
2 evidence on diet and cancer. It is not just concerned
3 with diet and cancer.
4
5 In those cases, and in others, what the scientists are
6 asked to do is to spend a period of up to 2, 3, 4 years
7 going down to scientific bedrock. What I mean by that is
8 that they will, the secretariat of those committees will
9 do -- well, they will now do computer searches; a large
10 number of scientists will be appointed, whose disciplines
11 go right over the relevant range of disciplines required,
12 and we are, of course, dealing here with a
13 multidisciplinary subject. Particular members of the
14 committee will be charged to draw up particular sections
15 of the report and those sections will be reviewed,
16 challenged and discussed in successive committee
17 meetings.
18
19 Characteristically what then happens is that the report,
20 in a relatively late draft, will go out to review. In the
21 States it will go out to review to many scores, possibly
22 even hundreds of experts in the field, so that,
23 characteristically, they do things rather thoroughly in
24 the States. It would be fair to say that the report, as
25 eventually published, does represent the consensual view
26 of scientific opinion. That is in the States.
27
28 Reports produced by the World Health Organisation are done
29 roughly in the same way, so the report "Diet, Nutrition
30 and the Prevention of Chronic Diseases", which again
31 I believe has been referred to in the court proceedings,
32 which was published by WHO Geneva in 1990, went about its
33 business in the same sort of way. You would have a large
34 -- similarly as with the NAS -- a large committee of
35 experts is appointed. They spend as much time as required
36 reviewing or rereviewing the scientific evidence to date,
37 and then would base their recommendations -- they base
38 their report, their own review of the literature, which
39 would be summarised in the report itself and their
40 recommendations on the best science available at that
41 time.
42
43 Q. So if they make recommendations based upon the report,
44 does that mean they are agreeing with the conclusions of
45 that report?
46 A. Can you rephrase that question?
47
48 Q. Well, when, say, the US National Academy of Sciences --
49 I believe their recommendations were later taken up by the
50 US Government, is that correct?
51 A. Correct.
52
53 Q. When was that, do you know?
54 A. When was it taken up by government?
55
56 Q. Yes.
57 A. To expand my answer a bit, those recommendations were
58 taken up by the American Cancer Society and the National
59 Cancer Institute, who were the two leading cancer
60 charities in the States in the mid-80s, and were taken up
