Day 057 - 29 Nov 94 - Page 03

     
     1
     2   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  I thought you had appeared, essentially, to
     3        have been at the end of what you had to say.
     4
     5   MS. STEEL:  More or less, yes.
     6
     7   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  But it was, obviously, not right to just say
     8        you have concluded and stop there.  If there is anything
     9        you more you want to say -- you addressed me quite
    10        extensively on it -- at this stage about what you say are
    11        the relevant parts, because we are still on F now, you have
    12        not moved on to L at all yet, of the leaflet mean related
    13        to what we call nutrition, then do so.
    14
    15   MS. STEEL:  Perhaps if I just go over a few points that are not
    16        particularly in any order?  I have not looked through all
    17        the references listed by Mr. Rampton of when "cause" was
    18        mentioned by Dr. Barnard.  We feel it is a complete red
    19        herring because you actually told us to ask Dr. Barnard
    20        about cause.  So, the fact that it is mentioned in the
    21        evidence does not make any difference.  But we would
    22        repeat, that is not the same as preparing our case on the
    23        basis of "cause" and asking him to research things,
    24        research bodies that had stated that the link was causal
    25        while he was over in the States before he came over here to
    26        give evidence because, obviously, he might have been able
    27        to find further material specifically on cause that could
    28        have been brought over here.
    29
    30        You may remember during Mr. Rampton's cross-examination of
    31        Mr. Barnard he put to him that there were no reputable
    32        bodies that were asserting that there was a causal
    33        relationship between diet and cancer.  Dr. Barnard disputed
    34        that, and when we re-examined we put to him some of the
    35        documents he had given to us where it did refer to or imply
    36        a causal relationship.  But, had we known before the case
    37        started (and certainly several weeks before Dr. Barnard
    38        came over here to give evidence) that the issue was just
    39        cause, we would have asked him to research that in
    40        particular much more intensively.
    41
    42        I think the same thing really applies to Professor Crawford
    43        and Mr. Cannon.  It was claimed by Mr. Rampton that they
    44        had prepared second statements that were about cause and
    45        so, clearly, we had realised by then that the issue was
    46        cause.  That is not, in fact, what happened.  What happened
    47        was that you asked us to get them to expand on what they
    48        were going to say about cancer because there was not much
    49        about it in their statements, so we asked them to do that.
    50        They brought in cause, but we did not specifically say to 
    51        them:  "Look, the case is now all about cause; can you just 
    52        concentrate on that and ignore everything else?" 
    53
    54        Basically, the position is we are not disputing that we
    55        asked Dr. Barnard, Professor Crawford and Geoffrey Cannon
    56        about cause to some extent, and we are not disputing that
    57        on some occasions we asked Vernon Wheelock and Dr. Arnott
    58        questions during cross-examination about cause, though, in
    59        Wheelock's case, I should add that -- I mentioned this last
    60        week -- during cross-examination, according to the index,