Day 254 - 22 May 96 - Page 04
1 A. Yes, I do, thank you.
2
3 Q. The first paragraph reads:
4
5 "Since my last report, the strength of belief of the
6 direct relationship between diet and development of certain
7 forms of cancer has become less strong."
8
9 Are you referring there to your strength of belief or
10 whose?
11 A. I tried to word that sentence very carefully, because
12 it is only related to certain forms of cancer, and the two
13 cancers that I am concentrating on, as far as this
14 particular situation is concerned, are cancers of the
15 breast and large bowel. What I am referring to is really
16 what the scientific community and the medical community,
17 who actually have to try to give advice to patients, feel
18 about the relationship between diet and cancer of the
19 breast and cancer of the large bowel.
20
21 Q. If you are not just referring to yourself, what is that
22 based upon?
23 A. Right. If you go back in time to the time that I gave
24 my original report, I pointed out that in the 1960s when
25 people were looking at variations in dietary habit
26 throughout the world, it seemed that if you looked at the
27 evidence that was presented at that time more than 80 per
28 cent of the variations of the incidents of breast cancer
29 and large bowel cancer could be explained by dietary
30 measures, diet, dietary variations throughout the world.
31
32 Now, I think to put that into context, this was around
33 about the time that the results of the British doctors
34 studies on smoking and lung cancer had come out, and it
35 was, I think, naturally believed that people were fired
36 with enthusiasm at the time, and I think it was naturally
37 believed then that we might be able to find as clear cut a
38 relationship between dietary variations and, say, breast
39 cancer and large bowel cancer as one had found between
40 cigarette smoking and lung cancer.
41
42 What has happened since then, of course, is that as soon as
43 people have tried to investigate that relationship in more
44 detail and carry out numerous studies, rather than having
45 consistent results, as one found in the relationship
46 between smoking and lung cancer, one has begun to find that
47 not all the studies actually give the same direction of
48 results: Some say there may be a relationship; some
49 studies say, well, there is no clear relationship; and some
50 studies have actually positively said that there is no
51 relationship.
52
53 So, I think that is what has made people become more
54 suspicious, I do not really mean 'suspicious', but more
55 critical of the original concepts that the situation was
56 going to be clear cut. I think people are now, in the
57 scientific community, where one has to rely on scientific
58 evidence, becoming much more circumspect by saying there is
59 clear relationship between diet and cancer.
60
