Day 256 - 04 Jun 96 - Page 26
1 I say Hunter and others, though perhaps I should say
2 Willett and others, because they put the senior man at the
3 end of the list. Do you have that there?
4
5 Can you bring that to me Mr. Riley, please?
6 A. Yes, OK.
7
8 MR. MORRIS: Have you got the Willett?
9 A. I do.
10
11 Q. Cohort studies?
12 A. Yes.
13
14 Q. Maybe if you look at that, forget Dr. Arnott's statement?
15 A. Right, OK.
16
17 Q. Put that one out of the way. Do you have any general
18 comment about cohort studies that might relate to this
19 particular report?
20 A. Yes I do and, in fact, I have a specific comment about
21 this particular paper. The chief author was David Hunter.
22 I was actually given a copy of this manuscript before it
23 was published. The key author on here is Professor Willett
24 who is on the committee (as I mentioned to you before) that
25 I presently co-chair, and so he actually shared this
26 document with me some time before it was actually
27 published. I have discussed it with Professor Willett.
28
29 The results of the conclusion of this particular study
30 I think can be questioned on some grounds that Professor
31 Willett does not deny, to be honest about it. Basically
32 the range of fat intake in this particular study was it
33 went somewhat lower than previously had been examined; that
34 is to say, it went below 20 per cent of the calories as
35 fat. However, that lowest decilitre, or lowest group only
36 included a fairly small number of individuals.
37
38 To briefly summarise this, you probably know, he did not
39 find any relationship when comparing these 7 different
40 studies. He did not find any relationship between dietary
41 fat and breast cancer, and the fat intake went to fairly
42 low levels, as indicated here.
43
44 However, the low fat intake, as I just mentioned, included
45 only a few individuals so that is one limitation, but
46 setting that aside, I think the chief problem with this
47 particular examination is that it is focused specifically
48 on just dietary fat. In fact, that is the way the subjects
49 undoubtedly responded in these studies. That is to say,
50 they decreased dietary fat alone and kept the rest of the
51 diet more or less the same, and the reason I say that is
52 because that is reference to one of the chapters that
53 I think is in the material that I submitted earlier, and
54 when people are generally told to decrease their fat intake
55 down to 30 per cent of the calories or 25 or something in
56 that neighbourhood, what they tend to do is to simply
57 decrease their use of added fat, which is fairly easy to
58 do. They tend to use lean cuts of meat and low fat dairy
59 products and, sure enough, they can get their fat intake
60 down to fairly low levels, but in actual fact they are not
