Day 279 - 12 Jul 96 - Page 17
1 serious question, because that topic in the case is an
2 important one. If it were some--
3
4 MR. JUSTICE BELL: It is not so much the diet and cancer, if
5 anything it is the cholesterol.
6
7 MR. RAMPTON: Yes, that is right. Diet and cancer is merely
8 repetitive. It is the cholesterol and the fat which, to my
9 reading, and I have not been through it line by line but I
10 did read it quite carefully last night, to my reading it is
11 both detailed, and I cannot deal with it in argument
12 because I do not understand a lot of it.
13
14 MR. JUSTICE BELL: That may very well go to weight.
15
16 MR. RAMPTON: It goes to disadvantage as well.
17
18 MR. JUSTICE BELL: If one looks, for instance, certainly so far
19 as dietary cholesterol is concerned, at what Dr. Barnard
20 says about the amount of cholesterol in a Big Mac and then
21 what he says about the amount of cholesterol per thousand
22 kilo calories you need, it is about four times what is in a
23 Big Mac -- three times, anyway.
24
25 MR. RAMPTON: It may be, my Lord, but I would not be willing to
26 take on the burden of challenging this statement simply as
27 an advocate. It may be in the end your Lordship might say,
28 well, as it has not been cross-examined and as the
29 plaintiffs have not had a chance to meet it by evidence of
30 their own, it has no weight -- or has very little weight.
31 But that said it is, in my respectful submission, given the
32 way in which the defendants are likely to read out their
33 statements in open court and then put them on the Internet
34 -- and I will come back to that later on because I said
35 that I would -- it would not be right to allow this
36 statement in at this stage of this particular case. Unless
37 your Lordship is going to say to me, "Well, I will let it
38 in but you must see if you can get Professor Naismith back
39 to deal with that part of the statement." But I am very
40 unwilling to do that on behalf of my clients at this
41 stage. I do not know what the Professor's availability is
42 anyway. I will begin to inquire into that should I need.
43
44 There is no other way in which I can deal with it
45 because, as I say, I am not a scientist, I cannot deal with
46 it and I cannot cross-examine Dr. Barnard.
47
48 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Thank you, Mr. Rampton. What would you like
49 to say about it?
50
51 MR. MORRIS: Well.
52
53 MS. STEEL: I will leave most of it to Mr. Morris, but I just
54 say that about the cholesterol figures that are given being
55 found in Big Mac food, in the Big Mac meal, the 83
56 milligrams of cholesterol, that was actually in his
57 original statement. So there is nothing new. And the
58 other thing is that, obviously, the plaintiffs has made an
59 admission about heart disease, so all Dr. Barnard is
60 commenting on is the extent of the risk, which is something
