[ RadSafe ] Letter: Homeopathy and Hormesis

[Steven Dapra]

Feb 7, 2006

Dear Group

Ran across this Letter to the Editor in the latest
edition of Skeptical Inquirer.

Skeptical Inquirer - the magazine for science and
reason - Vol. 30, No. 1 Jan/Feb 2006 p.68

Homeopathy and Hormesis:

Homeopathy is back, stronger than ever and more
global.  (See the review of Copeland's Cure, SI
July/August 2005.)  Now termed hormesis, it extends
homeopathy to include toxic chemicals and radiation,
among other hazardous materials.  Hormesis (defined
operationally as low-dose stimulation, high-dose
inhibition) is often used to promote the notion that
while high-level exposure to toxic chemicals are
detrimental to human health, low-level exposures are
beneficial, as in homeopathy.

[edit]

Radiation zealots began this
hormetic concept, but it has been expanded to include
other toxic materials.  This was built on the idea
proposed by Paracelsus (a seventeenth-century
German-Swiss physician) that "the dose makes the
poison," which the chemical industry extols in its
vested quest to exonerate its prized chemicals from
accusations of negative effects on human health.

COMMENT:

         There is some confused and dangerous reasoning at work here.  No 
one is saying that low-dose exposure to every toxin (insult) has a hormetic 
effect (that it is healthful).  Furthermore, no one is using hormesis to 
try and exonerate the chemical industry of anything, and I have never heard 
anyone claim that low doses of these chemical industry substances are 
healthful.  At most, people would say in these cases that low-dose exposure 
is not harmful, but never that it is healthful.

         We who accept the hormetic effect, or think there is some merit to 
the claim of hormesis, need to be careful to make a clear distinction 
between a hormetic (healthful) effect at low levels of exposure, and no 
effect at low levels of exposure.

(end comment)


Stimulatory responses are not always beneficial, and
some may be harmful.  Health decisions based on
purported beneficial effects of hormesis must address
differences between individuals in exposure and
susceptibility, including genetic, life-stage, and
health-status factors, among others.  Further, health
decisions based on so-called beneficial effects must
address the fact that other environmental and
workplace exposures may alter the low-dose response of
a single agent.

For more information, see "Fundamental Flaws of
Hormesis for Public Health Decisions," by Kristina A.
Thayer, Ronald Melnick, Kathy Burns, Devra Davis, and
James Huff, in Environmental Health Perspectives 113
(2005).

James Huff
The National Institute of Environmental Health
Sciences Research Triangle Park, North Carolina

COMMENT:

         No one is saying that stimulatory responses are always 
beneficial.  This needs to be approached on a case by case basis.

         Note that Huff refers readers to an article or a paper in 
Environmental Health Perspectives.  I have raised objections to EHP papers 
before on RADSAFE.  (Steve Wing's co-authored paper purporting to find a 
higher death toll at Three Mile Island was published in EHP.)  About ten 
years ago, one of the co-authors of this paper, Devra Davis, was active in 
the drive to attribute breast cancer to chlorine.  I heard her speak at an 
anti-chlorine and anti-radiation seminar in Albuquerque in 1994.  I do not 
know what Davis' present views are on chlorine and breast cancer.  (Wing 
also spoke at this seminar.)  Should anyone have questions about this 
seminar, please contact me by private e-mail.  Please do not ask me on RADSAFE.

Steven Dapra
sjd at swcp.com