[ RadSafe ] Letter: Homeopathy and Hormesis

[Muckerheide, James]

Hi Steve,

I suspect that you haven't been keeping up with the literature on
dose-responses to low doses of all toxins.  :-)  

I just sent the attached around today.  One of Calabrese's recent journal
papers ran 207 pages with individual summaries of papers just addressing
immune responses from very many different toxins, including some radiation.

And I can't imagine anyone stupid enough to "confuse" hormesis and homeopathy
if they know ANYTHING about them.  (I wonder how you would do 10-20 dilutions
of radon :-)

This really seems more like disinformation than just stupidity. :-)

Regards, Jim 


> -----Original Message-----
> From: radsafe-bounces at radlab.nl [mailto:radsafe-bounces at radlab.nl] On
> Behalf Of Steven Dapra
> Sent: Tuesday, February 07, 2006 10:23 PM
> To: radsafe at radlab.nl
> Subject: Re: [ RadSafe ] Letter: Homeopathy and Hormesis
> 
> 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
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> You are currently subscribed to the RadSafe mailing list
> 
> Before posting a message to RadSafe be sure to have read and understood
> the RadSafe rules. These can be found at:
> http://radlab.nl/radsafe/radsaferules.html
> 
> For information on how to subscribe or unsubscribe and other settings
> visit: http://radlab.nl/radsafe/