FW: Hormesis and Ed Calabrese positively reported by John Pike

["Ted Rockwell" <tedrock@starpower.net>]

The word is getting around.



Ted Rockwell



-----Original Message-----

From: owner-rad-sci-l@wpi.edu [mailto:owner-rad-sci-l@wpi.edu]On Behalf

Of Jim Muckerheide

Sent: Thursday, January 01, 2004 12:32 AM

To: RAD-SCI-L

Cc: tdl108

Subject: Hormesis and Ed Calabrese positively reported by John Pike





Friends,



Ed Calabrese's work is very positively reported, disparaging of persons

who question the effects, by Dr. John Pike. Dr. Pike has a very high

profile and is a widely quoted spokesperson on science, especially space

and security. He was a national spokesman for 20 years with the

Federation of American Scientists. 



Please forward this to your science and industry associates, to your

contacts in policy and media, and to family and friends, preferably with

your own comments and support to continuing the effort to document the

science.  (And to disparage the naysayers? :-)



Thank you. And have a Happy New Year!

Regards, Jim Muckerheide 

========================





Insight on the News - National 

Issue: 01/06/04 



------------------------------------------------------------------------

---



Can Toxins Lead to Healthier Lives?

By John Pike 



It is called "hormesis," and if this scientific theory is proved valid

it could be the most important environmental event of the 21st century.

Billions of dollars could be saved in environmental cleanup costs, say

researchers, while at the same time improving the health of all

organisms, including humans. But at first examination, hormesis appears

kooky. The knee-jerk reaction is to reject this phenomenon as

pseudoscience or propaganda by polluters, and a few uninformed observers

have done just that.



But hormesis is a possible, if not highly probable, iconoclastic notion,

first postulated either in the 16th century or the 1880s but gaining

flattering attention within the last decade, that humans actually need

small amounts of poison in their diets. A little arsenic, dioxin or

radiation peppered on the spaghetti sauce may be just what we require to

live long and healthy lives. And since humans need more toxins in our

environment than allowed under current government regulations, so the

theory goes, future efforts to clean up the environment could be greatly

reduced.



The idea is that poisons such as arsenic are, of course, poisonous -

that is, if one ingests too much they will produce sickness or death.

But arsenic and other toxins in very low doses, below an amount deemed

harmful, repeatedly have been shown to benefit the functions of organs,

the optimal growth of the organism or longevity. According to scientists

who favor this theory, when the human body, or cell, becomes stressed or

damaged by a small amount of poison, it not only repairs the damage but

overcompensates and becomes stronger than it was. The phenomenon is

similar to exercise; by jogging or lifting weights, one may stretch and

exhaust the muscle tissue, which causes soreness. But later the muscle

not only repairs itself but overcompensates and improves to the point

where one can lift more weight or run longer and faster. 



Chon Shoaf, a scientist with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

at Research Triangle Park, N.C., says recent work on hormesis "is

revolutionary and we want people to be aware of it. It has the potential

to generate substantial savings."



The persons most responsible for conceptualizing and exalting this

pioneering research since the 1990s, and who may flip EPA policy upside

down to the benefit of taxpayers and every organism down to the last

menacing insect, is Edward Calabrese, 56, a toxicology professor at the

University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and his longtime assistant Linda

Baldwin. He has been described as "one of the leading toxicologists in

the country." Speaking to Insight in his messy office, whose floor for

the last three years has featured what appears to be the largest

malfunctioning air conditioner ever seen on planet Earth, Calabrese

explains his breakthrough research. These are ideas, ironically, that

were generated not by an elite Massachusetts university with posh

paraphernalia on the banks of the Charles River, but rather from the "70

to 80 hours weekly" this scientist toils at his lunch-pail university

that the elitists sometimes refer to as "Zoo Mass."



"I believe there is not a single chemical that does not" exhibit

patterns of hormesis, Calabrese says. It is a general response that is

shown with mercury, lead, components of cigarette smoke, cadmium,

marijuana, cocaine, alcohol and "everything that is regulated by the

EPA."



One example is the first time Calabrese witnessed hormesis as an

undergraduate student at Bridgewater State College in Massachusetts in

1966. He had been assigned to retard the growth of peppermint plants

with high doses of a growth-retardant chemical. Not only did the plants

not die, they grew taller than normal - a result, Calabrese says, that

comes from mistakenly treating the plants with what proved to be too

little growth-retardant.



The policy implication for this work, if proved valid, is stratospheric.

It means the EPA could permit higher concentrations of so-called toxins

in the environment, actually encouraging healthier lives and

simultaneously saving money by not cleaning "toxic" sites. After all,

the EPA now assumes the optimal level for a vast majority of carcinogens

is zero parts per billion - in other words, none at all.



What makes the work of Calabrese and Baldwin especially credible as

these things go is that their research is not uniquely their own, but an

analysis of thousands of toxicology studies done by others the world

over. "We evaluated about 21,000 cases, using 2 percent on which the

data were most complete," Calabrese says. "Of those 2 percent, 40

percent showed hormesis." Most toxicology studies are not helpful in

analyzing for hormesis because the doses of toxins used are too high

since researchers are studying a poison's threshold of lethality and not

its potential beneficial properties. According to Calabrese, "The model

showing hormesis has a huge amount of data, more than any other

competing model. This is so overwhelmingly convincing I do not think

anyone rational could deny that hormesis exists."



That said, another reason scientists are taking the work of Calabrese so

seriously is the environmental cleanup and expense implications of work

he has done in the past. At one point his studies drew the wrath of the

chemical industry, the same circle now delighting in his conclusions on

hormesis. This Massachusetts scientist was in fact the primary proponent

of the "single-exposure carcinogen theory," which says that humans

sometimes can contract cancer with just one exposure to a carcinogen, a

theory with the potential to add millions to the cost of chemical

manufacturing. It also was virtually his testimony alone in the 1990s

that forced the government to spend millions of additional dollars

cleaning a toxic site in Colorado to a much higher standard than

previously expected, and contrary to the testimony of others and at

least one irate newspaper.



"I am nonideological," Calabrese says. "But my work on hormesis is a

little like President [Richard] Nixon going to China."



Calabrese is the first to say more research needs to be done "before we

start handing out radiation pills," though some researchers seem more

cautious. Nonetheless, this reporter was unable to find any toxicologist

who substantially disagreed with Calabrese's work on hormesis, including

officials at the Sierra Club, a prominent environmental advocacy group.



At the same time, "There are trade-offs in hormesis that we cannot

forget about," warns Michael Davis, an EPA scientist also in North

Carolina. "I do not believe all organisms share the same mechanical

basis of hormesis. I see it as a variety of things." Thus, each poison

must be evaluated separately because each particular toxin may affect

different parts of an organism differently. For example, a toxin at low

doses may help a person grow taller, but also damage his liver. Another

difficulty is the possibility that a particular poison at a certain dose

may help one individual, yet hurt another, Davis says. "But I am not

ruling out that hormesis could have significant EPA policy

implications."



According to Calabrese, hormesis also has an ugly side for some drugs

prescribed by physicians. It means some pharmaceuticals that might cure

a sickness at high doses could hurt at low doses. "The effects flip," he

says. "So I want my doctor to know about hormesis, though unfortunately

most are unaware of it."



One who apparently did not know about hormesis, or at least whose office

refused to respond to repeated messages about it, was recently resigned

EPA administrator Christine Todd Whitman, who would not comment even on

the work of her own people on this matter.



"The EPA does not want the American people to become cognizant of good

environmental news, or potential savings in environmental cleanup,

because in part they view the agency as a jobs program," says a

scientist who often engages the EPA. "If the American people realize the

environment is getting cleaner and healthier, they might seek to cut the

funding of the EPA because much of its purpose has been accomplished.

They seem to be afraid of losing their jobs."



Although properties of hormesis have been documented for many years,

Calabrese says there are several reasons why it took the scientific

community so long to examine hormesis and his research about it

seriously. The EPA controls a large part of the funding, and therefore

how the research is conducted, he says. Since the government is

interested in saving lives, the research it funds in this area is almost

always to study a toxin's lethal effect, as opposed to its beneficial

side, so the research is not generated.



In addition, the beneficial effects of a poison tend to be less dramatic

than its deadly results, he says, so it is less noticeable. It may

benefit a plant in small amounts by only 30 percent, but in larger doses

its pernicious effect may be a factor of 10 times. Scientists also often

will see a benefit of only 1 percent of the time in a study because most

of the research involves much higher doses, and "they blow it off,"

Calabrese says. "They think it is a freak thing. They have to learn to

think out[side] of the box."



But thanks in part to Calabrese and Baldwin, that box now has been

broken wide open and good news is spilling all over the ground. It is a

toxic spill with which we all can learn to live.



John Pike is a contributing writer to Insight magazine. 



-----------------------------------

URL:

http://www.insightmag.com/news/2004/01/06/National/Can.Toxins.Lead.To.He

althier.L.shtml 



or:



http://tinyurl.com/yun6k