The future of hormesis: Where do we go from here?

Although the occurrence of U-shaped dose responses in toxicology (i.e., hor metic effects) have been known for more than a century, the concept of horm esis has long been marginalized under the belief that such observations cou ld be explained by a combination of poor study designs and normal variabili ty. However, recent efforts have established that numerous highly reliable studies demonstrating hormetic effects exist and that such findings appear to be highly generalizable across species, endpoint measures, and class of agents assessed. In light of such a long and complicated history, and its s ignificant biomedical/toxicological implications, this article explores the unique challenges that the concept of hormesis confronts in both the exper imental and institutional domains with respect to assessing its scientific foundations and validity and the impediments to its intstitutional acceptan ce and use with society. This perspective is then immediately critiqued by five authors in subsequent articles.