ABSTRACT

By now it should be very clear that there is a large gap between our present levels of understanding in toxicology and the breadth of knowledge needed to make confident judgments about chemicals in our environment. The science of toxicology is a biological science and, as such, has to deal with living organisms that are continually changing. In addition, toxicologists must work with a dynamic system where even the individual parts have not been totally characterized. It is as if engineers were trying to understand a mechanical device that was in continual motion and where the individual parts were not clearly delineated. Actually, it is even worse, since toxicologists are asked to make judgments about organisms that they cannot study in a controlled situation-humans. It is as if these same engineers were further handicapped by having to look at a sunogate machine that shared some but not all of the attributes of the machine they wished to understand. Thus it is not too surprising that toxicology can only provide tentative answers to a wide variety of critical questions.