title: The ethics of hormesis--no fuss?
abstract: It has been argued that the phenomenon of hormesis should prompt us to revise current regulatory policy in order to take beneficial effects of small doses of various agents into account. I argue that three problems--the comparative smallness of hormetic effects, the fine-tuning problem, and the problem of aggregated actions--should lead us not to overemphasize the importance of hormesis for policy, and that they, if anything, points towards a non-consequentialist approach to the ethics of risk.
authors.affiliation: Department of Philosophy, Royal Institute of Technology - KTH, Stockholm, Sweden. sandin@infra.kth.se
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Sandin
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D004305:Dose-Response Relationship, Drug; D006291:Health Policy / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence* / Q000639:trends; D006801:Humans; D018570:Risk Assessment / Q000941:ethics*; D014118:Toxins, Biological / Q000633:toxicity*
chemical_list: D014118:Toxins, Biological