Food for thought … on evidence-based toxicology

I would like to devote the first article of this series that I am writing after my move to the US to the topic that has become my chair’s designation, i.e. evidence-based toxicology. this topic is really close to my heart. It all began in 1993, when my friend edmund “edi” Neugebauer co-edited the book “Handbook of Mediators in Septic Shock” (Neugebauer and Holaday, 1993). To the best of my knowledge, this was the first book to apply principles of evidence-based medicine (eBM) not only to clinical studies but also to animal studies and in vitro experimental work. So, when I started at eCVAM in 2002 and was developing ideas for possible directions to take, my list included evidence-based toxicology, i.e. the translation of eBM (for an introduction to this see, for example, Mayer, 2004) to toxicology, as a most interesting option. I was most fortunate that a Ph.D. student of mine at that time, Sebastian Hoffmann, who is a statistician by training, not only joined me to go from Konstanz to eCVAM, but agreed to refocus his thesis under my supervision to developing the concepts of an evidence-based toxicology (eBt). His thesis “evidence-based in vitro toxicology,” submitted in January 2005 to the University of Konstanz (Hoffmann, 2005), is the first extensive publication on EBT, as far as I am aware. Sure, there were a few previous attempts to link eBM and toxicology (Buckley and Smith, 1996), especially in the discussion around the toxicity of amalgam (Dodes, 2001). Also, Phil Guzelian and co-authors (Guzelian et al., 2005) independently developed a concept for eBt, though they took a different approach, focusing on causation and not on method evaluation (see below). One might ask whether these “Food for thought” articles are not the opposite of evidence-based. they are by purpose personal, provocative, not really peer-reviewed, not evaluated by statistics, broad in scope, etc. that is correct, but they also do not pretend to produce new knowledge but try to challenge common beliefs and stimulate new thinking. By this, they might, however, occasionally initiate a systematic review in the spirit of eBM and eBt. With this disclaimer in mind, let’s get into evidence-based science. Consideration 1: EBM tries to solve some problems that are strikingly similar to those of toxicology