Neither had I. Looked it up and learned something, thank you. And it sure is applicable to the matter at hand.
You do a great job commenting thoughtfully and often with great insight, so I appreciate the compliment.
I learned about hormesis from Art Robinson who was a student researcher with Linus Pauling. It was a long time ago, but they had a falling out over vitamin C (Robinson said the results disproved Pauling’s contention that C was a cure-all and often worsened some diseases).
Pauling’s other sin, like a lot of liberal gurus they have so many and never apologize, was that radiation or any insult to the body was always bad (linearly, i.e. the more the worse). This lead to our modern Greens, Communists, and EPA calling for “zero” levels of any toxin.
Clearly, this is unscientific as dose makes every poison and oxygen and water are toxic at the proper level. But, Robinson went further proving that hormesis exists and as regards radiation too little radiation causes cancer.
Robinson contends that Australian life guards have the lowest incident of skin cancer, but the highest of sun exposure. Look him up it is interesting stuff.
I might be confusing stories, but he worked in a lab where Pauling was working on showing how dangerous DDT was. They fed lab rats DDT and the control group a “healthy” diet, including Linus’ darling vitamin C. The DDT rats thrived, grew larger than normal and were trim and muscular while the rats on the “healthy” diet didn’t.
Pauling pulled the plug when his RAs started calling DDT, Vitamin DDT. He was a jerk and a liar.
You’d like Art Robinson. Search around for him. He and his children are a remarkable bunch - Christians, Scientists and great thinkers - naturally they’re conservatives. ;-]
Spread the word. There’s nothing like the truth, eh?