Needed: A Strategy for Implementing the Vision

摘要

The title of the NAS Report was Toxicity Testing in the 21st Century: A Vision and a Strategy. Both the NAS report itself, and the current synopsis, are long on the "vision thing" but short on the "strategy" part. What is needed next is more thought about how to turn this provocative vision into a reality for actually implementing the new paradigm for toxicity testing in regulatory risk assessments upon which important health and safety decisions are based.rnHow can the new paradigm actually become accepted in regulatory decision making? For example, are we ready to approve new drugs for market, or set regulatory limits for environmental agents, based solely on computational models of toxicity pathways? If the answer is "yes" in some cases, but "no" in others, how are we to distinguish the two? If the answer is "no, not yet," what's missing and how will we know when we are ready?