Edward Calabrese Self-Regulates Some

Following my last post, here's a recent upload of Calabrese explaining hormesis (which is "his version").  Radiation hormesis was originally defined by T.D. Luckey as a radiation effect that was beneficial.  Even though the root of the word hormo means "excite", the biological stimulation was promoted by Luckey (and others) as an overall beneficial effect.  In this recent video upload, Calabrese, is doing a Romneyesque flip-flip from what Luckey had originally meant and what he himself has said in the past.

While watching this video notice the use of the terms "stimulatory" and "biphasic".  He says that the biphasic effect may be neutral, beneficial, or harmful.  It should be noted that he's extended the agents to chemicals as well as radiation.  He doesn't mention radiation much at all actually, mostly at 21:00 where he discusses arthritic animals whose symptoms are alleviated at low dose and made worse at high doses (immune system suppressed) and the opposite happens in non-arthritic animals (immune system stimulated).  (He touches on radiation again around 29:00 dealing with fruit flies, but he doesn't really provide enough detail for me to comment.)

Keep in mind that the linear, no threshold (LNT) theory of health physics applies to radiation's effects on DNA leading to cancer, not the immune system.  Typically hormesis proponents ("Hormies") try to use hormesis improperly as a counter-argument to LNT theory:

At around 37:00 he states that pre- and post-conditioning doses are manifestations of hormesis.  In health physics we call the overall phenomena adaptive response, which occurs in certain cells/tissues/organisms in certain narrow circumstances.  But we don't see it at chronic low doses in humans, which is what the Hormies want to argue for.

In this older video he calls the LNT theory of health physics a fraud and is much less subdued. I don't think he used the terms "biphasic" or "stimulatory" at all (I'm going from memory, I don't have to time re-watch the video).  I covered it last year:

My guess is he is playing to his audience.  In the more recent video he is addressing people well versed in science and medicine, and he is more constrained. While in the older video he's playing to a political reporter who shares his ideology.