The September 1969 issue of the British Medical Bulletin is a symposium on Mechanisms of Toxicity dedicated to Sir Rudolph Peters, the distinguished biochemist, on the occasion of his 80th birthday.
It is very difficult to decide from limited observations on animals in the laboratory or on exposed human populations whether or not a degree of exposure to a toxic substance is having an adverse effect. Extrapolation of experimental animal data to humans is often unreliable, but nevertheless, without basic studies, our knowledge about toxic hazards in the human environment would be limited indeed.
Mechanisms of Toxicity provides many clues for the study of reaction between poisons and the cells in the intact animal; how poisons attack a target organ such as the liver or the kidney, the whole field of drug and chemical metabolism, and many other facets involved in an interdisciplinary approach.
Twenty-three outstanding British biochemists, toxicologists, experimental