It has long been recognized that exposure to low levels of toxic chemicals could have beneficial effects, such as increased resistance to related chemicals or stimulation of growth or development. The notion of radiation hormesis, that exposure to low levels of ionizing radiation could produce beneficial effects, developed seriously in the late 1950’s, and was, to most radiation scientists, incredible. This was due in pan to the then prevailing ideas of radiobiological mechanisms, in part to the sweeping generalizations made by the leading proponents of the radiation hormesis concept, and in pan to the many failures to confirm reports of beneficial effects. More recent understanding of the mechanisms of radiation damage and repair, and discoveries of induction of gene expression by radiation and other genotoxic agents [the adaptive response] make it seem inevitable that under suitable conditions, irradiation will produce beneficial effects.