SECTION 3 



THEORETICAL ASPECTS OF THE "NORMALCY AND PATHOLOGY" PROBLEM 



IN AQUATIC ECOTOXICOLOGY 



L.P. Braginsky^ 



During the rather short period of development of aquatic toxicology as a 

 scientific trend, attention was mainly focused on the influence of toxicants 

 upon selected aquatic organisms. The fundamentals of general toxicology 

 established while investigating warm-blooded animals were the guiding prin- 

 ciples in this research. Life, however is diverse and complex, and biology 

 is multifaceted. That is the reason such an approach is insufficient. It 

 does not include many of the consequences the influences of toxicants on the 

 living matter of the hydrosphere. 



In medicine and veterinary science, many variations from certain stand- 

 ard average values, characterizing vital manifestations and considered as 

 "the norm", are usually defined by the concept "pathology". Continuing 

 further with this analogy, medicine, veterinary science, phytopathology and 

 ichthyopathology in solving particular problems of diagnosis and treatment 

 of various human, animal and plant diseases, are based on general pathology, 

 the disease theory. However, even in such a highly developed science as 

 medicine, which for many centuries has accumulated information about human 

 organism functioning, the concepts of "norms" or "standards" are highly in- 

 definite. Only yery recently has a special science related to healthy 

 humans, normology, begun to develop in medicine. In both veterinary science 

 and ichthyopathology this problem remains completely unsettled. 



Our knowledge about the biological, physiological, and biochemical pro- 

 cesses of aquatic organisms is so poor and insufficient, that in every 

 separate case it is necessary to start a toxicological investigation from 

 the study of the norm, and then to draw conclusions about various pathologi- 

 cal effects as a result of studying the responses of known test-organisms to 

 toxicants, while the number of aquatic species amount to hundreds of thou- 

 sands, or even millions. 



For these reasons, aquatic toxicology and data storage needs tend to de- 

 fine existing concepts of the normalcy and pathology of aquatic organisms 

 under toxic environmental conditions. Recently, Soviet scientists have 

 given much attention to this problem. However, as analysis of the present 



^Institute of Hydrobiology, Ukraine Academy of Science, Kiev, USSR. 



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