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Greetings from the New Director
Takemi Yoshida, Director, the Japanese Society of Toxicology
During the 2-year term beginning in January 2010, I (Yoshida) will be serving as Director of the Japanese Society of Toxicology, and I ask for your cooperation in fulfilling my duties.
Our predecessors banded together and formed a Toxicology Research Group, and after passing through a stage as the Toxic Action Research Group, the Society emerged in its present form as the Japanese Society of Toxicological Sciences in 1981. Its name was changed to the Japanese Society of Toxicology in 1997.
Researchers in industry, government, and academia participate in carrying forward the Society’s research, from basic studies to practical applications, on the effects of pharmaceutical products, agricultural chemicals, various types of chemical substances, and biological materials on organisms and ecosystems, in a broad range of fields. The investigators and technical personnel from industry, government, and academia who come together in the Society forecast the effects of chemical substances on humans and animals and their environmental impact, and they scientifically evaluate their safety and strive to prevent toxic manifestations before they develop. Membership in the Society has increased to approximately 2500, and the toxicology field has clearly been steadily expanding.
Under the guidance of successive directors as well as Kunio Doi, the director before last, and Yasushi Yamazoe, the previous director, a variety of reforms have been implemented, and contracting out and streamlining the educational activities secretariat, upgrading of the homepage, including switching the membership list to an electronic system, and improvement of services to members, including information delivery, have been carried forward. In addition, thanks to the efforts of all of the members of the editorial board, including Editor-in-Chief Naganuma, has greatly advanced the Society’s journal, the Journal of Toxicological Sciences (J. Toxicol. Sci.) with the acquisition of an impact factor, and continued development as an engaging journal is anticipated. I invite all of the members of the Society to actively make submissions to the Journal, and to make it an even more excellent academic journal both in terms of quantity and quality. All of the Society’s various permanent committees are vigorously pursuing their activities, and I hope that they will continue to work with each other, and that their activities will lead to the fostering of young investigators. I will try to enable these various projects of the Society to unfold smoothly and lead to an improvement in services to our membership.
The public’s concern regarding “safety and sense of security” has been growing in relation to chemical substances, including medicines, and chemical contamination of foodstuffs, for which we are highly dependent on supply from abroad. On the other hand, through the Internet it is possible to obtain pharmaceutical products, health foods, etc., that have not been approved in Japan, and I think that their safety is also an object of concern by the public. I would also like to pursue the possibility of responding to the public in regard to problems surrounding chemical substances that temporarily become a popular issue by utilizing the Society’s homepage to rapidly make information available. Through such activities by the Society I would like to try to have toxicology recognized and accepted as a field that is important to society, not just from an academic or a scientific standpoint.
I hope that all of the members of our Society will enthusiastically participate in the Society’s activities, and I will strive throughout the next two years to contribute to the further development of our Society.
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