At War Within: The Double-Edged Sword of Immunity by William R. Clark

Review of At War Within: The Double-Edged Sword of Immunity by William R. Clark.

This book is a terrific basic coverage of the immune systems for us nonscientists. It covers smallpox and vaccinations, the history of how we learned about the immune system, immune deficiencies, allergies, autoimmune diseases, AIDS, organ transplants, how the immune system and the brain/mind interact and how the immune systems remembers.

Dr. Clark covers the basics of how the immune system works (though he short-changes the complement system) and then describes how that applies to various practical medical problems.

The final chapter on how we may be affecting our immunity through our emotions is the best description I've seen yet. He starts with Thucydides describing a plague in Athens, as I do in my book, then gives a lot more details on how the immune system and the brain interact.

The appendix is the best explanation I've ever read for how we can produce hundreds of millions of antibodies. I knew that. I've read it in other books -- but none of them ever explained how they could so confidently state that we can produce an antibody for any antigen that might enter us. Nor did I realize that B cells were operating on a system that is faster than viral mutation. That helps explain how some people always survive the worst diseases -- even Ebola, just based on the law of averages.

My one quibble with the book lies in the title and "theme" of the book -- that the immune system is a double-edged sword. If it fails to distinquish "self" from "non-self," we suffer from autoimmune diseases.

Of course that's true, but I just don't see the downside of the immune system as equal to the up side. Yes, our immune system can attack our own bodies -- but that's the exception, not a 50-50 proposition.

So allergies, arthritis, lupus etc deserve their place in this comprehensive look at our immune systems -- but they're disorders of the immune system (in my unscientific opinion) not an intrinisic aspect of a healthy immune system.

Let's examine how they happen and how they can be prevented, for sure. But why give them equal billing to the great work the immune system does protecting us from infections?

And now I have to wonder, since the focus of this blog is on bird flu and how to defeat it -- is it possible to use the nonstop random antibody generation of B cells to come up with vaccines against the bird flu virus before it mutates?

I know that companies currently "design" drugs by using huge super computers. They create a "virtual" testtube with software, then tests millions of different combinations of biochemicals to see if they will work against a certain disease.

Do we know enough about the genetic makeup and sequencing of hypothetical contagious strain of A/H5N1 to write a program to test antibodies against it -- and see which will work to kill the virus?

All using supercomputers testing millions of antibodies in a few minutes (hours?)?

I don't know. Maybe we're not that far along yet.

immune system, immunity, bird flu, avian flu bird flu vaccines



immune system, immunity bird flu, avian flu, bird flu vaccines