Description

We live in a sea of seething microbial predators, an infinity of invisible and invasive microorganisms capable of setting up shop inside us and sending us to an early grave. The only thing keeping them out? The immune system.

William Clark's In Defense of Self offers a refreshingly accessible tour of the immune system, putting in layman's terms essential information that has been for too long the exclusive province of trained specialists. Clark explains how the immune system works by using powerful genetic, chemical, and cellular weapons to protect us from the vast majority of disease-causing microbes-bacteria, viruses, molds, and parasites. Only those microbes our bodies need to help us digest food and process vitamins are admitted. But this same system can endanger us by rejecting potentially life-saving organ transplants, or by overreacting and turning too much force against foreign invaders, causing serious--occasionally lethal--collateral damage to our tissues and resulting in autoimmune disease. In Defense of Self covers everything from how antibodies work and the strategies the body uses to distinguish self from not self to the nature of immunological memory, the latest approaches to vaccination, and how the immune system will react should we ever be subjected to a bioterrorist attack. Clark also offers important insights on the vital role that the immune system plays in cancer, AIDS, autoimmunity, rheumatoid arthritis, allergies and asthma, and other diseases.

Of special interest to all those suffering from diseases related to the immune system, as well as their families, In Defense of Self lucidly explains a system none of us could live without.

Features

• The book is an updated and expanded sequel to Clark's At War Within (OUP 1995) and describes the immune system, what it is, how it works, and its role in human health and disease. That book emphasized all the ways the immune system can harm us. In this book the emphasis is much more on the positive aspects of immunity.
• The book discusses the latest approaches to vaccination, including DNA vaccines, how they work, and why they don't at times.
• The book treats the immune system's role in diseases and disorders like AIDS, cancer, autoimmunity, rheumatoid arthritis, organ transplantation, allergies and asthma, and various immunopathologies and infections caused by bacteria, viruses and fungi.
• The book should interest anyone who has had any of the diseases or disorders described in Part II, and whose families want to understand in lay terms what their maladies involve. There are very few resources in accessible books about immunology.
• Summarizes the facts into an easily readable and interesting explanation of 'big picture' ideas for an audience without a scientific or technical background. A short glossary is provided to help general readers with scientific terms.
• Part I's four chapters describe the immune system and its components, how they fit together and work to protect us against microbial diseases. It covers antibodies, how they are made and how they work; T cells; strategies the body uses to distinguish what is self from what is not, and how the body discriminates precisely among different forms of non-self; the nature of immunological memory; and the interaction of the evolutionary older innate immune system with more recent adaptive immune response.
• Part II's ten chapters systematically explore the role of the immune system in health and disease. It explores a wide range of topics including details of human resistance to microbial invasion: the latest approaches to vaccination, including DNA vaccines; the role of the immune system in cancer; and how the immune system will react should we ever be subjected to a bioterrorist attack.

Product Details

280 pages; 3 halftones, 25 linecuts; 5-1/2 x 8-1/4; ISBN13: 978-0-19-533555-2ISBN10: 0-19-533555-4

About the Author(s)