Medicine: Defending Aginst Disease

Man lives in a sea of microorganisms; the immune system is his license to survive.

ROBERT GOOD'S metaphor may be mixed, but it is apt. As a swimmer in an ocean of organisms, man must have a means of identifying and resisting the ones that can harm or kill him. The major mechanism that does this, and enables man to survive, is the immune system, designed by nature to quickly recognize, attack and destroy any foreign matter that enters the body. The system is complex and depends for its function on a wide variety...

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