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Missing Messenger. Pernicious anemia has remained a mysterious disease despite the finding that it can be controlled (though not cured), first by liver extracts and now by vitamin B12. Cornell University's Dr. Graham Jeffries began by studying the inflammation of the stomach lining that precedes pernicious anemia. This robs the patient of a biochemical messenger which normally conveys B12 through the digestive system to the body. In patients' blood, Dr. Jeffries reported, he has found antibody of a type that attacks the stomach-lining cells.
It is too easy to assume, warns New York University's Dr. Lewis Thomas, that because immune reactions are detected in a patient they must have caused his illness. In many cases, he suggests, they may be a result of it rather than a cause. On both sides of such questions, the Manhattan conferees agreed, much more must be learned. There is good reason for intensified research, because so many of the diseases now classed as autoimmune are crippling or even rapidly fatal, and for most of them there is no effective treatment, let alone a cure.