Immunity system complexity (Introduction)

by David Turell , Friday, June 19, 2020, 15:31 (1406 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: You are close to finally understanding immunity. The first bold is correct, but unfortunately not the second. Immune cells contain all the instruction they will ever need to fight all and every infection, most with permanent blockage. There are unfortunately some viruses that constantly mutate each year, corona viruses as common old and the flu, requiring new antibodies to develop each year. In TB, leprosy, and lyme disease, the bugs are in a very strange family that is difficult to fight. Luckily there are treatments, but never full immunity. Only TB can be stabilized without drugs: the body immune system calcifies walls around the TB colonies. The TB does not advance unless the person is weakened somehow and the calcium breaks down.

dhw: You agree that the immune system has built up a library of instructions to fight diseases as they have arisen. You say these instructions cover “all and every infection”, I say they don’t, and in order to prove me wrong, you provide a list of diseases for which the system does NOT contain the necessary instructions! Not for the first time, I have difficulty following your logic.

I simply gave you a small list of strange ones the immune system has trouble with. It can handle the thousands of others by following instructions. Your bold is not correct. The immune system follows instructions, not creates them. Antibodies produced are product, nothing more.