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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 616.079
EAN num: 9780195335552
ISBN number: 0195335554
Label: Oxford University Press, USA
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 280
Printing Date: February 04, 2008
Publishing house: Oxford University Press, USA
Sale Popularity Level: 721994
Studio: Oxford University Press, USA
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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.
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Rated by buyers -
My last biology class was in 9th grade and thus my understanding of cells, the blood system and the immune system in general has been very cursory. To be perfectly honest I've never been interested in biology at all but my son's condition (has chronic granulomatous disease (CGD) and is currently at day +4 in a bone marrow transplant) has caused me to revisit this topic. Unfortunately I've been confounded in finding a good overview of the immune system that is both intelligible to a lay person but which gets at the fundamental mechanisms. This book was nothing short of a revelation to me; particularly the very first four chapters and the paragraph on CGD. I now feel like I actually understand how and why CGD affected him in the way it did and what is happening with his donor marrow. This has allowed me to formulate questions that adequately convey my specific concerns and to better understand the responses and the daily results of his CBC counts. I strongly recommend this book to anyone wanting (or needing) to understand how the immune system works.
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