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This book takes the reader on a transformative journey into the immune system, challenging long-held beliefs about immunity. It examines the immune system under historical, philosophical and biological perspectives. It proposes a new way of understanding immunity that goes beyond the binary opposition between self and non-self.
Indeed, we, the livings, are chimeras. Mammals, birds, reptiles or fish, insects, spiders or mollusks, plants or algae, we are all made up of a community of living beings who share their lives in the same 'meta-organism'. If we live together, it is because we need each other to live, and if we can live together, it is because an immune system makes it possible, by adapting us to them and by adapting them to us. From this mutual adaptation a new kind of immunity emerges, dynamic, relational, never acquired, an always renegotiated immunity. Immunity that this system makes possible is not perfect, far from it, it is a compromise which does not always prevent disease; sometimes it even causes it. Disease is the cost of immunity. Because what the immune system enables is much more essential than the defense of the organism, it is the very existence of the meta-organism that we are. Immunity is more than a protection; it is a condition of existence.
With its didactic structure and accessible style, this book is an essential resource for anyone interested in understanding the nature and function of the immune system. It also offers different levels of complexity from which the reader can choose, depending on his or her background, without compromising the main message of the text.
List of contents
Part I. Introduction: A System to Defend Living Beings Against Each Other. Part II. The Defense: Before the Immune System.- The Invention of the Immune System.- The Immune System Facing its Challenges. Part III. Logics of the Living: In Space and Time.- Itself.- Who am I? Part IV. The Compromise:- The Reaction.- The Relationship.- Beyond Good and Evil.- Part V. Conclusion: A System that Enables Living Beings to Live with each Other.
About the author
Former Director of the Immunology department of Institute Pasteur in Paris, Marc Daëron, MD, PhD, MPhil, is currently an Inserm emeritus research director at the Centre d’immunologie de Marseille-Luminy, an invited scientist at Institute Pasteur, and an associate member of the Institut d’histoire et de philosophie des sciences et des techniques.
Summary
This book takes the reader on a transformative journey into the immune system, challenging long-held beliefs about immunity. It examines the immune system under historical, philosophical and biological perspectives. It proposes a new way of understanding immunity that goes beyond the binary opposition between self and non-self.
Indeed, we, the livings, are chimeras. Mammals, birds, reptiles or fish, insects, spiders or mollusks, plants or algae, we are all made up of a community of living beings who share their lives in the same 'meta-organism'. If we live together, it is because we need each other to live, and if we can live together, it is because an immune system makes it possible, by adapting us to them and by adapting them to us. From this mutual adaptation a new kind of immunity emerges, dynamic, relational, never acquired, an always renegotiated immunity. Immunity that this system makes possible is not perfect, far from it, it is a compromise which does not always prevent disease; sometimes it even causes it. Disease is the cost of immunity. Because what the immune system enables is much more essential than the defense of the organism, it is the very existence of the meta-organism that we are. Immunity is more than a protection; it is a condition of existence.
With its didactic structure and accessible style, this book is an essential resource for anyone interested in understanding the nature and function of the immune system. It also offers different levels of complexity from which the reader can choose, depending on his or her background, without compromising the main message of the text.
With a Foreword from Alfred I. Tauber
