‘He discovered that if a mouse was exposed to skin from another mouse when it was very young, then when the mouse grew up it would be able to accept a skin transplant from that second mouse. In other words, he discovered that at a young age the body learns what is self – what not to attack. You can get a skin transplant from one mouse to another as long as the recipient mouse has been trained in early life not to react to it.’ This was the insight that would, years later, win Medawar a Nobel Prize. As David Bainbridge has noted: ‘Although we take it for granted today, this sudden joining of
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