An Elegant Defense Quotes

“no medicinal fix we contrive will lead us to live forever. “There is no ultimate solution. There is no free lunch. If you cure cancer, you will have more cases of neurodegenerative disease. If you cure neurodegenerative disease, a major plague will come for people who are a hundred years old. There is no ultimate solution, nor should there be.”
― Matt Richtel, An Elegant Defense: The Extraordinary New Science of the Immune System: A Tale in Four Lives

“the likelihood of getting cancer depends in large part on how often a person experiences injury or certain types of injury. This is just math. More injury means more cell division and, simply, more opportunity for dangerous mutation to occur.”
― Matt Richtel, An Elegant Defense: The Extraordinary New Science of the Immune System: A Tale in Four Lives

“the war metaphor is misleading, incomplete—even arguably dead wrong. Your immune system isn’t a war machine. It’s a peacekeeping force that more than anything else seeks to create harmony.”
― Matt Richtel, An Elegant Defense: The Extraordinary New Science of the Immune System: A Tale in Four Lives

“If you land on the moon, you still have to get home.”
― Matt Richtel, An Elegant Defense: The Extraordinary New Science of the Immune System: A Tale in Four Lives

“Sometimes we cannot control our world and
hold it too tightly without squeezing some of the life from it.”
― Matt Richtel, An Elegant Defense: The Extraordinary New Science of the Immune System: A Tale in Four Lives

“What she and others discovered begins to explain why things like smoking or coal mining or sunbathing are so carcinogenic. Each activity injures the tissue and damages the DNA. When the tissue is damaged, the immune system kicks in and cleanses the site and helps stimulate new tissue growth. The trouble is that when the DNA is damaged, the new cells that grow can be malignant cells, some that are made up of self but that are different enough to behave like a cancer.”
― Matt Richtel, An Elegant Defense: The Extraordinary New Science of the Immune System: A Tale in Four Lives

“Baby mice, deprived of the thymus, had many fewer of the white blood cells with only one nucleus. These already had the name lymphocytes. This must mean, Dr. Miller thought, that these cells had come from the thymus. “Thymus-derived cells,” he called them. Thymus. T. T cells.”
― Matt Richtel, An Elegant Defense: The Extraordinary New Science of the Immune System: A Tale in Four Lives

“The cyclists produced more new T cells from the thymus, and they had fewer cytokines that cause the thymus to decay. The upshot of the research is that exercise slows the natural aging process of the immune system.”
― Matt Richtel, An Elegant Defense: The Extraordinary New Science of the Immune System: A Tale in Four Lives

“scientist”
― Matt Richtel, An Elegant Defense: The Extraordinary New Science of the Immune System: A Tale in Four Lives

“Together, autoimmunity is the third most common disease category in the United States (after cardiovascular disorders and cancer).”
― Matt Richtel, An Elegant Defense: The Extraordinary New Science of the Immune System: A Tale in Four Lives

“Ideas ... can elicit a kind of autoimmune response - an overreaction that feels protective initially but can ultimately be counterproductive and make it harder to find truth.”
― Matt Richtel, An Elegant Defense: The Extraordinary New Science of the Immune System: A Tale in Four Lives

“Jason could tell a yarn. He could hardly talk without telling a yarn; according to his zealous world view, every day was an adventure. He would relate his experiences like a combination of a bard, radio talk-show host, and bawdy”
― Matt Richtel, An Elegant Defense: The Extraordinary New Science of the Immune System: A Tale in Four Lives

“Inflammation is—very generally speaking—the body’s immune system’s response to stimulus.”
― Matt Richtel, An Elegant Defense: The Extraordinary New Science of the Immune System: A Tale in Four Lives

“The immune system killed only the infected ones that were self. An individual’s elegant defense didn’t care simply about the infection; it cared about the infection when it attacked its own personal habitat.”
― Matt Richtel, An Elegant Defense: The Extraordinary New Science of the Immune System: A Tale in Four Lives

“isoantigens—antigens within the same species.”
― Matt Richtel, An Elegant Defense: The Extraordinary New Science of the Immune System: A Tale in Four Lives

“The B cells came from bone marrow and generated antibodies. The T cells matured in the thymus and could either fight or direct action. They are generals and soldiers.”
― Matt Richtel, An Elegant Defense: The Extraordinary New Science of the Immune System: A Tale in Four Lives

“The answer to the polio mystery, also well known, came from Jonas Salk, who was born in New York City of Russian Jewish immigrant parents and eventually was appointed director of the Virus Research Laboratory at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine (by way of New York University and Michigan). His vaccine weakened the poliovirus with formaldehyde and mineral water. It effectively “killed” the poliovirus. But it was recognizable enough for the immune system to pick it up. Ta-da! It cut the risk of infection in half. The country scrambled to produce and disseminate the vaccine as quickly as possible. Alas, this happy ending comes with an asterisk. The first big batch of vaccine wasn’t properly made. Cutter Laboratories in California, one of the main producers of the vaccine, inoculated more than 200,000 children in 1955, and within days there were reports of paralysis. Within a month, the program was discontinued, and investigations revealed that the Cutter vaccine had caused 40,000 cases of polio, leaving 200 children with varying degrees of paralysis and killing 10.”
― Matt Richtel, An Elegant Defense: The Extraordinary New Science of the Immune System: A Tale in Four Lives