Main description:

The Paradox of the Immune System: Protection, Inflammation, Autoimmune Disease and Beyond provides a provocative approach to immunology as a "double-edged sword." While it is our greatest protector, it is also the cause of chronic inflammation that leads to autoimmune disease, cancer and infectious diseases like COVID-19. Sections cover the basic science of immunology and its intimate genetic associations, biomedical hypotheses asserting immunology as the basis of all human diseases, and elaborate on immunology as "the enemy within us." This engaging, original approach to a science so personal provides new and invaluable understanding on the bioscience that controls our lives.

Contents:

Section 1: Our friendly immune system
1. The innate (aka "natural") immune system and immunity
2. The adaptive (aka "acquired") immune response
3. Genetics and Genomics

Section 2: The enemy within us Introduction
4. Chronic inflammation: Enemy #1
5. Autoimmune diseases: When "self" becomes Enemy #2
6. Cancer: Immunology's cruelest enemy and greatest challenge
7. Immunology: The science of Pandemics, infectious disease, COVID-19 and Beyond