HLSC 1F90 Lecture Notes - Lecture 21: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Smallpox Vaccine, Severe Combined Immunodeficiency
Document Summary
Many diferent players interacing to achieve one goal. Physiological mechanisms that human and other animals use to defend their bodies from invasion by other organisms (but without harming themselves) Historically, observaions of survivors of epidemic disease that were apparently untouched (immune) when faced with the same infecious disease again at a later ime. These infecious diseases are caused by microorganisms: the advantage of reproducing and evolving much more rapidly than their human hosts, pit enormous populaions of its species against an individual human. In response, the human body invests heavily in cells dedicated to defense, which collecively form the immune system. In the absence of a working immune system, even minor infecions can take hold and prove fatal. Without intensive treatment, children born without a funcional immune system die in early childhood from the efects of common infecions. However, in spite of their immune systems, all humans sufer from infecious diseases, especially when young.