Word: lethal
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Perhaps with that thought in mind, residents of Manhattan's lethal "alphabet city" have transformed a rubble-strewn lot into a community garden, with poetry readings and potluck dinners and tiny plots for 107 local gardeners. Some grow food or medicinal herbs: one woman grows a lawn, just so she can come out on Sunday mornings with her deck chair to read the newspaper. "I've lived here 20 years, and we never used to talk to people on the street," says Sandra Kleinman, now in her fourth year of nursing Egyptian onions and Japanese mustard greens. "I've never...
...meeting of these strong-willed, lethal innocents is at first a comedy of errors. She, seeing his clerical garb, feels obliged to ask Oscar to hear her confession, even though that is the last thing she wants. He, shy, seasick, and terrified of the ocean view he knows he must face through her first-class porthole, reluctantly drags himself to his duty. He listens: "She confessed that she had attended rooms in Drury Lane for the purposes of playing fan- tan." He leaps to her, and his, defense: "Our whole faith is a wager, Miss Leplastrier . . . we bet that there...
...parasites fill the air. They cluster on every surface, from the restaurant table to the living-room sofa. They abound in lakes and in pools, flourish in the soil and disport themselves among the flora and fauna. This menagerie of microscopic organisms, most of them potentially harmful or even lethal, has a favorite target: the human body. In fact, the tantalizing human prey is a walking repository of just the kind of stuff the tiny predators need to survive, thrive and reproduce...
...killer T cells are relentless. Docking with infected cells, they shoot lethal proteins at the cell membrane. Holes form where the protein molecules hit, and the cell, dying, leaks out its insides. To ensure that the cell and its viral occupants are destroyed, the killer T cells then deliver the coup de grace by transmitting a signal that causes the cell to chew up DNA from both itself and the virus. Explains Dr. Irving Weissman of Stanford: "This is an overlapping, dual system of killing that ensures that the seed of viral production will be eliminated from the body...
Even without provocation by the AIDS virus or other infectious organisms, the immune system can sometimes go awry. Often, entirely on its own, it can overrespond, fail to respond or turn against the body it is designed to protect with the same lethal fury it directs against invaders and cancerous cells. Some 80 immune-system deficiencies have been identified so far. About one in 400 people has at least one immune-system component missing or malfunctioning, usually for genetic reasons. In one in 10,000 people, the deficiency leads to serious disorders. Perhaps the most tragic example is severe combined...