Word: medawar
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Marvel. Burnet shared his Nobel, worth $43,625, with towering (6 ft. 4½ in.) British Zoologist Peter Brian Medawar, who has been working on tissue transplants for the past 17 years. Experimenting with laboratory animals, Medawar was among the first to describe the mechanism of the puzzling "rejection reaction"-the process by which the human body develops antibodies similar to those it uses against viruses and bacteria to reject and destroy tissue transplants intended to replace diseased parts...
...immunological defenses," Dr. Medawar once remarked, "are dedicated to the proposition that anything foreign must be harmful, and this formula is ground out in a totally undiscriminating fashion with results that are sometimes irritating, sometimes harmful, and sometimes mortally harmful. It is far better to have immunological defenses than not to have them, but this does not mean that we are to marvel at them as evidences of a high and wise design...
...Step Closer. Using the work of Medawar and others as a starting point, Australia's Burnet theorized that the rejection reaction is not inherited full-blown, instead is developed gradually in the fetus and young child. Burnet speculated that if, during the period of immunological development, the human body could be taught to tolerate grafts from selected donors, it would later be able to accept tissue transplants from those same donors. Seizing on Burnet's thesis. Dr. Medawar proceeded to confirm it in a series of laboratory tests. He inoculated mouse embryos in the womb with tissue from...