Word: skins
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Humans are under constant siege by these voracious adversaries. Germs of every description strive tirelessly to invade the comfortably warm and bountiful body, entering through the skin or by way of the eyes, nose, ears and mouth. Fortunately for man's survival, most of them fail in their assault. They are repelled by the tough barrier of the skin, overcome by the natural pesticides in sweat, saliva and tears, dissolved by stomach acids or trapped in the sticky mucus of the nose or throat before being expelled by a sneeze or a cough. But the organisms are extraordinarily persistent...
Interleukin-2 has shown promising results in treating advanced skin and kidney cancers. In fact, says Gutterman, there appears to be "tremendous synergy" between alpha interferon and IL-2 in attacking cancer cells. While IL-2 works to make the killer cells more potent, he explains, they "have to recognize something unique on the surface of the cancer cell in order to kill it." That something is an antigen, and interferon seems to make it more "visible" to the killer cells...
...component of the immune system, destroys it, and in so doing virtually knocks out the entire system. Nothing illustrates the importance of a healthy immune system more dramatically than the disastrous consequences of its loss. AIDS sufferers become vulnerable to many kinds of invading organisms. Fungal growths corrode the skin and lungs. Normally dormant parasites in the lungs become active, causing Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia. As viruses and bacteria multiply out of control, competing for body cells and destroying them far faster than they can be replaced, victims can be stricken with severe cases of herpes and tuberculosis. What is more...
...them again. As early as the 11th century, Chinese doctors were manipulating the immune system. By blowing pulverized scabs from a smallpox victim into their patients' nostrils, they could often induce a mild case of the disease that prevented a more severe onslaught. In the 1700s, people rubbed their skin with dried scabs to protect themselves against the disease...
These primitive practices were introduced to England and the American colonies. In 1721 and 1722, during a smallpox epidemic, a Boston doctor named Zabdiel Boylston scratched the skin of his six-year-old son and 285 other people and rubbed pus from smallpox scabs into the wounds. All but six of his patients survived...