Dear Irene
I was going to reply to you directly off-list because I
don't want to get drawn into a futile set of exchanges with
RK. But seeing as Timofei Agarin has also been drawn into the
fray, I thought I might as well add by 2cents worth
publically.
However, this immune system analogy that he's drawing upon
here exemplifies exactly what is the problem with his whole
failure to enter into any kind of discussion about his posts;
based as they are on selective quotation from popular science
& self-help books (Lennart Nilsson for example is a
photographer specialising in 'National Geographic' style
picture essays of embryos developing etc - nothing wrong with
that, but not particularly authoritative. The full title of
Weiner's book is 'Maximum Immunity. How to Fortify Your
Natural Defenses Against Cancer, AIDS, Arthritis, Allergies
and Other Immune Deficiency Diseases' again nothing wrong
with that in itself, though it does promote the use of
germanium to a worrying degree).
The reason why the immune system acts so readily as a
metaphor for the body politic is because the standard model
of the immune system developed by Medawar & Burnet (Nobel
Prize winners in 1960) itself uses the body politic as a
metaphor for interpreting what the immune system does and how
it does it.
The use of the immune system as a analogy for the body
politic - a metaphor, in other words, about social process
based on scientific models - is only possible because the
model of the immune system which encourages this view itself
derives from metaphors drawn from social processes, used by
scientists for the purposes of contextualising their
observations.
To then turn round and argue that the immune system (as
described by M&W) can be used to provide insights into the
workings of the body politic is to turn a metaphor into a
tautology.
As it happens, this is not the only metaphor drawn from
social process that can be used to interpret what the immune
system does and how it does it. In recent years the 'self/non-
self' model of the immune system created by M & W has come
under pressure from the 'danger' model of Polly Matzinger.
She argues for instance that among the problems of
the 'self/ non-self' model is its failure to explain how
pregnancy is possible, given that a foetus has in almost all
respects the same characteristics as a cancer tumour
uncontrollable growth etc), with the added complication that
the DNA/blood type of the foetus can be different from that
of the 'host' (the mother's womb). How come the immune system
doesn't attack something like that - which is so clearly 'non-
self'?
Her answer is that the immune system behaves less like a
set of border guards/immigration officials, but more like a
fire brigade: reactively, in other words, rather than
proactively - called to a scene if distress calls are put out
by the previously unconsidered 'dendritic' cells
(unconsidered, that is, by the 'self/non-self' model), but
not otherwise. The immune system responds to danger signals,
not to the presence of foreign bodies (otherwise all the food
we ate would be attacked as soon as it entered the
bloodstream).
So Matzinger would say to you that that your illness (I do
hope btw that it's not a literal illness) 'represents'
neither civil war nor anarchy, but the equivalent of a
warehouse fire, that had been smouldering away unnoticed all
weekend, and by the time the first puffs of smoke appeared or
the first workers turned up on Monday morning, the fire was
too far gone to be put out.
Whatever the merits of the respective arguments, the fact
that such arguments exist within biology at all clearly mean
therefore:
1) that biological knowledge is not itself definite or
definitive, but is as contested and provisional as anything
in social science;
2)that that knowledge is as influenced by the social context
in which it is produced as by the 'facts' it studies/brings
forth for out attention.
This being the case, then the whole structure of
Koenigsberg's argument, which appears to be that our mental
processes derive from our physiological ones - and that he,
uniquely, has an inside track on how to overcome this,
('uniquely', since if his argument were taken to its logical
conclusion, we would not be able to overcome the limits of
our language, which itself would be limited by our
physiology) - falls.
But it's really not worth arguing with RK about this... or
about anything else. His kind of monomania requires therapy,
not debate.
Sincerely,
Paul Redfern
References:
Arthur, C., (1997) 'The New Body of Evidence'
(London) Independent on Sunday (Magazine) 6 April 1997 p49.
Pennisi, E., (1996) 'Teetering on the Brink of Danger'
Science 271 22 pp.1665-1667.
Matzinger, P., (1994) 'Tolerance, Danger, And The Extended
Family' Annual Review Of Immunology, 1994, Vol.12, pp.991-
1045.
Ridge, J.P., Fuchs, E.J., Matzinger, P., (1996) 'Neonatal
Tolerance Revisited - Turning On Newborn T-Cells With
Dendritic Cells' Science, 271, No.5256, pp. 1723-1726
> [log in to unmask] 16/12/2002 09:17:47 >>>
> I have an illness which means my immune system is
> attacking itself, is that civil war or anarchy?
>
> ----- Original Message -----
>
> From: Richard A. Koenigsberg
>
> To: [log in to unmask]
>
> Sent: Monday, December 16, 2002 12:56 AM
>
> Subject: The Human Body & the Body Politic
>
> Weiner, M. A. in MAXIMUM IMMUNITY. [snip]
>
> ------------------------------------------------
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