Intolerant Bodies

September 8, 2014
Anderson, of the University of Sydney, and Mackay, of Australia’s Monash University, consider autoimmune diseases, focusing on multiple sclerosis, lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, and type 1 diabetes in a fast-paced, jam-packed survey of medical history, clinical data, and patient accounts. The examination reaches back to the early 20th century and extends to mid-century, when biology, research, and clinical understanding coalesced around the vexing issue of the body’s immune response. By 1961, the authors note, microbiologist F. Macfarlane Burnet wrote of the “acute interest” in disease that results “from a misdirected immunologic attack on some of the body’s own components.” Patients had no name for their frightening, chronic ailments, yet their voices were soon heard. Writer Flannery O’Connor observed of her lupus, “it comes and goes, when it comes I retire and when it goes, I venture forth,” and one woman described her multiple sclerosis as “sporadically... in its infestations, a disgusting disease.” Today, despite greater understanding, O’Connor would find little changed in the management of lupus, the authors say. Similar troubles persist in dealing with MS and diabetes. Anderson and Mackay’s engaging survey is a studious examination of autoimmune diseases, and a humble admission that their cures remains stubbornly elusive.

September 15, 2014

Autoimmunity, when the body's immune system attacks its own cells as though they were foreign, causes a number of serious diseases: type 1 diabetes, systemic lupus erythematosus, multiple sclerosis, and rheumatoid arthritis. Mackay, a clinical immunologist, and Anderson, a medical historian, trace the development of the concept of autoimmunity, and, in the process, show how scientific and medical ideas evolve. Drawing on literary history and the social and health sciences, the authors discuss early concepts of disease and the difficulties that physicians and scientists faced as they tried to understand how and why the body's own defense system would run amok. They discuss the research of pioneers, such as Robert Koch, Louis Pasteur, and Ilya Ilyich Metchnikoff, as well as that of modern scholars Macfarlane Burnet and Noel Rose, demonstrating how pieces of the puzzle come together to change the understanding and treatment of disease. This is fascinating reading but aimed at an audience with a strong grasp of the health sciences. VERDICT A solid choice for academic science and health sciences collections.--Barbara Bibel, Oakland P.L.

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