Immunity I: You are unique, like everyone else
One of the positives of a raging pandemic is this: suddenly, unapologetically theoretical, over-your-spectacle discourses have become commonplace. You know the world has changed when you are forwarded densely technical documents in your school WhatsApp group: documents containing words like ‘antibody’, ‘cytokines’ and ‘immune memory’.
Of other things, it restores my lax, failing sense of self-confidence; it makes me want to believe that people who have spent most of their waking hours squinting over a microscope, strained their spines inclining atop a bench of cell cultures for days, and castigated themselves over a wrong significant figure in some arcane mathematical equation, do still have a residue of utility to the world.
Now, we had come to terms with the modern world. We had kind of accepted that the planet belongs to Youtube stars and meme-marketeers. We had come to believe that if you’re nobody unless you have at least a million (how many zeroes was that again?) intrepids behind you who have pressed that ‘bell icon’. We had happily mogrified the verb ‘like’ into a noun; going ‘viral’ (really, really bad pun, considering the situation we are in) was the only thing that mattered (after being re-tweetted (how do I even spell that?) , of course). ‘Science’ had become a four letter word. We do it of course, till we’re 18 — because physics-chemistry-maths-biology, or PCMB (roughly the STEM equivalent in India) — is what most colleges still prefer, as some sort of colonial-era sieve to sort the wheat from chaff. But like a bad childhood memory, we repress it; we cast the demons of ‘science’ away to the basements of our brain (or, sometimes our liver too), until Lethe takes pity and relieves us of our burden. Our feelings towards those cantankerous days spent in our school-sweatshops are not unlike that of Churchill
When I look back upon those care-laden months, their prominent features rise from the abyss of memory. Of course I had progressed far beyond Vulgar fractions and the Decimal System. We were arrived in an ‘Alice-in-Wonderland’ world, at the portals of which stood ‘A Quadratic Equation.’ This with a strange grimace pointed the way to the Theory of Indices, which again handed on the intruder to the full rigours of the Binomial Theorem. Further dim chambers lighted by sullen, sulphurous fires were reputed to contain a dragon called the ‘Differential Calculus.’ But this monster was beyond the bounds appointed by the Civil Service Commissioners who regulated this stage of Pilgrim’s heavy journey. We turned aside, not indeed to the uplands of the Delectable Mountains, but into a strange corridor of things like anagrams and acrostics called Sines, Cosines and Tangents. Apparently they were very important, especially when multiplied by each other, or by themselves! … I have never met any of these creatures since. With my third and successful examination they passed away like the phantasmagoria of a fevered dream.
— Winston Churchill, My early life
At this point, we long to ‘follow our passion’ (which, in the usual case, means ‘something that doesn’t have maths in it’). Now, ‘following ones passion’ is a corollary of the economy: the vast majority of population — even in this post-industrial society — has only one passion: that to survive. We, however, were born into a class that fueled our ‘uniqueness’ (any snowflakes out there?) , overlooked our faults, and chiseled the idea of having a certain ‘passion’ to chase — usually some form of artsy endeavour which we are supposed to take up casually, and hop from one such to other, until we find our ‘true calling’.
I hold nothing against the fine arts and the humanities; in fact, they are no different from other disciplines: it has been my experience that the practice of ‘arts’ requires the same, or even greater, amount of dilligence and scrutiny as that of science. The only reason we take refuge in ‘arts’ is, I suppose, that there are no fixed answers to problems there, one has the freedom to be roundabout and nebulous, and ‘acceptance’ by fellow humans (or, even the anticipation of posthumous publicity) is the only metric of ‘success’. One needs simply invent a colorful concoction of expletives to become an overnight celebrity, gather a fan following, and proclaim himself the new Baudelaire.
At about our midlife, the collective fear of mathematics (or science in general) turns us outwards: for those of us in Business class, we find meaning in the words of ‘life coaches’, ‘motivational speakers’ and ‘gurus’. The less financially endowed finds the local Chosen One (and there is always one more of them). A plethora of gospels is showered upon us; we encounter myriad of ways of finding meaning in life, ranging from ‘believe in yourself’ to ‘sleep without a pillow’ (yes, that). The one common thread that ties all of these scattered pearls of wisdom — is the lack of mechanism, i.e. the explanation of how one thing leads to the other. And since we have given up on that very thing, i.e. science, a long time ago — we feed on guruspeak with the venegance of a bullfrog. I guess, deep down — we find solace in knowing there are so many of us who don’t get science, and these ‘motivational speeches’ are like convocations of us damned!
What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy.
— Neil Postman, Amusing ourselves to death
I must admit something at this point: science has fallen into disrepute — noticeably since last decade — for a number of reasons. Sure, the very factors that have brought our species on the verge of extinction (for a detailed list, see any doomsday prophecy site) would not have been possible without science (not even sharp stones, let alone ‘weapons of mass destruction’). One can descend into an infinite spiral of counter arguments regarding who is to blame for this situation — but it would serve no more purpose to us than Sysiphus donning a black coat and questioning his stone. We are here and now, and we need to survive.
And science is just that.
Man walk on foot. Man get thorn in foot. Man pluck it out. Man know science.
One can wrap this humdrum series of events in as many layers of abstraction as he wants: but to protect oneself (and by ‘self’ I mean the body one is provided with) is that driving force behind life and evolution.
Antigens
The simplest of creatures have abilities to defend themselves. Bacteria produce toxins that kill other bacteria; they also produce elaborate molecular machines to evade an attack from virus (virus, it seems, are a little difficult to kill outright). Plants produce nasty toxins; the knowledge to tell a poisonous from an innocuous fruit might be the difference between life and death in the jungle. Even the plants that we have domesticsated over millions of years, are still plotting to kill us. It is not the purpose of life of a wheat plant to be eaten by humans: so it packs in poison in each grain. Sure, over the long period of domestication and artificial selection, the poison doesn’t work very well. But in the susceptible, it can eat away the intestines: ‘Celiac disease’, a disease with 0.1–0.9% prevalence worldwide, is caused by a protein called ‘Gluten’ in wheat.
Animals are plotting to kill us all the time (for obvious reasons): it is not at all to the liking of the cow that her milk gets stolen and fed to humans, while her calves starve. The carbohydrate in cow’s milk, lactose, is a major cause of gastrointestinal disease worldwide, and might also cause an occasional death. For all you know, peanuts are trying to kill us (actually, they already have: 150–200 deaths per year due to peanut allergies).
Now, to be a little paranoid, the cow must ensure that her own calves don’t get killed by milk. And sure, they don’t. There seems to be something unique in cows milk that can identify the stomach of another cow, but throws a tantrum whenever it lands in the stomach of some other species. However, poisonous gluten might be, it won’t (actually, can’t) kill another wheat plant. The most venomous snake on the planet won’t be able to kill another member of its own species with its venom. The ‘venom’ in this case, is shared property — like the gluten, and the enzymes that digest lactose.
And why just species — there are subtle differences between every individual. When Karl Landsteiner disocovered the blood groups (to be sure, the very fact that blood had groups was a revelation) , the list was restricted to just four: A, B, AB and O (originally ‘0’ or ‘none of the above’). The entirety of the human species was supposed to belong to one of these classes. However, with time we began to isolate more and more subgroups, sub-sub groups, and variants of sub-sub-groups — until we simply lost count and concluded (sulkily) that there are as many blood groups as there are people in this planet. (The four original groups are still in use, though: mainly because they determine the severity of transfusion reaction. It seems as long you give blood from A+ donor to A+ recipient, there won’t be a vigorous rejection of the donor’s blood, even if the sub groups and sub-sub-groups do not match).
What are these … ‘things’… that determine individuality?
A bacterium is made of stuff, material stuff (like the rest of us): proteins, carhohydrates, fats, some metals, nucleic acids, a few odd molecules (like pyridoxine), but mostly proteins. They make up the physical form of the bacterium (its body, to be precise), which is an (rather well designed) aggregate of these molecules.
Now, the very components of the bacterium might be completely novel to another organism. What serves as a tail (flagellum) to the darty, motile bacterium Vibro cholerae, is nothing like the human body has ever seen. So when, by providence or otherwise, one such bacterium enters us — we are met with a sudden plethora of novel molecules we have never ‘seen’ (figuratively speaking) before.
Information consists of differences that make a difference.
— Gregory Bateson
The differences that show up between individuals — when they encounter each other — are called ‘antigens’ (a name that has stuck since the early days of immunology). The barcodes on books and grocery items serve the purpose of ‘antigens’, except a very important difference: antigens don’t simply exist for the sake of it, they also serve some purpose in the organism (unlike the barcode, which hardly adds any value to the book). The flagella of bacteria and the blood group determinants inside us, are both ‘antigens’; nevertheless they were created to carry out entirely different tasks. The flagellum will make the bacterium move about, and the ABO antigens hold the red blood cell membrane together. It is only when the bacterium found itself inside another organism, and group A red cells found themselves in a group B person, that their ‘antigen’ nature was revealed.
What to do with these ‘antigens’ is an unduly complicated story, which, over being retold several times, developed into the discipline of ‘Immunology’. But let’s save that for another day.
