Immune: A Journey into the Mysterious System That Keeps You Alive

My 7 year old has been begging for this book and it was delivered today. He’s been reading it for the last hour with no end in sight❤️

I just finished this book. Out of ten, I'd rate it a nine. Aside from a few syntax issues, whereby some common American phrasings are slightly rearranged yet still intelligible, there's very little I can find wrong with this book.The information is solid, researched focused, and is based on staying within the realm of what is certain, while staying keen on underscoring the speculative. Dettmer deploys the narrative style of explanation, which is conducive to a coherent communication of a big picture for a topic that is unfortunately riddled with canyon-sized rabbit holes. If you struggle to direct your attention while reading, either because of a loss of pace or an excess of dry reading, you are especially catered to here. Delightful and appropriate instances of humor decorate sincere moments of education. Further, Dettmer successfully utilizes the educational form of explaining the very basics first to later elucidate topics that are relatable in common life, rather than diving head first into the complexities from the get go. As Dettmer cautiously mentions, this book doesn't scratch the surface, but upon its completion you'll know much more than the average person.I saw a couple reviews here that criticize his tendency to anthropomorphize while at once warning against the uncritical acceptance of the same idea. Another criticism brought up regards a discussion of stress and implies that the author encourages readers to dig themselves into holes whenever stress appears. I believe these criticisms are unfounded. Even at the undergraduate level, analogy, metaphor- yes even by anthropomorphizing, and anecdote are all didactic tools used to explain to the very novice the beginnings of a topic. As students learn, the simplifications and subtle lies are dispelled and the ugly truth is slowly revealed. Often, beginners can't handle the whole truth all at once and that should be clear here, as its constantly implied by the author. The book is not intended for advanced study, and that's obvious. If you buy this book thinking that your experience in immunology will be tantamount to that of an immunologist, you are wrong. If you buy this book expecting a university-style series of lectures whereby all the casual oversimplifications are disposed of, you are wrong. If you buy this book expecting anything other than a cursory glance at a complex topic, you are sorely mistaken. Criticisms against these discrepancies don't honestly and earnestly represent the intentions of the author or the content of the book. In addition, no- Dettmer does not suggest that the best remedy to stress is to hide in a hole, and the suggestion that you can simply adapt your immune system to cope with stress is a misunderstanding of the very content upon which the criticism was made. Instead, a notion is put forward that by maintaining a healthy and low-stress lifestyle, your immune system receives all the support it needs rather than depending on fraudulent supplementation. There's no suggestion that the reader should evade stress entirely and the claim that there is lacks veracity.Lastly, any criticisms against this book for its marked 'political' influences are rooted in their own biases from the get go. Upon reading the book, you'll pleasantly find that there is not a single mention of American or any politics, given that the author is German and trying to tell you about cells. One reviewer notes an apparent 99.9% survival rate of COVID19 as evidence for criticism against the statement by the author that SARS-CoV2 is deadly. This 99.9% supposed survival rate in turn indicates a 0.1% mortality rate. Out of the now 568,773,510 cumulative cases, that's a little over half a million cumulative deaths, more than both SARS1 2003 outbreak and MERS outbreak combined, two much more lethal viruses. Not only this, but the real life (and based on actual data) number of deaths due to COVID-19 is in the ball park of more than six million people in about three years. An average of two million people a year. I think it's safe to say that the virus is deadly and such criticism against the statement is untenable. Besides, why wouldn't you want to learn how your body protects itself from such a pathogen?

Immune is a very well timed book on the overall functionality of the Immune system. The author does an excellent job describing how the immune system functions, what the core cellular roles are and what are the main pathogens the body is trying to protect against. The book discusses how the pieces of the immune system fit together, how immune memory works and how complicated the whole system is. Given we remain within a pandemic and there is a shockingly poor understanding of how the immune system works, what vaccines do and what are the risks we face as a species, this book is perfect for a general audience that can help anyone think about how they should be thinking about their immune system.The authors goal is to give an overview of the immune system and the tools it uses to protect the body. The author starts by contextualizing the size of the body in cell count and the size of the body vs cells and the size of cells vs most intruders. The scale of the body's defense needs are enormous and so the author does well to give an idea of the scale of the problem the immune system faces. He starts out by discussing what we are born with and the basic cells we have to destroy bacterial intruders. He discusses the chemistry of cells and the protein foundations of almost all signaling and coordinating through the complement immune system. The author discusses how helper T-cells and B-cells coordinate with Macrophages and how dendritic cells signal which intruders are in the area. The author discusses how antigens are picked up and used as signals to trigger further cell production to combat specific pathogens where the body has a history of familiarity and highlights how the immune system has an astronomical library of how to build antibodies to protect the body. The author first details how the body fights bacterial infection and how they often enter the body by an example of if one steps on a nail. The author later gets into viral infections and how virus's use the body's own cells against oneself. The different machinery needed for viral infections is laid out and the more complex chemistry of how the immune system checks its own cells for faulty production is discussed as well as the use of interferon to slow down cellular growth generally. This picture of what goes on during a viral infection and the symptoms and risks are very informative for those who might have questions about COVID and how to think about it, though there is also a short discussion on COVID specifically at the end. The author highlights how vaccines work and the overall significant utility of them. He discusses MRNA vaccines in particular and the safety of them. This is definitely useful information in plain English that is further interpretable though the lucid writing about what goes on in the immune system when presented with antigens. Thus overall any reader would come out with a clear picture of why vaccines are so useful, how they could be risky (they trigger an immune response which inherently has some risk no matter what) and how that dwarfs the risk of a real viral immune response. The author goes on to discuss how the immune system can fail and discusses allergies briefly and how that can be seen as an immune failure. The author also goes into cancer operates and how AIDS is so challenging to fight.Overall Immune is an excellent introduction to the immune system and how it all fits together. Having a very faded memory of biology from High School, this was really helpful for me. It gives a clear overview and provides enough information that one will feel like they have a better understanding on how to make choices about ones immune system. In a time like this, such information is quite priceless.