RE: Innate vs. Adaptive Immune System (+why there is no story today)
Great explanation of the human immune system. The way you passed this knowledge was really simple and effective.
That's basically how applied biology emerged and works.
First, study and find the natural mechanisms through fundamental biology. Second, find and engineer strategies to trick those mechanisms into doing what is needed. Vaccination is just one result of this.
As you noted, it saved millions of lives. There is no way it would be possible without it. Some really nasty viruses are even practically non-observable anymore, because of it.
Could there be some side effects to it. Sure. That's probably true. But, everything has some risk associated. It is just a matter of weighing the pros and cons. To me, the pros clearly seem to outweigh the cons.
As a side note. I really liked the way you used phages on your illustrations. Despite being harmless to eukaryotes, I can see how their weirdness and bad looks made them perfect to visually illustrate your point :)
Thanks for the heads-up!
I'll continue following your work ofc. Whether scientific or fictional.
All the best
Pros vs cons is one of the most important concepts in medical research, true. And I feel like many people don't understand that there are always cons, never just pros.
So they rather do nothing.
I'm very happy to hear that you enjoy my content and will follow me regardless of stylistic choice :)
I totally agree!
As I see it, there is some lack of awareness within the general population about these topics. Within the life sciences, not everything is black or white. Quite on the contrary actually. A lot of research was put into these discoveries. They are constantly being refined to diminish the cons. But we're talking of biology and a biological system can be very unpredictable. Sometimes the same organism respond in a way at a given time, but that could change without any noticeable reason afterwards. That's why it has been difficult to tackle many problems and diseases, for example.
There is still a lot we don't know or control. So weighing the pros and cons is very important, because as you said there will always be cons. At least just for now, I hope :)
Note: Just in case someone might question, I'm talking about scientific based cons, not possible political agenda ones. Thanks
You should really join the steemSTEM channel on steemit.chat if you haven't already!
Oh, thanks for pointing that out and for the invite.
I'll definitely look at it :)