In Defense of Self

• AIDS (Chapter 8); cancer (Chapter 11); bioterrorism (Chapter 14) are all timely/newsworthy topics
• Summarises the facts into an easily readable and interesting explanation of 'big picture' ideas for an audience without a scientific or technical background. A short glossary is provided to help general readers with scientific terms
• The book should interest anyone who has had any of the diseases or disorders described in Part II, and whose families want to understand in lay terms what their maladies involve. There are very few resources in accessible books about immunology
• Part I's four chapters describe the immune system and its components, how they fit together and work to protect us against microbial diseases. It covers antibodies, how they are made and how they work; T cells; strategies the body uses to distinguish what is self from what is not, and how the body discriminates precisely among different forms of non-self; the nature of immunological memory;and the interaction of the evolutionary older innate immune system with more recent adaptive immune response
• Part II's ten chapters systematically explore the role of the immune system in health and disease. It explores a wide range of topics including details of human resistance to microbial invasion: the latest approaches to vaccination, including DNA vaccines; the role of the immune system in cancer; and how the immune system will react should we ever be subjected to a bioterrorist attack
• The book treats the immune system's role in diseases and disorders like AIDS, cancer, autoimmunity, rheumatoid arthritis, organ transplantation, allergies and asthma, and various immunopathologies and infections caused by bacteria, viruses and fungi
• The book discusses the latest approaches to vaccination, including DNA vaccines, how they work, and why they don't at times

Readership: General readers affected by the disorders discussed in the book.

William R. Clark, Professor and Chair Emeritus of Immunology, Department of Molecular, Cell and Developmental Biology, University of California, Los Angeles, USA

Part I: How The Immune System Works
1: What Is An Immune System?
2: Antibodies
3: How Do Antibodies Work?
4: T Cells: The Second Arm of Adaptive Immunity
Part II The Immune System in Health and Disease
5: The Immune Response to Infectious Disease: All Out War!
6: When the Immune System is the Problem, and Not The Solution: Microbial Immunopathology
7: Vaccines: How They Work, Why They Sometimes Don't, And What We Can Do About It
8: When the Walls Come Tumbling Down: HIV/AIDS
9: When the Walls Come Tumbling Down: Primary Immune Deficiency Diseases
10: When the Immune System is the Problem, Not The Solution: Hypersensitivity and Allergy
11: The Immune System and Cancer
12: Autoimmunity
13: Organ Transplantation
14: First Defense: The Immune System and Bioterrorism