UBC Researcher Discovers 'Control Room' That Regulates Immune Responses

[David T Anderson]

Why is it that transitory political crapola is constantly on the newspaper's front pages, while stories like this, news that _will_ change the lives of practically everybody on Earth, you have to go looking for?


VANCOUVER, Canada -- The approximately 50 million people in the U.S. who suffer from autoimmune diseases like HIV/AIDS, multiple sclerosis, and arthritis, may soon be able to control their immune responses, thanks to a breakthrough discovery by a researcher at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada.

Read the whole article HERE... (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/10/031023071804.htm)

[Chuck Munyon]

The other reason is that the difference between the actual impact of a given discovery and the impact predicted by the sponsoring organization often differ wildly due to reasons that cannot be anticipated. While this seems to be a very important discovery in the science of immunology, the speed with which it will affect our lives may vary from sometime within the next five year to never. Remeber angiogenesis inhibitors? They were going to cure cancer within the next five years! Unfortunately, that was ten years ago.

The ability to turn up the immune system may be clinically useful, but only to the extent that it is controllable. An overactive immune system can be just as crippling as a deficient one. While this is an exciting discovery in the realm of basic science, it will be quite a while before we can say if it is anything more than that (at which point I suspect you will hear about it, similar to the way the class of drugs known as statins recently made the cover of Newsweek even though the basic science discovery that allowed their development, i.e. the activity of the enzyme coA-reductase and its role in cholesterol metabolism, happened years ago).

I agree very much with your basic premise, however, that the majority of what passes for journalism these days is sensationalistic crap.