Tài liệu Practical Immunology 4th

Immunology might well claim to be the most popular and the most glamorous of biological sciences
today. I suspect that there has been a sharper increase in the number of research workers in
immunology over the last two decades than in any other scientific discipline.
Applied immunology, plus the intangibles we lump together as the rising standard of living,
has virtually rid the world of smallpox, yellow fever, diphtheria and poliomyelitis and has helped
in many other fields. Its prestige lingers on as the major tool of preventive medicine but, as one
whose first immunological paper was published more than 50 years ago, I have seen a complete
switch in the contemporary importance of immunologyabut not a diminution.
Immunology today is a science in its own right. The enthusiasm of younger workers, like the
authors of this book, is primarily directed toward understanding; medical applications of the new
knowledge will be wholeheartedly welcomed but they are not central. For me, and to some extent
all of us in immunology, the excitement is in the lead that our subject is giving toward a real
understanding of the form and strategy of living process. Thanks to the recognisability of the
significant molecules, antibody, antigen and the like, we have been able to apply the new techniques
of molecular biology to the elucidation of one of the essential bodily functions. We are
leading the field, for nowhere else have genetics, biochemistry and every other basic science that
can help, been so effectively applied to living function. It is the first step toward a sophisticated
understanding of what we are and how we became so.
This book is basically an introduction to the techniques and ideas on which immunology is
based; to one who grew up with the older, predominantly medical approach, the new version can
be sensed everywhere in the authors’ approach.
I wish them every success.
f.m. burnet
Basel, Switzerland
1976