The New Approach to Immunology

Abstract

FEW fields within the conventional ambit of the biologic sciences are more actively popular at the present time than immunology. Rather suddenly the old approach to immunity as an aspect of the study of infectious disease, with its almost exclusive concentration on antibody at the experimental level, has been replaced by a more sophisticated approach.In 1949 Fenner and I¹ made the first systematic attempt to look at the problem, recognized by Ehrlich but more or less neglected subsequently, of the implications of the nonantigenicity of body components. We pointed out that somehow the ability of cells within the body . . .