Immunosuppression and Infection — Progress?

Abstract

One characteristic of contemporary physicians is the ease with which they have accepted Shakespeare's tenet that "Diseases desperate grown by desperate appliance are relieved...."¹ Oncologists, rheumatologists, tissue transplanters and others are activists. They administer therapy that predictably induces profound suppression of the immune response and often leads to a variety of bacterial and nonbacterial infections that were considered medical curiosities only 20 years ago.² Implicit in this behavior are several assumptions: the first, of course, is that the frequency of cure and palliation will justify the price of iatrogenic infection; the second is that current therapy will evolve rapidly in . . .