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Thursday 5 September 2013

The immune system: a rant.

This is from The Guardian newspaper of 10th August 2013. It's from a review of The Compatibility Gene by Daniel M Davis.

The reviewer shall remain decently anonymous.

...the immune system is thought to be involved in fighting disease, pregnancy and the brain.

Two thoughts, here (which is, I fear, at least one more than the writer seems to have bestowed on this bit of his review).

First: if the immune system didn't fight disease then it wouldn't be...er...an immune system. Would it?

Second: if the writer had put fighting disease at the end of his list then he'd have saved himself embarrassment.

But, hey, it gave me a laugh.

Word To Use Today: immune. This word comes form the Latin immūnis, which means exempt from public service, from mūnis, which means duty.

 

3 comments:

  1. Yes: and it doesn't exactly 'fight' pregnancy, does it? Or, god save us, the brain?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Brilliant to hear from you, Katherine.
      Yes, you're quite right, of course. But then I suppose if people stopped to engage their brains before they attacked their keyboards then the newspapers would hardly be big enough to line a litter tray.
      And then where would we be?

      Delete

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