Tag: The immune system.

One of the main defense mechanism of the body against disease is the Immune System. The immune system creates immunity or makes us immune, meaning it makes us able to resist microorganisms that invade our body. The main workers of the immune system are leukocytes, also known as white blood cells. White blood cells can be divided into subgroups like basophils, neutrophils, and eosinophils for example. Each of these specific white blood cell is created and response more rapidly to different threats on the body like parasites or simple bacterial infections.

There are two main categories of immunity with the human body, there is Innate Immunity or “natural” immunity and Adaptive Immunity. Innate immunity is the bodies natural response to all foreign bodies, it consists of no memory, release of nonspecific white blood cells that are able to attack all forms of foreign bodies, the bodies inflammatory response, and the release of complement proteins and interferons. With innate immunity the body responses the same way to foreign bodies despite the type of threat. Adaptive Immunity is also known as specific immunity because the body creates memory of specific invaders like a polio virus and is able to then create specific white blood cells from memory to kill the invading polio virus. Adaptive immunity consists of natural immunity which occurs when exposure to a foreign body happens naturally, artificial immunity which includes when a child develops a disease such as polio and the body forms memory of the virus from the infection, and when when an injection of causative agents like immunizations are given just for a few examples. The video we watched discussed vaccination, based on studies and your opinion do you believe vaccines are equally as important as natural immunity? Can there be arguments made that natural immunity is the best way for the body to defend against disease?