Immune: A Journey Into the Mysterious System That Keeps You Alive

Immune: A Journey Into the Mysterious System That Keeps You Alive Book Review

What do a splinter, a thorn from a rose, and a sheet of paper have in common? All of them can give minor cuts. Although these cuts seem like just a mild nuisance, they do breach the skin and let bacteria in. The immune system, our body's natural defense against pathogens, has to take care of the bacteria every single time there is a minor breach so that the bacteria can’t pose a serious threat. Immune: a Journey Into the Mysterious System That Keeps You Alive by Philipp Dettmer informs readers about this crucial system. Philipp Dettmer is the founder, CEO, and head writer of Kurzgesagt, one of the largest science YouTube channels with over 18 million subscribers and nearly 2 billion views across its videos. I have watched most of the videos from Kurzgesagt, and I even bought Immune when it first came out. I chose Immune since it helped me learn about the immune system in an easy way through the use of infographics while explaining the two main parts of the immune system: the Innate and Adaptive Immune Systems.

Immune makes learning about the immune system more engaging since it consists mostly of text with some infographics, which are images with text on them. Some parts of the book aren’t easy to understand, but the infographics give the reader a visualization of how the immune system fights off infections. When I was reading about the part where two cells pass information, I had no idea what the book was talking about until I saw the image of how the transference of information was done through chemical signals. Afterward, I went back to the pages and found it easier to understand. Without the infographics, I wouldn’t have been able to comprehend how the immune cells work together and pass down information.

One part of the book that was especially useful to my understanding of how the immune system works was Dettmer's chapter on the Innate Immune System, one of the two most crucial parts of the immune system that is considered the first line of defense. The system consists of Macrophages and Neutrophils, which are cells that hunt bacteria. Another special cell, the Dendritic Cell, collects samples of the bacteria and leaves the site before activating the next stage of the immune system. The part that helped me the most in remembering the information on this chapter was the comparison of the infection to a battlefield with two different immune cells working together while killing bacteria. By correlating the breach to a war zone, I was able to better understand how a complicated system such as the Innate Immune System works.

Immune’s chapter on the other critical part of the immune system, the Adaptive Immune System, discusses the second line of defense in the immune system. The Adaptive Immune System takes some time to prepare for the assault on the remaining bacteria left on the battlefield. The Dendritic Cell from the Innate Immune System goes and finds the right Helper T-Cell, a cell that contains a special receptor for each pathogen, and the Helper T-Cell finds the right B Cell, a cell that produces antibodies. Once this is complete, these cells can effectively fight off the infection. All the cells in the Adaptive Immune System are critical and can’t function without one another. The book’s choice of words makes the Adaptive Immune System sound like the support in a battle. The book’s description of the Helper T-Cells as a kind of medic in the war, keeping the immune cells alive, and the B Cells as a kind of heavy artillery helped me retain all the information about the Adaptive Immune System.

Immune: A Journey Into the Mysterious System That Keeps You Alive explains the Innate and Adaptive Immune System in an easy-to-understand way by the means of infographics. In addition, Immune’s use of war analogies helped me understand the difficult and confusing parts of the book since I have an interest in war and history. In particular, the infographics that depicted the image of war piqued my interest. The book has helped me grasp why and how the immune system defends our body while keeping me engaged. I used to brush off a cut, but now that I have read Immune, I think about the immune system and what it’s doing after I get a cut. I know that for us, it seems like just a nuisance, but for our bodies, it’s a battle with millions of casualties.