Myths of immunity: Dr Michael Fitzpatrick, the medical columnist for sp!ked, continues with important reflections on the sociocultural context of healthcare. I wrote last month about his concerns, which echo my own, about the meaning of unquestioning acceptance of the validity and extent of ‘chronic fatigue syndrome.’ Now he considers the metaphorical significance of widespread fears about side effects of MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccination.

The term ‘immune system’ is now so familiar that it has the aura of a medical or scientific concept that has been around since the seventeenth century. In fact, the term is scarcely 30 years old. It was first used, by the immunologist Niels Jerne, at the Cold Spring Harbor Symposium on Quantitative Biology in 1967 (2). As Anne Marie Moulin, a historian of immunology explains, the term was introduced as a pragmatic device to hold together two contending factions within the discipline

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