On the attack

No, not the Clintons... the immune system! :-)

The Washington Post reports on the latest research that shows a dramatic increase in diseases such as asthma, food allergies, type 1 diabetes, and multiple schlerosis over the past 50 years. What all of these ailments have in common is an overreacting immune system. In the case of the first two, it shifts into overdrive against external substances; with the latter two, the body itself.

The leading theory to explain the phenomenon holds that as modern medicine beats back bacterial, viral and parasitic diseases that have long plagued humanity, immune systems may fail to learn how to differentiate between real threats and benign invaders, such as ragweed pollen or food. Or perhaps because they are not busy fighting real threats, they overreact or even turn on the body's own tissues.