White blood cells and other cells of ours actively seek out and kill foreign microbes. The specific antibodies that we gradually build up against a particular microbe infecting us make us less likely to get reinfected once we become cured. As we all know from experience, there are some illnesses, such as flu and the common cold, to which our resistance is only temporary; we can eventually contract the illness again. Against other illnesses, though-including measles, mumps, rubella, pertussis, and the now defeated smallpox - our antibodies stimulated by one infection confer lifelong immunity. That's the principle of vaccination: to stimulate our antibody production without our having to go through the actual experience of the disease, by inoculating us with a dead or weakened strain of microbe.
Jared DiamondRelated topics
blood build cold common dead disease experience foreign having illness immunity infection kill less likely measles microbe now once production seek specific vaccination white fluRelated quotes
I do not see why we should reject all genetic engineering because its technology might, one day, permit such a perversion of decency in the hands of some latter-day Hitler-you may as well outlaw printing because the same machine that composes Shakespeare can also set Mein Kampf. The domino theory does not apply to all human achievements. If we could, by transplanting a bacterial gene, confer disease or cold resistance upon an important crop plant, should we not do so in a world were people suffer so terribly from malnutrition? Must such a benefit imply that, tomorrow, corn and wheat, sea horses and orchids will be thrown into a gigantic vat, torn apart into genetic units, and reassembled into rows of identical human servants? Eternal vigilance, to recombine some phrases, is the price of technological achievement.
Stephen Jay Gould
When all is said and done, I hope that when the people of our country next return the White House for a time to the Democratic Party, our leadership then will be big enough to salute the present administration for what it will have done that is wise and good. And to build upon it forthrightly.
Towards that end, we must now expand our concept of what is needed to reach the goals upon which we all agree. The United States needs to create a world made more just and more hopeful, not just a world made more profitable for ourselves. I hope that this President's record makes it damn hard for the competition to complain about his record in foreign policy. That may be bad for the loyal opposition. But it's good for the people, who deserve it. And I promise my support for whatever he may do in support of that prayer.
Al Gore
During the war we had to stop producing the everyday things which we need in peacetime. We had to concentrate on war production and the bare necessities of existence. The natural result is that to-day we are short of the things which we need... You may ask why cannot we get what we want from abroad? The answer is that we can only get it if we can pay for it. Before the war many of the things which we got from abroad-food and raw material-were paid for by the interest on foreign investments, and by services rendered by us to people in other countries. During the war we had to sell our foreign investments to pay for the arms, food, and other things we needed. Apart from any temporary relief we may get by loans from our friends across the Atlantic, we can only buy from abroad now if we can pay by exporting goods or rendering services.
Clement Attlee
Once more, the spectre of Cold War is everywhere. Defence budgets, a decimal part of which could free humanity from hunger, disease, illiteracy, and poverty, instead of decreasing, have grown. The gap between 'the haves' and 'the have-nots' is daily widening. Many nations seem to be politically independent but cannot use their independence to deal with their problems or to prosper because foreign influence and interference is still strong. Fratricide and similar savagery in the world sting the human conscience. Racial discrimination a mark of shame on twentieth-century man, although intolerable to most humans can still be seen in various parts of the world. And the power-seeking policies of the strong are hampering the execution of United Nations' ideals.
Muhammad Reza Pahlavi
In my opinion the third sound principle is this-to strive to cultivate and maintain, ay, to the very uttermost, what is called the concert of Europe; to keep the Powers of Europe in union together. And why? Because by keeping all in union together you neutralize and fetter and bind up the selfish aims of each. I am not here to flatter either England or any of them. They have selfish aims, as, unfortunately, we in late years have too sadly shown that we too have had selfish aims; but then common action is fatal to selfish aims. Common action means common objects; and the only objects for which you can unite together the Powers of Europe are objects connected with the common good of them all. That, gentlemen, is my third principle of foreign policy.
William Ewart Gladstone