Immune Function: The Complexity of Not Knowing

I was recently shipped an article on the findings of a Johns Hopkins Medicine team and their colleagues at Columbia and Heidelberg universities on the potential correlations of immune response to schizophrenia. As someone that understands the challenges of this class of patients better than I had expected (or ever intended) years ago, I stand in awe of the complexity of their disease and how almost none of us understand or appreciate the many tragedies of mental illness. We tend to talk in terms of genetics today without thinking about the really complex problems of human adaption and impacts on families. Life may be chemistry, biology or whatever but we live each day as social animals.

And while I suffer from type 1 diabetes I live with a condition that has acceptance wrapped around it like some badge of tragic suffering -- nobody blames me for it, shakes their head, or avoids me on the street. The same is not true for those less fortunate in our community with schizophrenia that are more often the subject of scorn and amazing levels of ignorance.

But here's the real rub: I could have easily have been born with a nastier combination of genes or had some unexpected environmental exposure (or maybe now with the wrong immune reaction) and I would have been just like those that carry schizophrenia on their health map.

But I dodged those bullets, which was no great insight on my part or the results of years of hard work. I was simply lucky, which I think is the common and biggest variable in life that almost nobody likes to acknowledge. Your average schizophrenic was not as lucky as you or me I bet.

This is why I love science and the people that toil away in silence (and probably never post anything in LinkedIn or even read it) making change happen and increasing our understanding of this world. The Hopkins/Columbia/Heidelberg team is a great example of a cohort that has stumbled into another view of the intersections of the body where the systems act through some choreography that I am not sure we really understand -- but people like them are trying to decipher. Enjoy the read from PubMed on their remarkable activities.

So to the teams at Hopkins et al and countless others, keep pushing even though almost nobody but a few of your associates gets it. And accept my thanks today as a preview of the applause you will receive later (I hope).