Bruce Beutler Quotes

Researchers have found that the brain definitely sends nerves directly to organs of the immune system and not just to the heart and the lower gut. In that way, too, the brain is influencing the body.

I align myself with almost all researchers in assuming that anything we do is a composite of whatever genetic limitations were given to us by our parents and whatever kinds of environmental opportunities are available.

The immune system has evolved the capacity to react specifically with a very large number of foreign molecules with which it had no previous contact while avoiding reactivity for autologous molecules, naturally antigenic in other species or in other individuals of the same species.

It is often seen that in households where all members are exposed to the same danger, or again in schools or troops where everyone lives the same life, disease does not strike everyone indifferently.

The nature of a protective immune response to HIV is still unclear. Because in a very, very unique manner, unlike virtually any other microbe with which we're familiar, the HIV virus has evolved in a way that the immune system finds it very difficult, if not impossible, to deal with the virus.

To manipulate the immune system, you need to find the key bottlenecks that govern the system. The T-cell is an absolute bottleneck.

Probably the most important reason we are seeing more cancers than before is because the population is ageing overall. And cancer is an age-related disease.

The need to deal with pathogens has driven the evolution of the vertebrate immune system, so it should not be surprising that experiments with infectious agents have often illuminated key elements of the underlying mechanisms.

Investigating rare diseases gives researchers more clues about how the healthy immune system functions.

We don't know why, but pancreatic cancer has a very interesting physiological link to depression. There seems to be a deep link, and we don't know what it is.

I'm not a doctor or scientist. I'm just a mom. But I do think there's a genetic predisposition, and there are environmental triggers. I feel like that combination, in my child's case, is what resulted in autism.

We found out that, contrary to what many people thought, in the immune system, genes can change during the life cycle of the individual.

I don't know if acting is genetic. Maybe it's environmental.

Once a disease has entered the body, all parts which are healthy must fight it: not one alone, but all. Because a disease might mean their common death. Nature knows this; and Nature attacks the disease with whatever help she can muster.

Psoriasis is an autoimmune disease, and I'm sensitive.

The genetics of autism are real, but there are also environmental triggers.

Inflammation as understood in man and the higher animals is a phenomenon that almost always results from the intervention of some pathogenic microbe.

The body's immune system is like any other system of the body. Each of them have their vital function for the human host.

Nature's patterns sometimes reflect two intertwined features: fundamental physical laws and environmental influences. It's nature's version of nature versus nurture.

Many key concepts concerning the nature of immunity have originated from the very practical need to control virus infections.

What the immune system of man has in its advanced development is what we call immunological memory, so that once it sees something for the first time, when it sees it the second or the third time, it can respond against it in a way that's much more accelerated than when it sees it for the first time.

A person's health isn't generally a reflection of genes, but how their environment is influencing them. Genes are the direct cause of less than 1pc of diseases: 99pc is how we respond to the world.

We are all born with a unique genetic blueprint, which lays out the basic characteristics of our personality as well as our physical health and appearance... And yet, we all know that life experiences do change us.

Many people assume the diseases that kill us are pre-programmed into our genes. High blood pressure by 55, heart attacks at 60, maybe cancer at 70, and so on... But for most of the leading causes of death, our genes usually account for only 10-20 per cent of risk.

Genes work with probabilities; they don't work with certainties. So most things that you're looking at with these genetic tests, it's not like you're condemned to automatically get the disease or the syndrome. There's a lot of factors in play there.