The Symmetrical Network Theory of Adaptive Immunity

Even as the brain is a vast network of neurons, that possesses a profound sense of self, and the ability to (sometimes) remember and learn, so is the immune system a network of cells and antibodies that also have a profound sense of self, and the ability to remember and learn.

The immune network theory states that the “recognizers” of the immune system (the lymphocytes and antibodies) not only recognize foreign particles, but also recognize and interact with each other, as parts of a network that can remember.  According to the theory, this has important implications for the medical issues of autoimmunity, organ rejection and HIV.

Network interactions in the immune system have been validated in numerous peer reviewed journals, however they are an aspect of the system that most of the field of immunology is not paying attention to currently, largely due to the IJ paradox of the early 1980s.  This paradox was sufficiently central to network theory, that immunologists at the time left the network paradigm, to focus on the details of the system.

Dr. Geoffrey Hoffmann was able to solve the IJ paradox, and published its resolution in a peer reviewed journal in 1994, however by then, to most immunologists, network theory was little more than a paragraph in their textbooks, a forgotten paradigm of immunology.