Talk:Artificial induction of immunity

Which?

This is a working title. One might say induction of prior immunity, or medical induction of immunity, the key point in a title being that it is immunity produced by means other than waiting to catch the disease and hoping to survive it.

What


 * 1) The unique element of the article is to tie variolation and vaccination and modern immunisation into one process, with the (potential?) artificial production of antibodies as still part of that process.


 * 1) Providing a bit of context eg germ theory etc is a secondary intention.  It doesn't seem to me an article that should go into detail about the individual processes, otherwise it could get very long and duplicate them.

Why (separate)

The argument against merging it with one or several of the articles linked to is that it has that unique element that is not provided by the other separate articles.

Dive in... Midgley 13:45, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Article name

 * I'll await to see how this article develops, but a change of name is likely indicated. This is supposed to be an umbrella article which introduces a number of topics covered more extensively in their own articles. It is a sort of mini-subproject within the project of clinical medicine and just as that has a name that people would not immediate know to search for (WikiProject Clinical medicine), nor does this need a "perfect" name.
 * However whilst this article name tries to distinguish itself from "naturally acquired immunity" (following infection from the native disease), would a better name be "Medically induced immunity" or just "Induced immunity", else "Stimulated immunity" ?
 * Whilst there is a Category:Vaccination (which rightly does not include variolation), the next level up is Category:Immunology which seems too high a level (autoimmune disease have no direct link to stimulating disease immunity - PS I note Variolation is not in this category either). Clearly these categories wont work as they are and either:
 * A new category is needed (ugh - each vaccine really does not need yet another category), or
 * Category:Vaccination is renamed to make it a little more encompassing, e.g. Category:Induced immunity, that would allow variolation etc to be included within it ?
 * Thereagain, who wants germ theory being directly categorised under a vaccination category (might as well have every single microbiology article included too).
 * So perhaps a new category of our own would allow us to select the appropriate inclusion criteria ? David Ruben Talk 01:02, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
 * This is all eminently sensible. I'm going to sit on my hands so far as this article goes, for a while, I believe it has some slight merit, but it will be better if others take it out of the rough.  I suppose an assertion whcih could be made would be that there are several ways of articially inducing immunity ... which might make a category ... I'm not sure how comfortably the members would sit next to each other or how useful it would be to readers.  This article's content-based name should really be Artificial induction of specific immunity which is clearly not as snappy as one would like.   Midgley 01:35, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Time to revisit the name I should admit I'm happy with the existing one, but would put forward no effort to keep it. This is a stable article now, and evolved as they should, it really ought to do for good article status I think, or at least be reviewed for it. "Therapeutically induced immunity" is one reasonable title, adding "specific" as th epenultimate word would leave it long, but correct. Are there any others worth considering? Midgley 02:23, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

Onesimus and Boston
I meant accounts other than the one about Lady Motagu, but agree that was a superfluous expression. Onesimus is noted in the NIH on-line presentation on variolation cited already. Cotton Mather claimed to own him. Midgley 05:17, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Readability Edits
Hi -- just FYI, I've just made several large (but hopefully content-sparing) edits just for things like grammar, flow, and readability. Haven't done the last section yet -- need to go to bed.

Regarding the title -- I like the title "Therapeutic induction of immunity", as it's more specific and makes some reference to the purpose of the procedure. Still a mouthful, though. Scot &rarr;Talk 10:20, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
 * That seems an adequately good title. Therapeutically induced immunity is one word shorter and a little tighter.  Midgley 11:00, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

By the way, I love the picture of the platypus -- nice touch! Scot &rarr;Talk 02:15, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

A malapropism unless we use Roman Numerals
In teh introductory paragraph:-

"a widening number "

IIII is indeed wider than III but I think in MMVI we can have "a widening range", or "an increasing number", or at a pinch "more and more". Pick one, someone. Midgley 02:26, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

GA failure
Reasons : Lincher 14:58, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
 * This is a historical overview, and an introduction to a collection of detailed articles on the main topics. – doesn’t make any sense in an encyclopaedic article.
 * No lead, see WP:LEAD.
 * Anthrax is now known to be caused by a bacterium, and rabies is known to be caused by a virus. The microscopes of the time could reasonably be expected to show bacteria, but imaging of viruses had to wait until the development of electron microscopes with their greater resolving power in the 20th century. – doesn’t go with there rest of the text in the Germ theory section.
 * The article doesn’t flow … there is no logic in the section order.
 * Sounds POV in some sentences.
 * Needs more citations for this kind of subject.


 * The germ theory section points out that the people developing that theory could _see_ Anthrax bacteria, but had to _infer_ the unseen Rabies agent, and that going from that to a vaccine against it, on the basis of the germ theory, was rather clever. Later, one of the demonstrations of correctness was that the virus could be seen with increased magnification with the EM.  Perhaps it could be made more clear.  My feeling remains that htis should not  be a long article. Midgley 21:48, 2 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Section order ... I don't follow that argument. The sections follow the chronological order of development of understanding of, and artificial induction of, immunity against disease.  What other order could they be in?  I think that criticism is entirely mistaken.  Midgley 21:48, 2 June 2006 (UTC)


 * References: There could be more, but each main article has many, and repeating them here is not ideal. Midgley 21:48, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Citations and other improvements
Per the request of Midgley, here are some of my concerns with this article. This will deal primarily with citations, but there is one very glaring problem I'll mention first. Here goes!
 * This article lacks a lead. - The very first sentence should define "artificial induction of immunity." The rest of the lead paragraph should discuss how it is done, why it is done, and what the goals of the treatment are. The three to five major points of the article should each get a phrase, half-sentence, or full sentence in the lead paragraph.
 * Each statement of fact in the article should have its own citation. - Referring readers to citations in other articles on Wikipedia is not appropriate. If a citation in another article supports the statement of fact in this article, go steal it and add it to this article. Be bold!
 * Do not break the "third wall". - The sentence which begins "This article places the development of techniques..." should be eliminated. Wikipedia's Manual of Style generally precludes articles from addressing readers directly, and precludes articles from using such self-referential statements. (Self-referential statements are common in scientific periodicals, but this is not a scientific periodical.)
 * I have noted various issues with the lead, as currently written. These include:
 * "Since Pasteur..." - A citation is needed which indicates that Pasteur was the person who provided support for the germ theory of disease. I would also suggest that the sentence be changed to read "...Pasteur and others" (since many people contributed to this theory).
 * "...we have increasingly induced immunity..." - Who is "we"?
 * "...we have increasingly induced immunity against a widening" - Give a citation to the fact that the number of diseases against which induced immunity is applied is widening.
 * "...against a widening range of diseases..." - Only diseases? The implication from the prior clause is that only germ-caused diseases are the object of induced immunity, but that is perhaps incorrect.  A citation would help clarify this for readers.
 * "...to prevent the associated risks from the wild infections." - A "wild infection" is an unclear term. Do you mean an untamed infection?  An infection which is out of control in the body?  A zoonotic infection?  (If this is a scientific term, perhaps it should be defined in a footnote, and a citation provided for that definition.)  What are "associated risks"?  (If this is a scientific term, perhaps it should be defined in a footnote, and a citation provided for that definition if possible.)  Is prevention the key word, or can "control" be included?  (Most induced immunities do not prevent infection, but rather arm the body to effectively fight infection so that illness does not occur.)  Lastly, if this is the goal of artificially induced immunity, it should have a citation that says so.
 * "It is hoped that further..." - "It" is a weasel word. Who says this?  If physicians and biomedical researchers say this, then the sentence should read "Physicians and biomedical researchers hope that further..."
 * "...understanding of the molecular basis of immunity will translate to improved clinical practice in the future." - This needs a citation. And if both "physicians and biomedical researchers" are used as the noun in this sentence, then the citation should say that as well.
 * Thank you. Do feel free to write some of it. To answer a couple of questions, we are the human species.  If anyone else has been doing it, they have not published, so far as I know.  Pasteur developed the germ theory.  Before him it was not clear, after it was.  Hence, since him ....Midgley (talk) 22:53, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
 * The box at the bottom deserves a moment's attention before the nature of this article is radically changed. Midgley (talk) 22:57, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Tetanus toxoid
The original description of this made the importance of the time-coruse - the speed at which immunity can be generated to the natural toxin clear. THe current one has lost that. Midgley (talk) 11:40, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

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A Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion
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 * Platypus.jpg

The foundation of modern medicine
I'm not absolutely convinced that modern medicine is founded on a germ theory of infectious diseases. The portion of medicine which is both modern and relating to infectious diseases may reasonably be said to be. I'll not rewrite that lede sentence, I wrote the first version, but the run-on is a little uncomfortable there. Midgley (talk) 14:48, 28 August 2021 (UTC)