All great things have modest beginnings as is the birth of modern Immunology.  In the twentieth century at a place removed from the influence of the east began something that still shrouds in mystery.  For Wracks, it is the selection for Immunology Research as an elective because at the big U at that time, everything was about basic research.  The Immunology team located in the west wing of the Biology building in the science quad and the Wracks is now part of the team.  The preceptors are Eli and Dr. M with an Israeli with a funny sounding name as consulting physician.  They work with mice and the Wracks is going to work with mice until he moves to the Medical Center next year.  The mice they use as experimental objects are Balb/c and C57.   Balb/c mice are white spotted brown and c57 are all grey.  These strains represent highly inbred lines making their genes almost identical between lines and suitable for experimental design.   The Wracks and mike are going to assay bone marrow transplantation in line and between lines as a model for human bone marrow transplants.   The major organ of immunity in mice is the spleen.  A scientist challenges the spleen with an antigen and then harvests the spleen and does identity assays on the cells.   The identity assay Eli and Dr. M use is the plaque-forming assay.  A scientist harvests a primed mouse spleen, homogenizes it, blends it with gelatin containing the antigen identity being assayed on a petri dish and then counts the rings forming on the disk.  If rings form which are antigen-antibody complexes, then this connotes an antigen-antibody reaction and a positive test. 

Eli is tall and of Scandinavian descent. His long curly hair and grey eyes are set in a pair of worn jeans and tee shirt immersed in Mexican huarache sandals.   Today he wants the Wracks and Mike to drive to the radiation facility and irradiate some c57 mice with a cobalt 60 bomb so he and Dr. M can practice syngeneic bone marrow transplants.  Mike has a car and the Wracks carry the cage of mice to the facility at the Veterans Administration.  They leave the car at a parking lot which also was a radioactive waste dump and is still hot.  The administration paved over the dump with asphalt and conclude that people parking there will suffer little radiation exposure due to the brevity of their stay.  This is the great and opulent veteran’s administration on the west side of town and if a person knows where to go and what to look for, they can find an irradiation center with a cobalt 60 bomb in the center.  Mike and the Wracks find the building that no one knows about, enter it and display their student identifications to a soldier that guards the entrance to the building.  The physicist that maintains the bomb welcomes them and crosses off their names on the schedule that only he possesses.   The irradiation room is a small ten foot by ten-foot concrete grey room with beacon lights hanging from the ceiling and in the center is a podium that elevates to expose the bomb.

Be sure you are out of the room when the beacons and sirens go on exhort the physicist in charge.

Mike has walked out of the room and the Wracks sets the cage near the podium sunk in a lead scabbard in the ground.  The wracks make sure the door is open when he sets down the cage of mice because without the door closed the bomb will not elevate.  Keeping his eye on the door, he runs out, the door closes, lights like a police car flash and siren goes off and an atomic bomb like scenario happens in the room.  The Wracks smells lightning like a strike at the beginning of a rain storm and time freezes and then everything becomes quiet.   The door opens and the Wracks goes in to fetch the cage.   The mice are still alive but look strange like they have just been through a savage fight and they sweat and their fur is matted and askew.   Mike and the Wracks thank the Physicist and take the cage back to the Biology facility.

The mice have no white cells now says Eli.  We will transplant syngeneic and allogenic bone marrow cells in their abdomens and see if they take.   If they can mount an antibody-antigen response on a plaque-forming assay then the transplant is a success. If the mouse dies with allogenic cells which are mouse cells from other inbred lines than this is graft versus host reaction and cells from another similar but different strain attack the host identity antigens. 

The results from our group are as follows:   cells from genetically identical mice usually but not always are accepted by the host.  This means that there is enough genetic variability in identical inbred strains to prevent bone marrow transplants.  Allogenic cells from an entirely different but related strain never accept the host antigens and are rejected.  They conclude that bone marrow transplants do not work and should not be used in humans.   Cells from similar but different lines are universally rejected.

Every Friday the group meets in a conference room at the medical facility and Eli and Dr. M bring beer and pretzels and discuss research findings with their students.  The Wracks is not yet 21 and is under age but he drinks beer and eats pretzels and chips and listens to the high-tech research discussions.  He is on his third Styrofoam cup of beer and is feeling good.  He wolfs down the pretzels because he is starving and it is a free meal.  There is a virologist with thick glasses and wiry hair at the get-together as are other graduate students in Microbiology.  Eli is animated and his research excites him and he speaks and the Wracks listens with his good drunk buzz.

Our next phase of research connotes the transplantation of tumor cells.   Mice will be induced to produce leukemic cells and we will introduce them to syngeneic and allogeneic lines and note if there is an antibody response to cancer.   In other words, is cancer transplantable, and to what extent do mice make an immune response to transplanted cancer. 

The concepts are highly technological and cutting edge but the laboratory work is very simple to perform in context and the Wracks is part of it for two quarters, until the summer session.  Summer is now here and the Wracks has to take an English class to satisfy his major and he folds his hands in prayer at the student  cuad on the north campus early in the morning on the steps of Bunch hall.  No one could imagine what he has been doing for half a year and the findings are revolutionary and poignant.  Not even Crandalman has inkling of what the Wracks is doing in the school of Microbiology in the Biology building.

You will never get into Medical School with a B average asserts Crandalman.  You should become a lawyer like me. 

It really doesn’t matter says the wracks.   It really doesn’t matter.  

The Wracks has a counselor.  She agrees to give him advice on what classes to take in his academic career at the big U.  She is of average height with short cut brown hair, about middle-aged and dresses in a casual blouse with pants.  The Wracks does not notice if she is married.  She sits in a big office with an official oak desk and portraits of her alma mater here at the university.  Her grey Anglo-Saxon eyes look at him intently without displaying emotion.

What classes should I take in my Biology major at the university asks the Wracks? I would like to attend graduate school and eventually become a doctor of Medicine.

You should take challenging classes and get at least a B average in them says the counselor.  Graduate schools tend to favor high graduate exam scores over grade point averages because they are not inflated by which university you attend.

I would like to attend an Immunology Class offered by the graduate school chimes in Wracks.  It sounds interesting.  Do you think it is too much for me? 

No I don’t say the counselor.  You have until after the first midterm to drop the course.  You will probably enjoy it. 

Thank you very much for your advice says the Wracks.  I think I have fall semester planned.  Have a good day.

Fall quarter begins early in summer for students using the quarter system.  Instead of two semesters there are three quarters a year and a summer session.  Each quarter is ten weeks long.  Immunology class hosts in the main lecture hall in the chemistry building because that is what immunology is: cellular chemistry.  The science initially came into being from the discoveries of Sir Harvey Burnett and Professor Roit who discovered immunoglobulins and elucidated their properties. The big lecture hall fills with at least one hundred people, most of whom the Wracks have never seen before.  There are graduate students who sit in the front row, medical students in their white uniforms, and graduate students from other universities who drive here because this is the only place where the new science is being hosted and offered.   The professor is a researcher who wears a white lab coat and a tie and goes by the name Clark.  The Class is long and full of the chemistry of proteins that are called antibodies.  Antibodies have chemical properties just like salt; protein or sugar in a biochemical system and Medicine is studying them now avidly. 

It is now wintertime in California and the autumn winds have gone away and the professor lectures and the class goes on and finals are very soon.  Midterms have gone smoothly and the Wracks has an A average going into the final.  However the final is one-third of the grade and anything less than a B plus knocks your grade from A to B.  Dr. Clark gives Wracks the option of taking an essay exam or a multiple choice exam.  The Wracks options for the essay exam but chickens out when he sees the questions and asks to change to the multiple choice examination, and is given the change.  The exam fills with graphs and data spreadsheets for the Wracks to analyze and the Wracks is befuddled and make wild guesses.  It happens that the Wracks is a good guesser and scores one point below a B plus and Dr. Clark is feeling charitable today and gives him an A in the course.

Would you like to do research with mice asks Dr. Clark.  In the winter and spring quarters we have openings for students in the School of Biology to do murine research in Immunology under the auspices of the Graduate school.  The grants are fully funded and all you have to do is complete the work to get an A.  It’s a lot of work and your other classes will suffer.   Are You Up to it?

It sounds good to me says the Wracks.  My counselor told me to take challenging courses.

It will be challenging and I will inform the professors that you will enroll.  Good luck.

The Wracks sit in the refreshment venue newly built at the science quad of the big U.  All in white concrete, the picnic tables sit in an amphitheater in front of a grill and fry shack that serves delicious hamburgers, hotdogs, and French fries.  The Wracks doesn’t have any money to buy the delicious food and sit there and smell the delicious odors.  His mother who works at the big U told him to take a sack lunch because they built the science quad over a radioactive waste dump.  In the old days before government regulations, nuclear reactors and researchers dug deep holes to bury their radioactive isotopes and waste, and here and up in Northern California are unmarked graves of radioactive waste.  The Wracks savors his cheese and crackers packet and two slices of Wonder bread together with a V8 juice bought from the vending machine kiosk at Bummer Hall.  The savory odor of French fries boiling in grease suffuses the air and the Wracks reads some of his notes bought from an official note taker who sells her wares at the Student Union.  Soon it will be here at the Student Union where the Wracks eats his daily two dollar bowl of soup meal at the Student cafeteria with all the coffee you can drink for a quarter.   Then it is up to the research university to study for three hours and then take a vacant lonely bus ride home to prepare for another day.  For a student monthly pass, the bus ride home is only one quarter.

This was in the good old days when the government wanted all their new generation to succeed and subsidized intrepid learners with low tuition stipends and low-cost meals.  Anyone who wanted to work hard and better themselves could be a technician or professional and shoot for the stars.  Life has changed and everything is expensive and the middle class slowly phases out.  These are the good old days when the nation was great and its citizens were the bell ringers and shining examples in the known world.  Now it is all about money.