The Autoimmune Epidemic: Bodies Gone Haywire in a World Out of Balance--and the Cutting-Edge Science that Promises Hope (No Series) by Donna Jackson Nakazawa Page A
Authors: Donna Jackson Nakazawa
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dedicated medical student to slowly begin to turn the theory of horror autotoxicus upside down. In 1951, as a newly minted twenty-three-year-old PhD from the University of Pennsylvania, Noel Rose and his pregnant wife, Deborah, packed all their meager belongings into the back of an ancient, rear-dragging Oldsmobile station wagon and journeyed north from Philadelphia to the State University of New York at Buffalo. Back then, the little-explored and poorly understood domain of immunology—the study of how the immune system functions in the body—was hardly a bustling field, and few labs existed where a young PhD could go to complete his medical studies in the field, much less support a new wife and coming child.
Today Rose, a genteel seventy-nine-year-old whose generous smile spreads nearly as wide as his signature bow tie, serves as director of the Center for Autoimmune Disease Research at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and Bloomberg School of Public Health. Back then, Rose considered himself fortunate to receive an invitation from Ernest Witebsky and his immunology team at the University of Buffalo to serve as a junior faculty member. Part of the appeal of moving to Buffalo was the fact that Witebsky was the scientific grandson of Nobel laureate Paul Ehrlich. Ernest Witebsky was a student of Hans Sachs, who, in turn, had been one of Paul Ehrlich’s principal protégés. Witebsky was the inheritor of the Ehrlich mantle and was universally recognized as a vigorous champion of the horror autotoxicus theory.
Assigned one part-time assistant and a ten-by-ten office that also served as his lab, Rose set to work. At Witebsky’s request, Rose was seeking to prepare a pure form of thyroglobulin, the major protein of the thyroid gland, in a natural, unadulterated form for use in other experiments Witebsky was busy conducting at the time. Rose had worked with rabbits for years, and all those long hours spent amidst rabbit cages had led him to develop a severe allergy to rabbit fur. He often had to wear a mask in order to help circumvent an asthma attack. Nevertheless, Rose quickly succeeded.
In one of the final steps involved in creating this pure thyroglobulin and assuring it was not altered, Rose injected that thyroglobulin—derived from rabbit thyroids—back into his rabbits. Later, however, when he examined the rabbit thyroids, he was shocked by what he saw. The rabbit thyroids were inflamed—and that should not have happened. They had produced antibodies to the thyroglobulin and developed lesions in their thyroids. Thyroid lesions signaled that the presence of an antigen—a foreign invader that is capable of causing the production of an antibody—had caused the rabbits’ immune systems to turn on and destroy their own thyroid tissue. Almost all of the rabbits had slowly developed a disease that mimicked the human disorder known as Hashimoto’s thyroiditis. Although Hashimoto’s was already a recognized disease in 1951, its cause had remained unknown. That Hashimoto’s might be caused by the immune system attacking the cells of the thyroid was a concept that stood completely at odds with horror autotoxicus. Yet in that small postdoc lab, fifty years ago, Rose was staring at proof positive of autoimmune disease—a completely revolutionary idea at the time.
“I sat there for a long time, looking at the results with a mixture of awe and fear,” Rose recalls. “It was one of those marvelous and rare eureka moments in science when you realize that you’re on the edge of an important new discovery. But I was also afraid. I realized that it would be difficult to convince my mentor as well as the world that I was right.”
For the next several years, Rose worked, at Witebsky’s urging, to run his experiments again and again to correct for any possible errors. Finally, Witebsky too became convinced: when an antigen from the thyroid gland was introduced into the body, the body’s fighter antibodies could
Today Rose, a genteel seventy-nine-year-old whose generous smile spreads nearly as wide as his signature bow tie, serves as director of the Center for Autoimmune Disease Research at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and Bloomberg School of Public Health. Back then, Rose considered himself fortunate to receive an invitation from Ernest Witebsky and his immunology team at the University of Buffalo to serve as a junior faculty member. Part of the appeal of moving to Buffalo was the fact that Witebsky was the scientific grandson of Nobel laureate Paul Ehrlich. Ernest Witebsky was a student of Hans Sachs, who, in turn, had been one of Paul Ehrlich’s principal protégés. Witebsky was the inheritor of the Ehrlich mantle and was universally recognized as a vigorous champion of the horror autotoxicus theory.
Assigned one part-time assistant and a ten-by-ten office that also served as his lab, Rose set to work. At Witebsky’s request, Rose was seeking to prepare a pure form of thyroglobulin, the major protein of the thyroid gland, in a natural, unadulterated form for use in other experiments Witebsky was busy conducting at the time. Rose had worked with rabbits for years, and all those long hours spent amidst rabbit cages had led him to develop a severe allergy to rabbit fur. He often had to wear a mask in order to help circumvent an asthma attack. Nevertheless, Rose quickly succeeded.
In one of the final steps involved in creating this pure thyroglobulin and assuring it was not altered, Rose injected that thyroglobulin—derived from rabbit thyroids—back into his rabbits. Later, however, when he examined the rabbit thyroids, he was shocked by what he saw. The rabbit thyroids were inflamed—and that should not have happened. They had produced antibodies to the thyroglobulin and developed lesions in their thyroids. Thyroid lesions signaled that the presence of an antigen—a foreign invader that is capable of causing the production of an antibody—had caused the rabbits’ immune systems to turn on and destroy their own thyroid tissue. Almost all of the rabbits had slowly developed a disease that mimicked the human disorder known as Hashimoto’s thyroiditis. Although Hashimoto’s was already a recognized disease in 1951, its cause had remained unknown. That Hashimoto’s might be caused by the immune system attacking the cells of the thyroid was a concept that stood completely at odds with horror autotoxicus. Yet in that small postdoc lab, fifty years ago, Rose was staring at proof positive of autoimmune disease—a completely revolutionary idea at the time.
“I sat there for a long time, looking at the results with a mixture of awe and fear,” Rose recalls. “It was one of those marvelous and rare eureka moments in science when you realize that you’re on the edge of an important new discovery. But I was also afraid. I realized that it would be difficult to convince my mentor as well as the world that I was right.”
For the next several years, Rose worked, at Witebsky’s urging, to run his experiments again and again to correct for any possible errors. Finally, Witebsky too became convinced: when an antigen from the thyroid gland was introduced into the body, the body’s fighter antibodies could
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