Our body’s “immune privilege” and why some parts of our body have or need it and others dont.
In: Biology
“Immune privilege,” simply stated, is the property of several bodily organs that means they can tolerate the introduction of foreign tissue or antigens, which the immune system has not learned to tolerate, without causing an immune response.
The common agreement seems to be that immune privilege is an adaptation so that the body runs less risk of killing or severely damaging itself in the event an immune response would have ordinarily happened.
Specifically, if the eyes or central nervous system were to experience pronounced inflammation as a result of antigen introduction, it could seriously injure us.
Another example of immune privilege is the placenta, where a baby’s blood touches its mother’s. Without immune privilege, the baby could be attacked by the mother’s immune system and cause a miscarriage.
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