Do vaccines overwhelm the immune system?
Studies on the diversity of antibody specificities indicate that the immune system has the capacity to respond to extremely large numbers of immunologically distinct regions of viruses and bacteria. Current data suggest that the theoretical capacity determined by the genes that make different antibodies would allow for as many as 109-1011 different kinds of antibodies (i.e., 1 billion to 100 billion). But this theoretical capacity is limited by the number of circulating antibody-producing cells (B cells or lymphocytes) and the likely redundancy of antibodies generated by one individual.
Studies on the diversity of antibody specificities indicate that the immune system has the capacity to respond to extremely large numbers of immunologically distinct regions of viruses and bacteria. Current data suggest that the theoretical capacity determined by the genes that make different antibodies would allow for as many as 109-1011 different kinds of antibodies (i.e., 1 billion to 100 billion). But this theoretical capacity is limited by the number of circulating antibody-producing cells (B cells or lymphocytes) and the likely redundancy of antibodies generated by one individual. A more practical way to determine the diversity of the immune response would be to estimate the number of vaccines to which a child could respond at one time. Assuming the quantities of antibodies likely generated by an individual in 1 ml of blood (one-fifth of a teaspoon) during seven days after exposure to a vaccine, and the number of different specificities of those antibodies, then each infant would
