We laugh at the medieval view that disease is due to an imbalance in the four humours. Instead we see infectious illness as an attack by something external. But this can't be the whole story. After all not everyone got Covid or suffered from it equally. And there are mounting challenges to this attack-defence paradigm. Critics argue It relies on our being able to distinguish self and non-self and there is no such immune mechanism. We also don't attack non-self bodies such as food proteins and fetuses. Instead it is argued radical collective and ecological solutions are already proving highly effective.
Can the new paradigms of danger theory or adaptation help crack disease? Must we give up our current ideas of the self and identity? And might immunology prove to be the key to the deep philosophical question of what makes us who we are?