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40. Immune Systems
How could immune systems of animals and plants have evolved? Each immune system can recognize invading bacteria, viruses, and toxins. Each system can quickly mobilize the best defenders to search out and destroy these invaders. Each system has a memory and learns from every attack.
If the many instructions that direct an animal’s or plant’s immune system had not been preprogrammed in the organism’s genetic system when it first appeared on earth, the first of thousands of potential infections would have killed the organism. This would have nullified any rare genetic improvements that might have accumulated. In other words, the large amount of genetic information governing the immune system could not have accumulated in a slow, evolutionary sense.a Obviously, for each organism to have survived, all this information must have been there from the beginning. Again, creation.
Figure 17: White Blood Cell. A white blood cell is stalking the green bacterium, shown at the lower right. Your health, and that of many animals, depends on the effectiveness of these “search-and-destroy missions.” Consider the capabilities and associated equipment this white blood cell must have to do its job. It must identify friend and foe. Once a foe is detected, the white blood cell must rapidly locate and overtake the invader. Then the white blood cell must engulf the bacterium, destroy it, and have the endurance to repeat this many times. Miniaturization, fuel efficiency, and compatibility with other parts of the body are also key requirements. The equipment for each function requires careful design. Unless all this worked well from the beginning of life, a requirement that rules out evolution, bacteria and other agents of disease would have won, and we would not be here to marvel at these hidden abilities in our bodies.
A few “stem cells” in your bone marrow produce more than 100 billion of these and other types of blood cells every day. Each white blood cell moves at up to 30 microns (almost half the diameter of a human hair) each minute. So many white blood cells are in your body that their total distance traveled in one day would circle the earth twice. © Boehringer Ingelheim International GmbH; photo by Lennart Nilsson.