Jeffrey Bland, PhD explains that new research shows the innate immune system can "learn" and recover function after insult — overturning prior assumptions that only the adaptive immune system (antibodies) could be taught. He emphasizes that the innate system can be programmed with either harmful or beneficial signals, implying it can be 'rebooted' or re-trained in ways previously unrecognized.
I recognized that we were starting to learn for the first time how the immune system actually recovers its function when it's undergone insult at the innate immune system level. Because before, it was always thought the immune system was kind of a primitive system that didn't learn. It couldn't be taught new lessons. You couldn't reboot the innate immune system. Well, it turns out that's wrong. We've now learned that the innate immune system can be learned in a different way than the adaptive immune system with its antibodies, but it can be taught either bad messages or good messages.
