ABOVE: JOHNS HOPKINS BLOOMBERG SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH
Noel Rose, an immunologist and microbiologist whose early experiments underpinned the molecular mechanisms of autoimmune disease, died of a stroke July 30. He was 92.
As a young medical student, Rose worked alongside his mentor, Ernest Witebsky of the University at Buffalo, studying organ-specific antigens. The prevailing hypothesis for the last half century had been that the body was incapable of producing antigens against itself, an idea known as horror autotoxicus. Witebsky’s own academic lineage stretched back to the idea’s original progenitor, Paul Ehrlich, who had coined the term in the late 19th century.
But Rose showed that rabbits injected with their own thyroid-derived antigens mounted an immune response against the invading molecules that damaged or destroyed the animals’ thyroid. The body was indeed capable of attacking itself. The results were so outlandish that the first journals refused to publish the findings, ...
