How the Immune System Is Supposed to Work

This lesson establishes the baseline: what a healthy immune system is trying to do before we examine what goes wrong in autoimmune disease. Students learn the immune system as a coordinated defense network, not a single organ or a simple on-off switch.

Professor Anthony Owens explains the major roles of barriers, innate immunity, adaptive immunity, antibodies, T cells, inflammation, immune memory, and self-tolerance. The goal is practical understanding: learners should be able to interpret later discussions about autoantibodies, flares, immunosuppressive treatment, and diagnostic testing without getting lost in technical jargon.