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Immunology, as taught in the MBBS curriculum was always fascinating.I still vividly remember Ananthnarayanan's extremely content intensive Harrison type chapter on the immune response.I was reading about Niels Jerne's antibody idiotype network, Susumu Tonegawa's VDJC splicing, the same time as I was seeing cases of Wiskott Aldrich syndrome in peds wards and was learning about GVHD and TA-GVHD from Dr Apte at his clinics. Same time Jayshree was cured of acute lymphoblastic leukemia. She is doing her patho residency in Mumbai now. Perhaps apart from critical care no other branch of medicine gives you the satisfaction of having gone to the brink with the patient and been back to see the light of day.Hearing Mammen Chandy speak at MBA's hemat CME was another inspiring moment. It was the most lucid and simplistic explanation of the PCR that I have heard. From Dr Chandy's mouth it sounded like music.If there were limits to achievement in the medical field, this was the specialty that was tearing to have a go at them, then I had thought.For everything seemed so intuitively simple- that these guys were playing high stakes of life and death along Kaplan Meier slopes with ingenuity and logic as tools seemed astonishing.

This week's NEJM features an amazing series on kidney- PBSCT co- transplantation and immune tolerance with microchimerism. The case report of the liver transplantation done on the girl with FHF is a perfect example of how perspicaciousness, and perhaps more importantly common sense, creates wonders when serendipity offers you the chance to do so. The decision to withdraw immunosupression when the hemolysis developed was a masterstroke to an amazing turn of events.Even more delectable is Thomas Starzl's editorial on the three articles. Your day is made when you have such pedantry to savor from!!!!!!!!!!!