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Let’s go back to the security guard questioning a possible intruder. In many cases, the guard can recognize someone suspicious (nylons over the head is a dead giveaway). But let’s say an intruder is disguised as a delivery person or claims he’s just visiting an aunt; then it takes a lot more skill and investigation to determine whether that person is a threat or not. That’s one of the ways your immune system can go haywire—by not recognizing a potential threat. When you’re immunized against mumps early in your life, your body actually gets the information about what the mumps virus look like. Your immune system then stores that info in its memory data bank; later if you were ever exposed to mumps, your body would pull out the file on mumps, immediately recognize those cells as intruders, and send out the right defense in order to thwart an attack—without your ever having to be affected at all.
Now, when your immune system doesn’t know what a potential intruder looks like, you have problems. If your body has no data on file—no record of criminal activity of sorts—your immune system has no ability to respond to that particular intruder. And as your immune system ages, it loses files. In the case of a typical flu virus, your body knows parts of it (it mutates every year, it seems, so you know only a part of the newer strain unless you’ve received a current flu vaccination) and is able to fight it off.
But when a virus is new—as in the case of the SARS virus—it doesn’t display the same markers, indicating that it is foreign to your body. Without that prior file, your immune system doesn’t respond as quickly; the virus is then free to rummage through your things and destroy whatever it chooses: part of your nervous system, respiratory system, or something else. We feel the effects of the invaders when they produce toxins or when we produce substances that try to kill the offending agent. Those toxins or substances cause fever, chills, and aches. Fevers sometimes are good, because they’re very dangerous to invading cells but not to your resilient cells.

Even worse is when a portion of the bacteria or virus looks just a little different from something else in your body—say, heart cells. Your body may kill the invader, but may also initiate an attack on the normal tissues of your body that simply look like the invader cells—that is, your own immune system may actually start attacking your own body and destroy your own heart cells. This dangerous friendly fire is called an autoimmune response. So not only will it kill the foreign substance, but it will also kill the cells you need to function properly. In worst cases, that can lead to organ failure, but it can also lead to other autoimmune diseases such as lupus, inflammatory bowel syndrome, and rheumatoid arthritis. By the way, an allergy is just an immune response to something like dust or detergent that you don’t want an immune response to—it’s like when your security system signals the fire department because the toast is burning.)
The last important thing that can go wrong is actually fighting too much—or overreacting to an infection. In order to build the best immune response, it’s equally important to be able to shut it off as it is to turn it on. Why? Think about our security guard again. Let’s say he sees an intruder at the front entrance and calls for backup. What happens if the whole department comes out to handcuff the intruder? Right—there’s nobody left at the precinct to handle a problem at another house.

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