Immune cognition and culture: implications for the AIDS vaccine

We examine the implications of IR Cohen’s ‘cognitive principle’ address of the immune system [1-3] for the HIV vaccine program. This approach takes on a special importance in the context of recent work by Nisbett et al. [4] showing clearly that central nervous system (CNS) cognition is fundamentally different for populations having different cultural systems, and in the context of a growing body of evolutionary anthropology which suggests that such effects are inevitable, since culture is as much a part of human biology ‘as the enamel on our teeth’. The current vision of human biology among evolutionary anthropologists is summarized by Durham [5] as follows: