Humans are exposed to millions of potential pathogens daily, through contact, ingestion, and inhalation. Our ability to avoid infection depends in part on the adaptive immune system (discussed in Chapter 24), which remembers previous encounters with specific pathogens and destroys them when they attack again. Adaptive immune responses, however, are slow to develop on first exposure to a new pathogen, as specific clones of B and T cells have to become activated and expand; it can therefore take a week or so before the responses are effective. By contrast, a single bacterium with a doubling time of one hour can produce almost 20 million progeny, a full-blown infection, in a single day. Therefore, during the first critical hours and days of exposure to a new pathogen, we rely on our innate immune system to protect us from infection.