Are the antibodies we produce to fight COVID-19 infection causing severe disease? A new paper—so new in fact that it hasn’t yet been peer-reviewed—from scientists in Hangzhou, China, appears to indicate just that. The researchers’ data suggests that at least two antibodies that target the spike protein that enables the COVID-19 virus to enter human cells are “pathogenic”—meaning these antibodies create illness all by themselves. It’s hard to think of antibodies—one of the body’s best infection fighters—as “pathogenic,” but that’s exactly what happens in autoimmune disease. Antibodies that the body develops in response to foreign invaders attach to body tissues instead, sometimes causing catastrophic damage. In early 2020, Japanese researchers discovered that many COVID-19 deaths were caused by part of the body’s immune reaction. In a peer-reviewed article published in Inflammation and Regeneration, the scientists argued that it was a “cytokine storm” that overwhelmed the body and was implicated in …