I recently read Everything is Tuberculosis:
The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection by John Green (2025).
JG is most well-known as a writer of
fiction. He undertook this work as a departure from his usual foci, as much as
anything out of curiosity as to why tuberculosis, with a known cure, seems so
recalcitrant.
My top takeaways:
Ø
Roughly 30% of all humans
have been infected with TB.
Ø
90 percent of people
infected with TB will never become sick.
Ø
Inexplicably, 20-25% of
people recover from active TB without treatment.
Ø
It is foolish to think
that history belongs to the past.
Ø
Since TB thrives in
crowded living and working conditions, it is often seen as a disease of poverty.
Ø
“Courage” and “Encourage”
are powerfully related words in that they tend to call forth our best selves.
Ø
The colonial British
Empire was excellent at building systems, with the intent of resource-extraction.
Ø
“Poor” is almost always
multidimensional in nature.
Ø
In places where formal
healthcare systems are not particularly effective more trusted spaces and
people—like churches and faith healers—are often viewed in higher regard than
doctors and hospitals.
Ø
Tuberculosis is listed in
Guinness World Records as the oldest contagious disease.
Ø
“Inspire” = breathe in; “Expire”
= breathe out, all the way out.
Ø
Many diseases exist where
the cure does not; and the cure is where the disease is not.
Ø
Disease, and its
treatment, are not only issues of biology; they also have nutritional,
educational, economic, social, and political dimensions.
Ø
There are vicious cycles,
and there are also virtuous cycles. The differentiators are CARING and LOVE.
Ø
What constitutes a good
time and manner of death is purely subjective.
Ø
To effectively fight
pernicious disease we need an entire set of robust systems that work perfectly
in concert with each other.
Ø
We lose 1,250,000 people
each year to tuberculosis. A curable illness.
My favorite quotes:
“Looking at history through any single
lens creates distortions, because history is too complex for any one way of
looking to suffice.” (p. 19)
“Once, when Isatu talked to me about
her childhood, the interpreter used the word “woven.” ‘Myself and my friends
were woven.’” (p. 27)
“History is often imagined as a series
of events, unfolding one after the other like a sequence of falling dominoes.
But most human experiences are processes, not events.” (p. 77)
“Before the germ theory of disease, we
did not know that around half the cells in my body do not, in fact, belong to
my body—they are bacteria and other microscopic organisms colonizing me. And to
one degree or another, these microorganisms can also control the body—shaping
the body’s contours by making it gain or lose weight, sickening the body,
killing the body. There’s even emerging evidence that one’s microbiome may have
a relationship with thought itself through the gut-brain information axis,
meaning that at least some of my thoughts may belong not to me, but to the
microorganisms in my digestive tract. Research indicates that certain gut
microbiomes are associated with major depression and anxiety disorders; in
fact, it’s possible that my particular microbiome is at least partly
responsible for my OCD, meaning that the microbes are the reason I’m so deeply
afraid of microbes.[*]” (p. 94)
“And this is why I would submit that
TB in the twenty-first century is not really caused by a bacteria that we know
how to kill. TB in the twenty-first century is really caused by those social
determinants of health, which at their core are about human-built systems for
extracting and allocating resources. The real cause of contemporary
tuberculosis is, for lack of a better term, us.” (p. 182)
“In a world where everyone can eat,
and access healthcare, and be treated humanely, tuberculosis has no chance.
Ultimately, we are the cause. We must also be the cure.” (p. 184)
“This is the gut-wrenching,
heartrending injustice of living with tuberculosis in the twenty-first century:
You live if you’re rich. And if you’re not, then you hope to get lucky.” (p. 187)
Glad my lovely bride recommended that
I put my nose in this one. Enlightening.
