Is Everything Really Tuberculosis?
- Siri Patil
- Mar 30
- 2 min read
Updated: Mar 31
Hi everyone! I hope you're all having a great day.
As an avid reader and someone deeply interested in diseases and outbreaks, when I saw John Green's video titled "The Deadliest Infectious Disease of All Time", I was extremely excited. To sum up a nearly 50 minute video, Green goes into incredible depths on the historical implications of tuberculosis, explaining to the audience just how deeply embedded this disease was 200-300 years ago to now. It subverts our expectations on what the viewer might already know about a seemingly "primitve" disease, despite the fact that it still kills a little over 1 million people per year -- surpassing diseases like HIV/AIDS -- all while literally being curable. The Bacillus Calmete-Guerin (BCG) vaccine, while not widely used in the US, offers other nations a direct way to prevent possibly fatal cases of childhood tuberculosis. While we may not be affected, significnat portions of the world are and are consequnelty dying from it. It's harrowing, fascinating, and an incredibly well made video that every person even slightly interested in the history of medicine should watch.
I'll put a link in the blog for anyone who's interested, but i'd also like to mention that John Green also has a book called "Everything Is Tuberculosis" (i wonder where i got the title of this post from...) which offers even more comprehensive dialogue on TB. He also has an organization called TBFighters which does more upfront campaigning work to help make TB curable globally -- I've actually been doing some volunteer work through this group! I will happily add another link for anyone interested in joining the cause.
TB is very interesting. Anyone who watches or read's his book will realize that everything really is tuberculosis, from chairs to the stethoscope to hemlines on pants. Hopefully along the line this helps another individual figure out that they like TB (and John Green) too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7D-gxaie6UI "The Deadliest Infectious Disease of All Time",
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