Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the bacteria responsible for tuberculosis, can develop significant drug resistance, making the disease difficult to treat. (Image credit: Medical Illustrators: Alissa Eckert; James Archer via CDC/Antibiotic Resistance Coordination and Strategy Unit)
Did you know that tuberculosis (TB) was the origin of the Adirondack chair? In the past, TB patients used this iconic piece of furniture to rest, as recommended by their doctors. People with TB also helped found the cities of Pasadena, California, and Colorado Springs, Colorado, which became famous destinations for convalescents looking for fresh air. And did you know that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, before writing Sherlock Holmes, debunked the myth of a miracle cure for TB that was exaggerated in the 19th century?
In Everything Is TB: The History and Resilience of Our Deadliest Infection (Crash Course Books, 2025), John Green explores lesser-known aspects of TB’s impact on history. He also highlights changes in public perception of the disease over time. Once seen as a romantic disease that made sufferers “beautiful,” “helpless,” and “sensitive,” TB has since become associated with poverty and stigma.
Although we now have treatments for TB, Green notes that “there is a disease where there is no cure,” paraphrasing a Ugandan doctor who said the same about treating HIV/AIDS. There are more than 10 million cases of TB worldwide each year and 1 million deaths from the disease, with most cases and deaths occurring in low- and middle-income countries.
Green is a member of the YouTube group vlogbrothers, co-author of the educational series Crash Course, and the bestselling author of The Fault in Our Stars (Penguin Books, 2012) and The Anthropocene Survey (EP Dutton, 2021), among others. Live Science spoke with him about his new book, its central theme, tuberculosis survivor Henry Rader, and the uncertain future of efforts to eradicate the disease worldwide.
Nicoletta Lanese: In your book, you mention that tuberculosis was initially perceived as a disease of the past – “of 19th-century poets.” What was it like to challenge that concept when you were writing the book?
John Green: If you had asked me in 2018, “What are the most dangerous infectious diseases in the world?” I would have said, “I don’t know, malaria, HIV, typhoid, cholera.” I would have put tuberculosis near the bottom of the list, even though it turns out to be the world’s deadliest infectious disease, killing more than 10 million people every year.
In some ways, this has been a recurring theme throughout history – when Robert Koch declared that tuberculosis was contagious, he seemed almost to be making excuses. He said, “I know we are more afraid of cholera and plague, but tuberculosis is actually a much more serious threat.”
I didn’t realize that tuberculosis was a crisis until I visited a tuberculosis hospital in Sierra Leone in 2019. … [There] I met a young man named Henry Rader, and that changed the direction of my life in a big way.
Sourse: www.livescience.com
