Review: Everything is Tuberculosis

 Everything is Tuberculosis got great reviews from everyone so I checked it out of the library to read it. The author, John Green, wrote The Fault in Our Stars, which was a famous novel which got made into a movie, and it shows that his passion isn't in non-fiction or science, but in drama and people.

Tuberculosis has frequently been described as "Ebola with Wings." It's well deserved, and has killed a more people than any other disease in history. However, it's also eminently curable with today's antibiotics. Except what has happened is that a lot of patients who got the antibiotics would stop taking them once they felt better, which led to the rise of antibiotic resistant strains of the virus. That resulted in the rise of direct observed therapy in 3rd world countries to assuage first world donors' concerns.

John Green observed "a 2007 study found that Africans were more likely to adhere to HIV/AIDS treatment regimens than North Americans." (kindle loc 2085). Again, that had nothing to do with Tuberculosis, since as far as I know, there haven't arisen versions of HIV that have become multi-drug resistant.

The book is full of such frustrating statements where you would draw the wrong conclusions if you'd taken what Green wrote at face value. I cannot tell whether Green is making arguments in bad faith, or whether he truly doesn't understand the epidemiology. I appreciate his repeated sentiment that Tuberculosis is curable and no one has to die of it today, it's just that health infrastructure isn't equitably distributed. But that problem cannot be solved through technology, but has to be solved through politics.

I thought the amount of attention given to this book would probably be better devoted to a book written by a scientist, doctor, or epidemiologist. But hey, any attention is better than no attention to such a dreaded and horrible disease.