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EVERYTHING IS TUBERCULOSIS

2025-02-25 · reading · John · 10:11 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Global development (also: Health) · mode: Personal essay · tags: self promotion, recurring series, heavy topic

Reading the first chapter of his book Everything Is Tuberculosis, John traces tuberculosis through James Watt's dying son and his own great-uncle Stokes, and argues that TB, curable since the 1950s, still kills over a million people a year because the cure is where the disease is not.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — James Watt and his failed attempt to cure his son Gregory's consumption

  • ★★ John says James Watt, already famous for making steam engines more efficient and helping fuel the industrial revolution, began a new project at the turn of the nineteenth century. — 00:00:00
  • ★★ John says the steam engine led to everything from air conditioning to AirPods while releasing over a trillion tons of carbon dioxide and reshaping the climate. — 00:00:00 · climate change
  • ★ John notes Watt also invented a machine to copy sculptures and new ways of making chlorine to bleach textiles, and the unit of power bears his name. — 00:00:29
  • ★★ John says Watt became obsessed with a chemical treatment for phthisis after his daughter Jessie died of it at 15 in 1794 and his son Gregory fell ill. — 00:00:59 · tuberculosis
  • ★★ John says Watt helped invent a device delivering nitrous oxide to the lungs to save Gregory, but it failed; Gregory died of consumption in 1804 at 27. — 00:01:27 · tuberculosis

00:01:57 — John's great-uncle Stokes Goodrich: childhood illness, tuberculosis and death in an Asheville sanatorium

  • ★★ John's great-uncle Stokes Goodrich was born in 1900 in rural Tennessee, raised in a house built by John's great-grandfather Charles, a country doctor in Franklin County. — 00:01:57
  • ★★ John says it was common then, and perhaps still is, to tie illness to some deficiency, failure or past mistake, like a German doctor blaming a barking dog. (hedged) — 00:01:57
  • ★★ Stokes was a sickly child; coffee and sweets from a family friend were blamed, after which he had the worst case of typhoid his great-grandfather saw recover. — 00:01:57
  • ★★ At 18 in 1918 Stokes nearly died in the influenza pandemic while working at a munitions factory, then in 1920 became a lineman for Alabama Power and Light. — 00:02:43
  • ★★★ After coughing up blood, Stokes was X-rayed in Gadsden and found to have miliary TB; the technician said he had never seen such a case live over two months. Stokes entered an Asheville sanatorium. — 00:03:13 · tuberculosis
  • ★ John says Asheville was one of many American cities founded as a kind of tuberculosis colony. — 00:03:13 · tuberculosis
  • ★★★ Despite the best care, Stokes grew steadily worse and died on May 18, 1930, aged 29. — 00:03:50
  • ★★ John often wonders what it was like for his great-grandfather, a trained doctor, to be unable to save his own son. — 00:03:50

00:04:14 — Humans cannot save those they love; TB still the deadliest infection though curable; the drugs are where the disease is not

  • ★★★ John says humans can light the world, refrigerate food and orbit Earth but cannot save loved ones from suffering: human history is an organism that can do much but not what it most wants. — 00:04:14

    “the story of an organism that can do so much, but cannot do what it most wants”

  • ★★★ John says over a million people died of tuberculosis in 2023, more than died of malaria, typhoid and war combined. — 00:04:37 · tuberculosis, malaria

  • ★★★ John says tuberculosis has caused over a billion human deaths in the last two centuries alone. — 00:04:58 · tuberculosis
  • ★★ John cites an estimate from Frank Ryan's book that TB has killed around one in seven people who have ever lived. — 00:04:58 · tuberculosis
  • ★★ John says COVID-19 displaced TB as the deadliest infectious disease in 2020-2022, but in 2023 TB regained that status, killing 1.25 million people. — 00:04:58 · COVID-19 pandemic, tuberculosis
  • ★★★ John says what is different now from 1804 or 1904 is that tuberculosis is curable. — 00:04:58 · tuberculosis
  • ★★★ John says we know how to live in a world without tuberculosis, but we choose not to. — 00:05:43 · tuberculosis, health equity
  • ★★ John says in 2000 Ugandan physician Peter Mugyenyi spoke against the rich world's refusal to widen access to HIV drugs, while millions died of AIDS yearly despite effective antiretrovirals. — 00:05:43

  • ★★★ Peter Mugyenyi (quoted): Mugyenyi said the drugs are where the disease is not, and the disease is where the drugs are not. — 00:05:43 · health equity · first in: 2023-09-14, Talking Tuberculosis, GeneXpert, J&J, and more with MY HEROES

    “The drugs are where the disease is not”

00:06:20 — What the book is about: the cure, its delay, and TB as injustice

  • ★★★ John says the same holds for TB: this year (2025) thousands of doctors will be unable to save millions of patients because the cure is where the disease is not. — 00:06:20 · tuberculosis, health equity
  • ★★★ John says the book is about the cure, why it was not found until the 1950s, and why since then we have let over 150 million people die of TB. — 00:06:20 · Everything Is Tuberculosis, tuberculosis
  • ★★ John says he started writing about TB to understand how an illness could quietly shape so much of human history. — 00:06:20 · tuberculosis
  • ★★★ John says he learned along the way that TB is both a form and an expression of injustice. — 00:06:20 · tuberculosis, health equity

00:07:10 — Past understandings of TB and the modern science of infection, latency and risk

  • ★★★ John says how we imagine illness shapes societies: TB was blamed on lung mechanics, coffee, heredity, demons, bad air, God or whiskey, and each view shaped who lived and died. — 00:07:39 · tuberculosis
  • ★★ John says TB is a bacterial, airborne infection spread through coughs, sneezes or exhalations, and anyone can get it. — 00:07:39 · tuberculosis
  • ★★★ John says between a quarter and a third of all living humans have been infected with TB. — 00:07:39 · tuberculosis
  • ★★ John says in most people the infection stays dormant for life, but up to 10% of the infected eventually develop active TB. — 00:08:14 · tuberculosis
  • ★★ John says weakened immunity from diabetes, HIV or malnutrition raises the risk of active TB; of 10 million who fell sick in 2023, over 5 million were malnourished. — 00:08:14

00:08:43 — TB as a disease of poverty; everything is tuberculosis

  • ★★★ John says because TB spreads well in crowded slums and factories it is seen as a disease of poverty, walking the trails of injustice we blazed for it. — 00:08:43 · health equity, tuberculosis

    “an illness that walks the trails of injustice and inequity that we blazed for it”

  • ★★ John says the world we share is a product of all the worlds we used to share. — 00:08:43

    “The world we share is a product of all the worlds we used to share.”

  • ★★★ For John, the history and present of tuberculosis reveal the folly, brilliance, cruelty and compassion of humans. — 00:09:05 · tuberculosis

  • ★★ John says his wife Sarah jokes that in his mind everything is about tuberculosis and tuberculosis is about everything, and she is right. (playful) — 00:09:05 · Sarah Urist Green, tuberculosis

00:09:27 — The first-chapter tradition, release date, pre-orders and starred reviews

In the description and comments

  • ★★ The description says the book can be pre-ordered at everythingistb.com or wherever books are sold, and that John narrates the audiobook. — video description · Everything Is Tuberculosis
  • ★ The description thanks everyone who supported John and this work over the last four years; he is excited to finally share the book. — video description · Everything Is Tuberculosis
  • ★★ In a comment, John says the century-old BCG vaccine prevents severe TB in young children but is not very, possibly not at all, effective in adolescents or adults. (hedged) — creator comment · vaccine, tuberculosis
  • ★★ In a comment, John says a better TB vaccine is needed and the main reason there is none is lack of investment in illnesses that mostly affect the poor. — creator comment · vaccine, health equity

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: Everything Is Tuberculosis · Gregory Watt · health equity · James Watt · Peter Mugyenyi · Stokes Goodrich · tuberculosis

Also: People: Charles Goodrich · Frank Ryan · Jessie Watt · Sarah Urist Green

Works: Paper Towns · Tuberculosis: The Greatest Story Never Told

Organizations: Alabama Power · Booklist · Kirkus Reviews · School Library Journal

Concepts: antiretroviral therapy · carbon dioxide · climate change · diabetes · HIV/AIDS · immune system · infectious disease · malaria · malnutrition · social determinants of health · steam engine · typhoid fever

Places: Asheville, North Carolina · Franklin County, Tennessee · Gadsden, Alabama · Tennessee

Events: COVID-19 pandemic · Industrial Revolution · Spanish flu

Only in the description or credits: audiobook · vaccine

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