CBR17Bingo: “Borders” – because even though bacteria do not respect borders, whether you contract or can fight off tuberculosis depends primarily on where you live.
I know tuberculosis still exists in the United States because many years ago I had a patient cough in my face and later found out she suffered from tuberculosis. I knew just enough to be kind of concerned until I got tested and was negative. My only other knowledge of tuberculosis is that Doc Holliday suffered from it in Tombstone. It goes without saying that I learned a lot while reading this book.
I know John Green from “the kids cancer book” The Fault in Our Stars, which I was very impressed by. I have also experienced Green’s non-fiction writing in The Anthropocene Reviewed. So, when I saw he had another non-fiction book out, I thought it was worth a try. I listened to this on Audiobook.
“Nothing is so privileged as thinking history belongs to the past.”
For a long time John Green was like me. If he thought about tuberculosis at all, it was something from decades and centuries ago. But then he found himself in a tuberculosis hospital in Sierra Leone, and that’s where he met Henry. Henry was a teenager, but he looked much younger. He had been sick most of his life, and was dying of tuberculosis. But he was a smart, optimistic, and likeable kid. And he just happened to have the same name as Green’s son.
According to the internet, 1.25 million people died of tuberculosis in 2023 (down from 2022); 565 of them were from the United States. I had no idea of the human toll that tuberculosis continues to take on people around the world, especially in Southeast Asia and Africa. It’s hard to even wrap my brain around that large of a number succumbing to a disease that is treatable. And tuberculosis is an excruciating way to die: coughing and choking until your body can’t hold out any longer. It is just so much suffering.
Green mentions a number of times that the cure for tuberculosis is where the disease is not. And the disease is where the cure is not. And that’s the simple reason for why we have not eradicated tuberculosis. With growing antibiotic resistance, eradication has become harder, but it would still be possible if the developed world had different priorities.
Green writes about the history of tuberculosis, how its perception changed throughout the years, how ubiquitous it was in Europe and America in the 1800’s, and how a cure was eventually developed in the 1950’s. These chapters are interspersed with chapters of Henry, his early life, the death of his sister for want of a simple operation, how the civil war in Sierra Leone tore his stable life apart, and his subsequent sickness with tuberculosis. Green goes into the different treatments Henry has tried, how difficult they were on his body, and how they didn’t work because he did not have access to the test that could have told him he had drug-resistant tuberculosis.
Tuberculosis became something of an obsession for Green, and he is committed to breaking down the barriers for those in need accessing the care and medications required. This book is part of that mission, educating anyone willing to read it that tuberculosis is still a very real problem no matter how little it affects our lives here in the United States.
“We are powerful enough to light the world at night, to artificially refrigerate food, to leave Earth’s atmosphere and orbit it from outer space. But we cannot save those we love from suffering.”
“It reminded me, that when we know about suffering, when we are proximal to it, we are capable of extraordinary generosity. We an do and be so much for each other. But only when we see one another in our full humanity. Not as statistic or problems, but as people who deserve to be alive in the world.”
I found this book interesting, moving, and enlightening. Highly recommended.
You can find all my reviews on my blog.