Everything is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection by John Green

 

Summary (from the publisher): John Green, the #1 bestselling author of The Anthropocene Reviewed and a passionate advocate for global healthcare reform, tells a deeply human story illuminating the fight against the world’s deadliest disease.

Tuberculosis has been entwined with humanity for millennia. Once romanticized as a malady of poets, today tuberculosis is a disease of poverty that walks the trails of injustice and inequity we blazed for it.

In 2019, John Green met Henry, a young tuberculosis patient at Lakka Government Hospital in Sierra Leone while traveling with Partners in Health. John became fast friends with Henry, a boy with spindly legs and a big, goofy smile. In the years since that first visit to Lakka, Green has become a vocal and dynamic advocate for increased access to treatment and wider awareness of the healthcare inequities that allow this curable, treatable infectious disease to also be the deadliest, killing 1.5 million people every year.

In Everything is Tuberculosis, John tells Henry’s story, woven through with the scientific and social histories of how tuberculosis has shaped our world and how our choices will shape the future of tuberculosis.

Review: This was an incredibly accessible and moving social history of tuberculosis that put a human face on the suffering faced by millions each year. Did you know that one estimate projects that 1 in 7 people who have ever lived have died of tuberculosis?? Truly astounding. To this day, 1.5 million people die from TB each year. 

Early on in this book, we meet Henry, who John Green initially assumes is 9 becuase of his small, wasted appearance. But he learns that Henry is 17 and been hospitalized and undergoing treatment for tuberculosis for years. Ostracized by everyone except his mother, Henry has endured grueling treatments, missed years of school, watched friends and fellow patients die in the hospital, and all the time assumes he will also die. Henry becomes a spokesperson for modern day suffers in this book, illustrating the human element behind the statistics. 

John Green walks the reader through the history of tuberculosis. It was once seen as a beautiful, wasting disease of poets. Then it became a disease of poverty, mostly preying on those that most face injustice and inequality. It is an extremely slow-moving disease, up to a quarter of those affected survive it on their own, but for those that don't, the price is steep. Green details one young woman who suffered from tuberculosis but was misdiagnosed at first, delaying treatment. Before doctors correctly diagnosed her, she was down to 70 pounds with extreme lung damage. It took three years of treatments and her consuming between 20,000-30,000 pills to beat the disease. The treatment left her deaf. After five years, she finally received a cochlear implant to restore her hearing, but at a cost of $40,000. This is staggering. And this is a best-case scenario of someone who actually survived the ravages of the disease. 

One thing I really appreciated about this book is the obvious passion that John Green brings to this. This is not just research for a book. He earnestly and deeply cares about Henry and other sufferers. He has abandoned other writing projects to focus solely on this mission. His care and advocacy showed in his writing. 

Stars: 4