Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection

by John Green

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.

“Nothing is so privileged as thinking history belongs to the past.”

People who are treated as less than fully human by the social order are more susceptible to tuberculosis. But it’s not because of their moral codes or choices or genetics; it’s because they are treated as less than fully human by the social order.

Why must we treat what are obviously systemic problems as failures of individual morality?

This is often not an environment patients are excited to return to—and yet somehow we always seem to blame the patient for noncompliance, rather than blaming the structures of the social order that make compliance more difficult.

TB is rare where I live. It doesn’t affect me. And that’s all true. But I hear Shreya, and Henry, and so many others calling to me: Marco. Marco. Marco.

This difference, as Dr. Joia Mukherjee writes, is “not caused by genetics, biology, or culture. Health inequities are caused by poverty, racism, lack of medical care, and other social forces.”

Yes, illness is a breakdown, failure, or invasion of the body treated by medical professionals with drugs, surgeries, and other interventions. But it is also a breakdown and failure of our social order, an invasion of injustice.