https://archive.md/U5mUi
"
Mycobacterium tuberculosis is a near-perfect predator. In 1882, Robert Koch,
the physician who discovered the microbe, told a room full of scientists that
it caused one in seven of all deaths. In 2023, after a brief hiatus,
tuberculosis regained from COVID its status as the world’s deadliest infectious
disease—a title it has held for most of what we know of human history.
Some people die of TB when their lungs collapse or fill with fluid. For others,
scarring leaves so little healthy lung tissue that breathing becomes
impossible. Or the infection spreads to the brain or the spinal column, or they
suffer a sudden, uncontrollable hemorrhage. Lack of appetite and extreme
abdominal pain can fuel weight loss so severe that it whittles away muscle and
bone. This is why TB was widely known as “consumption” until the 20th
century—it seemed to be a disease that consumed the very body, shrinking and
shriveling it. On a trip to Sierra Leone in 2019, I met a boy named Henry
Reider, whose mix of shyness and enthusiasm for connection reminded me of my
own son. I thought he was perhaps 9 years old. His doctors later told me that
he was in fact 17, his body stunted by a combination of malnutrition and
tuberculosis.
The cure for TB—roughly half a year on antibiotics—has existed since the 1950s,
and works for most patients. Yet, in the decades since, more than 100 million
people have died of tuberculosis because the drugs are not widely available in
many parts of the world. The most proximate cause of contemporary tuberculosis
deaths is not
M. tuberculosis, but
Homo sapiens. Now, as the Trump
administration decimates foreign-aid programs, the U.S. is both making survival
less likely for people with TB and risking the disease becoming far more
treatment-resistant. After decades of improvement, we could return to something
more like the world before the cure."
Via Susan ****
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
