Medicine Can Cure TB—But Humanity Won’t
Tuberculosis is curable. We just don’t care enough to cure it. That’s the premise behind John Green’s book, Everything Is Tuberculosis (https://everythingistb.com/). In this episode, M1s Zach Grissom, Kate Timboe, Tyler Pollock, and Srishti Mathur consider that premise, and what it says about humanity’s stubborn failure to solve a solvable problem. They unpack how cultural narratives, like romanticizing TB, stigmatizing the poor, path dependency, and greed have fueled inequities that keep TB deadly across the globe. The group reflects on Henry Rider’s story, which serves as the emotional spine of the book, and how John Green’s storytelling approach hits harder than raw data ever could. From an emphasis on short-term thinking to postcolonial infrastructure (built to extract, not connect), the book dissects the history and systems that allow TB to persist even when we can easily cure it. The crew also talks about what medical education could look like if it provided stories with slide decks—and why Green thinks Mario Kart might be the best metaphor for how humanity could achieve global health equity.