Taylor’s Reviews > Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection > Status Update

“Human history is largely the story of human choice.”

“There was no way to see inside the body while that body was still alive.” my stomach dropped

“The idea of becoming sick in order to look healthy or beautiful speaks to how profoundly consumptive beauty ideals still shape the world we share.” can’t believe a woman had fantasies ??? of tapeworms ??

“Black people were not more susceptible to TB because of factors inherent to race, but because of racism- crowded housing, malnourishment, more likely to experience intense stress and less likely to access healthcare” all important risk factors of TB


TB as form of racial violence: “Even after we understood that TB was an infection, we continued to blame it on the sufferer, but with a radically racialized and stigmatic lens that caused more harm to the ill than even previous forms of stigma.”

Dr. J.F. Miller falsely argued in his 1896 essay that “the only way to restore Black people to health was to return to the institution of slavery” after 30 years of freedom. What a disgrace.

Indigenous people were more than 10x as likely to die of TB than White Canadians in the 1930s..residential schools rate was 8,000 per 100,000 = 8% of all kids in school died of TB each year.. Today, Inuit people are over 400x more likely to contract TB than White Canadians.”

“People who are treated as less than fully human by the social order are more susceptible to TB, not because of their moral code or choices or genetics, but because they are treated as less than fully human by the social order.”

This is why we need more representation in the medical profession and healthcare system, to correct biases such as these.

“Biology has no moral compass. It does not punish the evil and reward the good. It doesn’t even know about evil and good. In addition to living with the physical and psychological challenges of illness, there’s the additional challenge of having one’s humanity discounted.” This is the sentence I think my brain has always wanted to say. Being physically disabled is oftentimes walking a tightrope and simultaneously a seesaw with the self.

“Even when there’s no clear link between character and illness, we (society) will invent one.”

"In the US, we still often use the phrase, 'TB control’ in public health departments, whereas for illnesses like cancer, we're more likely to use the phrase 'cancer care’. It is critical to control outbreaks of infectious disease, but such efforts can be counterproductive if elements of care are abandoned in pursuit of
control..care-focused treatment often controls the disease better than control-focused treatment..wary of trusting the TB patient."

Over 6 million lives have been saved since 1995 from TB survivors receiving DOTS (Directly Observed Therapy, Short-Course), a strategy for treating tuberculosis (TB) that ensures patients take their medications regularly and correctly.

Preventative therapy for TB was pioneered in Bethel, Alaska, where rates were brought down to 69% in a single year.

“When the last line of available drugs fails, you know the ending of the story. That’s the point when you put down your stethoscope.”

“Why should we move mountains to save one patient? Because he is one person. A person, you understand?”

“TB doesn’t just flow through the meandering river of injustice, TB broadens and deepens that river.”

“TB in the 21st-century is not really caused by a bacteria that we know how to kill. TB in the 21st-century is really caused by those social determinants of health which, at their core, are about human built systems for extracting and allocating resources. The real cause of contemporary tuberculosis is, for lack of a better term, us.”