Skip to Main Content

Pandemics, Epidemics, and Vaccines: History, Science, & Controversies: Tuberculosis (BCG)

A research topic guide covering pandemics and epidemics as well as the history, science, and controversies of vaccines.

Resources

Research & Reference

Tuberculosis

This program contains the latest CDC guidelines and the requirements of OSHA and is intended for all health care workers. Learn what TB is, how it is transmitted and how to prevent transmission.

Source: Films on Demand

Perspectives

Catching Breath

With more than a million victims every year--more than any other disease, including malaria--and antibiotic resistance now found in every country worldwide, tuberculosis is once again proving itself to be one of the smartest killers that humanity has ever faced. But it's hardly surprising considering how long it's had to hone its skills. Forty-thousand years ago, our ancestors set off from the cradle of civilization on their journey towards populating the planet. Tuberculosis hitched a lift and came with us, and it's been there ever since; waiting, watching, and learning. The organism responsible,Mycobacterium tuberculosis, has had plenty of time to adapt to its chosen habitat--human lungs--and has learned through natural selection to be an almost perfect pathogen. Using our own immune cells as a Trojan Horse to aid its spread, it's come up with clever ways to avoid being killed by antibiotics. But patience has been its biggest lesson--it can enter into a latent state when times are tough, only to come back to life when a host's immune system is compromised. Today, more than one million people die of the disease every year and around one-third of the world's population are believed to be infected. That's more than two billion people. Throw in the compounding problems of drug resistance, the HIV epidemic, and poverty, and it's clear that tuberculosis remains one of the most serious problems in world medicine. Catching Breath follows the history of TB through the ages, from its time as an infection of hunter-gatherers to the first human villages, which set it up with everything it needed to become the monstrous disease it is today, through to the perils of industrialization and urbanization. It goes on to look at the latest research in fighting the disease, with stories of modern scientific research, interviews with doctors on the TB frontline, and the personal experiences of those affected by the disease.

The Remedy

During the surge of the deadliest and cruellest disease in history comes the unexpected encounter of two great men- one a pioneer of modern science, the other a pioneer of modern literature. In The Remedy, Thomas Goetz chronicles the riveting story of Robert Koch, a provincial doctor turned revolutionary scientist whose kitchen-sink discoveries inspired a new age of medicine - and ultimately aroused the interest and then the suspicion of another ambitious doctor, Arthur Conan Doyle. The account begins in 1875, when a diagnosis of tuberculosis or consumption, was a death sentence. Doctors had little in their arsenal for treating this cunning disease and were even less certain about what caused it. But a scientific revolution was brewing. Koch, armed with but a microscope and a notebook, began to methodically pursue these things called 'germs'. His biggest discovery - one that would push medicine out of the dark ages - was of the bacteria that caused tuberculosis. After the accolades and honors, Koch set his sights on a greater glory- not just to identify the cause but to create a cure. And then, he had it. When Koch announced his remedy for tuberculosis in 1890, euphoria swept the globe. Physician and aspiring writer Arthur Conan Doyle joined the throngs racing to Berlin for the public demonstration. But amid the frenzy over Koch's remedy, Conan Doyle quietly toured the wards of treated patients. He was staggered by what he found- Koch's remedy was either sloppy science or outright fraud. Conan Doyle has no choice but to accuse one of the world's greatest scientists of an unfathomable error. The question was this- Whom would the world believe? The Remedy, is a stunning tale of ambition and hubris, of discovery and deceit. It chronicles the profound shift in medical science from the nineteenth century of cod-liver oil and leeches to the twentieth century of microscopes and antibiotics. And it vividly explores how modern medicine emerges, not as the inevitable march of progress but as a lurching tumult of failed experiments and petty rivalries. In a brilliant interweaving of scientific and literary history, Goetz vividly shows that Koch and Conan Doyle shared more than a chance meeting- they were collaborators in the new age of medicine. What Koch proved in his laboratory Conan Doyle brought to the world through his literature - especially through his new scientific detective, Sherlock Holmes. As The Remedy makes clear, without Robert Koch, Sherlock Holmes would never have existed.