the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
Apr 28, 2025
The best-selling non-fiction book provides incredible detail of one of the oldest, pervasive and most persistent diseases. The story is mesmerizing: the author provides numerous narratives of how this disease is intertwined with our story over our entire history, in aspects of our lives which you would never guess. There were times in our history, he writes, when almost everyone had tuberculosis, though for well-nourished people in a healthy environment, the disease lay mercifully dormant. It was not until relatively recently that the disease was understood to be infectious and finally curable with antibiotics. He presents how the ubiquitous disease influenced style, fashion, romance, the arts, and even statehood for New Mexico.
But once the cause and the cure were found in the 1940s, the disease was NOT eradicated, even though the possibility was there. In poor areas of the world, it persists, virulent as ever. The current federal policy cutting off access to available antibiotics in underdeveloped and poor areas of the world is making TB even more of a global threat. TB requires a long regime of antibiotics, which if interrupted, causes the disease to become drug-resistant. The author lays out these facts and shows how this threatens all of us, and leaves the solution to us.