TUBERCULOSIS has seemed, in the United States at least, a quaint disease. The very name raises images of old-fashioned sanitariums peopled with invalids, coughing gently into linen handkerchiefs as they move with slow dignity across the green institutional lawns.
The American public had the luxury of ignoring TB because the disease had for several decades been pretty much under control in the nation. The persistent, tough lung infection was one of the deadly diseases felled by the onslaught of the “miracle drugs” that became available after World War II — the antibiotics and vaccines that turned once-deadly or crippling diseases into fading memories or, at worst, minor inconveniences.
But tuberculosis, like some of the other battered diseases, was not finished with human beings. Drug-resistant strains of TB developed over the years. Think of it as a race between the disease and the drug researchers. Right now, TB seems to be winning — developing resistance to existing drugs before new drugs can be developed.
The race became big news a few weeks ago when an American man thought to be infected with a drug-resistant strain of TB was found to have flown on commercial airlines to and from Europe and all over Europe, potentially exposing thousands of people to the disease.
That incident also shook the confidence of the American people in the Centers for Disease Control, the nation’s leading public-health agency, which had diagnosed the man’s infection before his trip. The situation got worse when it was revealed that the man was the new son-in-law of a CDC researcher. The researcher’s field of expertise? Tuberculosis.
It is true that the CDC — underfunded, understaffed and now saddled with new challenges — may not be the the best place to pin the nation’s and the world’s hopes for new cures for tuberculosis.
For that reason, the new TB research effort announced last week at the University of Kansas is most welcome news.
The International Consortium for the Study of Tuberculosis will involve researchers at KU, the state of Kansas, the Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research, the University of Arizona, the University of Texas-El Paso, the Texas Department of State Health Services and Chihuahua University Medical School and Public Health Service in Mexico. The consortium will marshal immunologists, geneticists, epidemiologists, anthropologists and public health officials to study not only how TB infects people, but why people are susceptible to infection and how human populations allow TB to spread.
The consortium plan is both ambitious and innovative. The plan’s focus on complete understanding and control of a single disease calls to mind the great public-health efforts of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Some of those efforts — before antibiotics, antivirals and electron microscopes — were amazingly successful in fighting endemic diseases.
It is not unreasonable to hope that the new consortium, working with the latest tools and the best information, may help chart a course for finally eradicating this terrible disease.
Patrick S. Kelley
Editorial Page Editor