What Makes Everything Is Tuberculosis So Cool
For starters, I haven't read the book yet. Well, I guess for starters I should say what the book is.
Everything is Tuberculosis is a new non-fiction book by John Green (the John Green of The Fault in Our Stars and The Anthropocene Reviewed) that is about his new obsession: Tuberculosis.
Tuberculosis is a remarkable disease, owing to the fact that it routinely kills more people on the planet than any other infectious disease (with the noted exceptions of COVID in 2020-2022) but it is entirely preventable. There's a reason that we, here in America, don't hear much about TB: because it's curable, and has been curable for fifty years. The problem is that the cure costs money, and so impoverished nations don't get it.
This is the case that John Green makes in his book Everything Is Tuberculosis: that the disease is where the cure isn't, and the cure isn't where the disease is--but it could be, if we just put the right money and programs in place, which would be a relatively minor cost and would save over a million lives a year.
But here's the thing that I love about this book. It's not just a book about how TB is preventable and we should fix it. It's a John Green Book about how TB is preventable and we should fix it. John Green Books sell. They get picked up by the press. They make a splash. I guarantee that I could have written the same exact book with the same exact words and phrases, and it would have a hard time even getting to publication, let alone having an initial print run of over 100,000 copies.
And that's the thing that's cool about John Green (and his brother Hank Green): they decided a couple years ago that they had made plenty of money in their lives, and dedicated all of their new income to charity. Specifically, they dedicated that money to Partners in Health, and have been, over the last couple of years, building a hospital in Sierra Leone for the purpose of decreasing maternal mortality.
And this isn't the first time that they've used their influence for something good. They recently finished the Project For Awesome, a two-day livestream event that is now in its 18th year, which raises money that is evenly split between Partners in Health, Save the Children, and a variety of charities that viewers select from submissions. This year alone the Project for Awesome made more than three million dollars in two days.
All of this is the kind of author--and person--I aspire to be. I can't just decide that I've made enough money in life and that I'm done; I've still got debts to pay. But to be able to use your influence and your personal brand for causes that are good and right? To use whatever power you have to do the right thing? That's the kind of person that we should all strive to be.
The wealthy of the world could learn a thing or two about being better citizens of the world--the biggest tech billionaires could eradicate TB in a year on their own and not bat an eye.
But rather than tell the Musks and Zuckerbergs and Gates of the world what to do with their money, I'm going to instead recommit myself to using my influence, however small and insignificant it is, to doing good.
