"We are not enemies here, the enemy is tuberculosis" is so important to realize. We need to be working together to both recognize the accomplishments of the hardworking people who make TB drugs possible, while making the drugs as cheap as possible.
It should be noted it is not the workers who make the TB drug jacking the price up beyond the reach of people who need it. The owners of the TB are jacking the price up so they can meet quarterly profit projections for people who primarily care about line go up.
@@Praisethesunsonexactly. Danaher's shareholders and executives literally are our enemies. Their business is not saving lives, it's making money. From their pov, why should they take any steps to make the drug cheaper without a real competitor to contend with? The framing of "recognising the hardworking people who make TB drugs possible, while making the drugs as cheap as possible" is just wrong. The shareholders who profit the most off of these drugs are not the same as the workers who make them, who get a far smaller cut. These shareholders shouldn't be making any money off of people's misery. We are not on the same side as them. Nationalise the company under workers control and see how fast those prices drop.
My partner asked who I was watching. He knows the Vlogbro's. By name. Why is it we get SO confused when something on people's face changes?! It amazes my mind! Same voice! Doesn't matter! Help us understand why our brains are so bad at this, smart people.
Im not smart but i do know we probably didn't change much day to day for most of our evolution. A guy grows a beard he has a beard. You dont expect it to be gone and why would you. Sorta similar to seing a relative after a long time, we sort of hone in on whats changed not just whats familiar. Its just us noticing probably but humans are weird so some people freak out where others are entirely indifferent
Dear Hank and John, I am a certified Medical Laboratory Scientist, and I could not be more grateful for your videos about tuberculosis! Just hearing people mention the laboratory technicians and scientists who are working to diagnose illness, such as TB, and also mentioning some of the complexity of diagnostics is so helpful. The medical laboratory field is critically understaffed right now, with many people retiring or switching jobs due to post-COVID burnout. Visibility for our jobs matter, and I’d love to see you discuss (or potentially interview?) a medical laboratory scientist about the field to get the word out there to people entering college that we exist 😂
My dad has been in the MLS field for over 30 years. Thank you for your contribution to the field! It's very true how severely understaffed the MLS profession is, and it's scary. My dad can't even take a break, and they have the MINIMUM number of MLS technologists on shift at a time (especially at night). Covid and post-Covid burnout was brutal for healthcare professionals, and the lab gets forgotten quite often. We definitely need more people in MLS!
@@psychlover42 It truly is shocking, and if something doesn’t happen to build numbers, I worry about patient outcomes. If we can’t get enough MLTs and MLSs, we will be having people who don’t have the specialist knowledge and insight from our field running tests (as if all healthcare workers aren’t already overworked). I wish people knew how complex the work we do in the lab is, and how hands on and technical it still can be- it isn’t just “pushing buttons” as I’ve heard some people say. I currently work in a microbiology department, and while we do have a lot of specialized instrumentation, we still rely on the hands-on skills and the specialist knowledge of laboratory scientists to assess results and help fill in the clinical picture.
@@mklaebel Great question! In an ideal world, attending college to get a Bachelor’s degree in Medical Laboratory Sciences/Clinical Laboratory Sciences would be the best way to achieve your goals. You should aim to apply to a NAACLS (National Accrediting Agency for Clinical Laboratory Sciences) accredited program- this is the gold standard for MLS programs. Your schooling will consist of your normal general education requirements (ie- humanities classes, some minor math, etc), plus classes like Biochemistry, Organic Chemistry, and Anatomy/Physiology. The program itself will teach you about the areas of the laboratory: Immunology, Hematology, Coagulation, Clinical Chemistry, Immunohematology/Blood Bank, Bacteriology, Virology, Parasitology, and Mycology. These programs will have a clinical internship associated with them of various lengths, rotating through these departments at a local hospital. And after graduation, you can sit for the ASCP (American Society for Clinical Pathology) Board of Certification exam. Once you pass, you are a certified MLS(ASCP). There are other organizations you could seek certification through, if you wished. Alternatively, if you have a bachelor’s degree in a health science or biology/chemistry, there are often avenues to enter into the laboratory world as well. Once you get in the door, there are ways to get that further education and certification which are offered through hospitals themselves, or through their partnerships with colleges. I will say this: I am so glad I entered this field. It allows me to fulfill so many interests/aims at one time. I get to be a scientist, investigating human physiology and illness. I get to be a detective, piecing together the information to fill in the clinical picture. I get to help people heal, as 90% of medical diagnoses rely on the work of the laboratory. And I get to work with bacteria, which is just a bonus because they are really neat 😂
I actually have latent TB, it's insane and we still don't know how I caught it... I took almost 9 months of antibiotics, but it's still hanging out there...
her doctors think my mom probably caught her latent tb when she traveled to china, and she had to take antibiotics for nine months in order to start taking her arthritis meds because if she became immunodepressed it might become active... insane...
I thought almost everyone had some tb in their lungs but its kept in check by immune system. Maybe im remebering wrong though Edit: rick and morty was wrong i guess
I was also exposed and found to have inactive TB when I was living in Japan in the late 1990s. Surprising how common the spread still is there. I forget how long the antibiotic regimen was, but it was many months
Hank, the beard, it's fantastic. As a guy in his mid 30s who still can't grow facial hair, I'm very happy for you. It sucks that it took cancer and chemo to change your follicles so you could grow it but, hey, silver lining.
Especially for a redhead. My poor brother wasn't all that red, more of a tawny red, but you had to get him in a strong light to see his mustache. PS, sister was strawberry blonde and I was auburn.
Look as a mid 30s guy who also struggled with growing a beard, 1000% use minoxdil. It takes like a year of applying before you can say you have a full beard, but it's so worth it. I'm being genuine, too. This actually works for me and would work for you, too.
@@thedoctor3372 Glad it worked for you, but only about 39% of men get hair growth effects from minoxidil, so please tone down the "and would work for you, too" because it most likely wont and it is best not to get hopes too high.
I'm currently fighting against a TB infection. It's horrible, but I'm responding to treatment. Hopefully, I will be finally cured by the end of January 2024. It's hard, but I'm doing what I have to do - taking my meds, eating healthy meals and chilling. Thank you Hank ❤
Biomedical Scientist in the UK here. The Cepheid is an amazing piece of kit but so ridiculously expensive! The cost for us to validate a single module (as in a single port for one cartridge to go into) is £8k!! I work in one of the biggest diagnostic microbiology in the UK and our Cepheid has ten modules but we could only afford to validate four of them. Thank you for bringing attention to the work we do, we gotta get those costs down
1:01 I am a college educated person and never in my life have I seen a diagram breaking down the constitution of a cell wall. The cell wall was always just the outside part in the diagram of a cell. Thank you for enlightening me.
I said this all the time about COVID, in response to people who were fighting mask mandates and railing about the government. I said, your frustration is valid and real, but misdirected. The enemy is not the government, it's a microscopic virus. It's more satisfying to yell at a person, but our common enemy is the virus itself.
I work in healthcare and travel to hospitals all over the US. It occurs to me after watching this video that I have to have up to date TB tests every time I travel. Really says how seriously it's taken; they don't want me coming to visit unless they're certain I won't be bringing TB with me.
Antibiotic pharmacist from the UK here. Great summary and that's the machine we use in UK hospitals to run hundreds of covid samples. Great to see they can be repurposed for TB. Only thing to add is that many anti-tb drugs act by blocking its metabolic processes. Slow metabolism = takes longer to see an impact from antiTB drugs = 6 month plus treatment regimens
I think I am a little confused. Are you implying those drugs that block the metabolic process are worse than other solutions because they are slower? I'm not great at reading tone in text, so I couldn't quite pick out your intended meaning.
@logan_ward apologies. The metabolic processes are slower which makes killing them a longer process. As an analogy think of trying to saboutage a car engine by unscrewing a part. An engine running fast will fall apart quicker than one thats running slow.
John (and now Hank) have hammered the importance of tuberculosis so much i now bring it up in every contemporary history class and the teacher HATES it
I only know about this being the deadliest disease because of the anime Dr. Stone. It’s pretty fascinating how modern medicine has evolved and how well we’ve gotten better at understanding diseases.
As a tuberculosis researcher it’s so refreshing hearing people talk about and bring awareness to this topic. I spend all day every day thinking about and working with tuberculosis and yet most of my friends and family don’t understand that it’s even a large problem globally. I’m really appreciating hearing you guys talk about this problem that i’m very passionate about
Someone asked my husband what I do, he said "she works in TB." They automatically assumed that meant I was working overseas, and not in London, whereas at the time our average incidence was over the 40/100,000 threshold for high incidence 🤣
Hank, my mom was battling cancer with you. I was watching your videos about it while watching my mom goes through the same things. Unfortunately, we lost her on August 13th. The radiation and chemo broke the cancer apart, and part of it got stuck in her liver and caused it to fail. I'm glad to see you doing better and being stronger. Stay strong, brother. I've been watching your stuff including your other channels for seems like at least a decade.
we need a book on this. I remember telling my daughters English teacher that the short story my daughter had read....had been written by a writer who died of TB. When this writer was diagnosed with TB, she spent her life trying to find a cure, looking at alternative treatments. When she died, it was rather horrific, she was sure she was cured or almost cured. She ran up the stairs at the treatment place she was staying (it was very alt medicine), and hemorrhaged right on the stairs, coughing up blood and going from happy to the knowledge she was dying.
We were stationed at a USAF base in Turkiye, and tuberculosis was a huge problem. Many people from the local area worked on base, and tho they had be tested before working there, it was pretty common for them to develop it at some point. It was so hard to treat it, although the base hospital would provide them with treatment the drugs were worth so much it was very tempting to just give up working on base and sell the pills as soon as they felt better. So you end up with people only partly cured and driving the development of drug resistant strains...poverty drives the spread of this disease.
Back a long time ago, when TB started making a comeback (early 90s, maybe), I saw a news piece where the health nurses had to watch the patient take their meds and chase them down if they missed a dose to avoid developing antibiotic resistant strains of TB and reduce the spread of the TB.
@@kitefan1 We still do that. It's called Directly Observed Therapy (DOT). Although now, we do have video versions as well, but if we have issues with consistently confirming the patient has taken meds appropriately, we'll go back to in-person DOT to encourage more consistent meds. Treatment of active TB can be anywhere from 6-24 months, so it's quite the resource intensive disease to cure. And it's hard on the patient too for many reasons beyond the disruption in their life to accommodate DOT. It's difficult enough for countries like the US to treat the relatively much lower number of patients, so you can imagine how much more difficult it is for countries without the resources the US has.
I wrote a paper in my graduate program on tuberculosis and its history, and it truly is terrifying. It's usually very easily identifiable in archaeological contexts because it's known to cause something called spinal kyphosis, which is a deformation of the vertebral bodies, causing the spine to bow. This is due to the TB bacterium targeting portions of the body high in iron, weakening and almost dissolving the vertebrae. The book 'The Bioarchaeology of Tuberculosis' by Charlotte Roberts and Jane Buikstra is an excellent resource.
I hope employees at these companies start talking to each other about this issue. It's really hard to stand up for something at work if you're all alone, but much stronger and safer when a group of people do it together.
God I love you both!! I work at one of America's largest reference laboratories, in the infectious disease lab specifically. Outside of my field I never see the way testing is performed affect the conversation about diseases and it's so refreshing to see it being brought to wider audiences. I don't personally do anything with TB testing, but I know how much of an issue laboratory procedure, machine prices, and the many many maintenance issues on those machines affect testing and patient care. There are reminders posted everywhere in the lab saying "hey! That tube you're holding is a person" Because it is so easy to forget when I'm handling thousands of samples a day. And in the normal world that person doesn't think about what's happening to the body fluid they sent off. Everything in healthcare is so disconnected.
You're not alone in not realizing how big of an issue TB is. I, someone with a *masters degree in microbiology*, found out from John somehow. Since Hank didn't mention it, growing TB on a petri dish sometimes takes 6-8 weeks. I'm not talking about figuring out what antibiotics work on it, that's just the amount of time it takes to say "yeah the sample we got doesn't have any TB in it"
@@xSoupyTwist oops, i messed that up with another number in my head. Thanks for the correction (and reminding me that it's so much worse than i thought)
Yeah, and trying to explain to a patient who feels fit & well why they have to stay in isolation in a negative pressure room waiting 6 weeks for that culture to come back negative... it's not great.
That's exactly what happened to me! A quick test said I had TB but two months later I was called and the doctors told me "yeah you remember your sputum sample? It has a bacteria but it's not TB, we don't know what it is so we will send it to another lab". I thought I was going to be dead by the end of that week.
It does! It does occasionally (when he has just the right expression on his face) make the recognition circuits in my brain tell me that I'm seeing John Green instead of Hank Green though!
Thanks for expressing some sympathy to the test developers here, Hank. I work in medical device product development, and a lot goes into making things cheaper, though the mark up on top of that isn't something I have visibility into and is the fastest lever to pull.
@@danielarossi5437I think that is an oft repeated theme in society but in general I think it’s more of an ignorant view that is extremely more nuanced with tons of interlaced variables.
We have one of those machines at my work to run rapid PCR tests for flu, Covid and RSV. It’s pretty amazing! But the test cartridges cost an arm and a leg 😅
I wasn’t wearing my glasses and thought we got the wrong brother at first. The resemblance sure is uncanny. But the beard sure looks good on you, Hank!
The Fix: “Did you know…that TB has a massively thick shell around it, protecting it? But, here’s the thing. It makes it harder to kill…but it also makes it super satisfying when you do.
Got to see a lecture by one of the biologists who first studied PCR for rapid gene identification. One of my favorite classes in uni and got me really into microbiology as a whole
I just got word that my uncle got TB, he's very old and we live in the Global South. I'm so scared, but thankfully he's being treated. I hope the treatment goes well
i'd also suggest calling your representatives about this cepheid situation. i know that a lot of federal level hospitals (like the vast majority) use cepheid products so getting those eyes on this situation might help?
I was waiting for Hank to talk about how the immunology behind tb infection makes it weird, and instead I got a call to action to help this current health crisis. This is why I love vlogbrothers.
I called. I got through. Someone said try tech support, and it worked. And since they double as customer service, my complaint was still heard. I'll keep trying.
I first learned that TB was actually still around in the 3rd grade when I had to get a TB test in order to attend public school after we moved to California. But the only thing my parents told me was that immigrants have TB and California has lots of immigrants, so that's why I had to get tested bc TB is bad. It was a simple test. Just a little something injected into my skin and then if it was rd and swollen after a week, I had been exposed to TB at some point. I wish my parents had the knowledge then to tell me how bad TB is in other parts of the world. It would have been good to know additional context and I appreciate knowing that context now, even if it took me over a decade to learn it.
You had tuberculin injected into your skin! It's a sterilized protein designed to trigger an immune reaction if the patient has had TB. Unfortunately, you can also get false positives, for example, if you get regularly tested or have been vaccinated. You'd then have to get a CXR and thorough history to rule out TB. We have a blood test now that's one and done, and much easier for the patient. Getting a TB test is essentially part of our immigration process. And immigration application will not be rejected because of a positive test, but the applicant will be offered and encouraged to take treatment if you have latent TB infection. Some of the latest LTBI treatment research has cut treatment time down to 4 months, with additional trials going as little as 1-2 months!
TB Is such a frightening disease and it's abhorent to me that it's still such a common problem. Thanks you both for using your platform for things like this! Also the new beard is very much giving me David Cross Meets Jason Statham
My great grandfather died of TB but they covered it so his wife wouldn’t suffer stigma by telling people he died bc of being gassed in WWI. Still crazy we have the ability to diagnose and treat and yet we just don’t because capitalism.
Same goes for protecting land and nature, or climate change for that matter. As a species, we know what we need to do, we know what we cán do, we have the resources to do it, but we don't because a select group can't make (enough) profit. It's sad really. I hope capitalism dies in the near future, even if the collateral damage to humans or society is immense. In my opinion it would be worth it in the long run. But I do fear it will have done too much damage by then in general, and the losses will be great...
My Dad's mother was born before the turn of 1900. In the 70s, when I was in my late teens, my Grandmother and I were looking through an old box of things and we found a little bag embroidered with her name. She had made the bag to hold her toothbrush, comb and so on. That was when my father, in his 50s, found out that his mother had spent a year or so in a TB sanatorium when he was a very little boy. He remember staying with his uncle and aunts but had never known why. In general, my family talks about stuff, but that was TB.
I wish all people and companies goals were the same as you and John. Which trying to make the world a better place and helping the world best we can. You and John are an inspiration and give me hope and drive to do the same
Hank explains things in ways that I can actually understand and learn. John puts into words feelings or ideas I havent been able to articulate. So greatful for these two orators.
Hank, bear with me because this might be a bit long. I honestly don't know much about tuberculosis, but I was recently diagnosed with Lyme disease. On short, I was bit by a tick in 2019 and had gone to the ER and I did in fact have the classic bullseye rash, was given the standard 14 days of doxycycline. Far as I knew, I was good. I have lived in Maine all my life and know about ticks, but had NO idea, how it all worked until recently, when I began having heart issues, for the last 4 years; extreme fatigue, raging headaches, joint pain, tinnitus, and I could keep going. The blood test for Lyme disease came back negative, which we expected. The reason, the CDC has NOT UPDATED lab testing in decades. I lab will do the standand test for the two common bacteria and there are now about 80 types of tick borne bacteria. The ONLY two labs in the United States is Igenex and Medical Diagnostics. This now impacts over 400,000 people in our country alone. To make it more insulting and worse, there are doctors in the medical community who will absolutely NOT look at late stage Lyme disease as a chronic condition. I am only 10 days in on doxycycline, and not sure yet if it's working. Would be awesome if at some point you could do a video on this! Glad to see you're doing better and happy for you!✌️
As a biotech student, it's been really surprising to learn how much of the way we deal with infectious bacteria comes down to seemingly little things like cell wall structure or a weird mutation.
I work at a hospital microbiology lab in Boston, MA, in the USA. We have a full TB lab which tests lots of patient samples every day for TB. The cultures take at least 40 days to determine whether someone is positive or negative. We also have a cephied machine which we use for all kinds of things, but the TB cartridges specifically are too expensive for us. Again, we are a well-known hospital in the US, treating many insured patients and we cannot afford these cartridges.
Completely agree. I know major hospitals in London UK who are v selective about when they use GeneXpert or not. But I also know >50% of our MDR TBs don't fit the "typical" profile for MDR TB. So, again, diagnostic delays = treatment delays = poorer outcomes and increased transmission.
I really love this Green brothers one-two punch where John is teaching us the history of TB, and Hank is teaching us the science of it, and then they're both telling us how to make the world better. 10/10.
Don't forget about all the different mechanisms TB has to persist in different stress conditions that the immune system puts it under (such as ribosome hibernation and stringent response!)!!
John coming in with the call to action and then hank coming in with the science of the matter and seconding the call to action is so on brand. Thank you both for not forgetting to awesome, and I can say the same for this community and all the others who have been working for years to get the cost of these drugs down. Thank you, and we will keep working on this to make the world suck less.
You both together have put such a clearer picture on what is happening + why the cartridges and their cost matter + how changing one thing (such a price or a patent) has such direct impact on saving people.
Now that the Maternal Center for Excellence is realized it seems the Greens are beginning to shift to a new topic for focus and I appreciate this. I was wondering what they would do when the time came
@@kaypgirl Absolutely, I didn't mean to imply it's done. The whole campaign to get it built is winding down but I have zero doubts they will continue to support it. I just meant that it seemed they would begin to shift for a new focus, not that their old focus had been solved or something
Nice video! I did about 3/4th of a PhD on mycobacteria, including Mtb (I even cultured an avirulent strain!), and I think this hits a lot of the big Mycolic Acid Stuff. My go-to statistic is that 1 in 4 humans are infected with TB. That's not 1 in 4 adults, or people in certain areas, that's one in four people globally!! On the plus side, when I started in 2019, that stat was about 1/3rd of people. So glad you hit on the slow growth thing too! My research work was centered more around dormancy, or "latent TB". Latent disease is also a big deal. TB has this nasty habit of going dormant, like a bear in winter, if things start going bad for it. In this dormant phase the person infected might not have any symptoms at all, and the TB become more resistant to antibiotics. This is also a big problem because TB antibiotic courses are really long - think 9 months long - so its really hard to get people to keep taking the drugs after they feel better for such a long time.
That slow growth thing means that thinking/language is slowly changing in TB research circles, there's some proposals now to stop calling them 'latent' and 'active' TB and to switch to 'clinical' and 'subclinical' TB. I'm interested to see if they do wind up going that way, and if so how it'll change drs' and researchers' approaches to it.
When I got to the US I was told I was a TB carrier and I always will be a TB carrier. 30 years and maybe 12 X-rays plus half a dozen CTSans later no one has made a fuss about it. When pushed on the subject a provider will admit to there being a 'shadow'. In the UK I worked with cattle. Here I ended up getting Chronic Fatigue Syndrome(/Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Systemic Exertion Intolerance Disease) which really sucks big time- no cure and no life any more.
I love this so much! I work in a lab that does this exact testing, and to see you guys discussing it makes me even more passionate about my job. PCR for the people!
“I cannot grow [facial hair] because of the brand” - Hank during a vlogbrothers video with Katherine I love it honestly. 2023 is weird. Change it up! Take it up a notch!
Being involved in veterinary medicine for the last 40 years I have to say I love the way you have presented this topic and the interesting way you have made it so even non-medically trained people can understand it. Great job!
It's odd that you bring TB up at this time. I work in a hospital in housekeeping. In the last 2 years I have cleaned 3 TB rooms. In the last 2 weeks I cleaned 2 of those! It might not sound like much, but that is double the number of cases that, I personally, have taken care of and I rarely clean patient rooms. This, to me, seems a serious uptick in cases, at least locally.
TB bacteria have evolved with us for so long and have learned to play with our immune systems so much that they’re the single most complicated human pathogen to treat. Thank you Hank for using your platform for the most good anyone can do!
Bless you both for shining your spotlight on this issue. TB is not something I have ever encountered other than to read about others experiencing it... But as a prevalent and curable disease that affects millions... every effort should be made to offer treatment to anyone affected regardless of their financial situation. A slight aside... Those are some mighty fine looking chin hairs you are growing there sir...
"We are allies, the enemy is tuberculosis." Yes! And the enemy -as is so well articulated in this video- is playing a long game with the arc of human history that is far more pressing to stop then any blip of a short term benchmark or quarterly profit report.
Wow, I did not know that about the TB cell walls. If it weren't so destructive to our species, we could almost admire its resilience the way we admire the horseshoe crab or the tardigrade. (And for the record, I don't think you look like Walter White.)
I don't know how much I can disclose, but my school is working on a project that might revolutionize the testing process for TB. I don't think it will be able to tell the difference between strains of the bacterium, but it would be able to give a +/- result and would be portable and cost efficient. I had a hand in processing the data and we saw some good results. It might be a while before anything becomes public, so I'm glad to see that you're bringing attention to this and demanding change from pharmaceutical companies in the meantime.
Yes but that's not helpful, (Unless you're a REALLY good lawyer maybe) Hank's trying to actually get shit moving and convincing people that the thing you want them to do is a good thing that is in their own best interest is a much better strategy than torches and pitchforks. (Having the torches and pitchforks waiting in the wings is helpful though lol).
Sorry for fixating on your looks Hank, but you look so much more like The Fix now, and that is very much a good thing! (And also very appropriate because of the hyperfixation John has on tb which you're joining in with (and rightly so))
I skipped the "Barely Contained Rage: An Open Letter..." video because I thought Danaher and Cepheid were names in some kind of fandom I knew nothing about. So I'm glad you named them in this one, and I guess I'll go back and watch the other video now.
It's amazing how much the beard really accentuates how you and John look alike! I feel like before, if I had looked at you two without knowing, I wouldn't guess you were brothers, but the beard really highlights just how similar you guys look!
Im in an outpatient M.A.T. and I get to be tested for TB yearly and for the longest time I really never understood why other than the homeless and addicts are higher risk to get it- and I've understood now from Johns wonderful knowledge sharing, that TB is a virus to be taken more seriously and we can test for it earier and should (in the right circumstances of course). What a simple change of making testing more prevelent could do for the world! Take care everyone!🤙
I don't know what an M.A.T. is but following what John said - TB is absolutely a disease of poverty and malnutrition and overcrowding. So yes folks who experience homelessness, drug addiction, alcohol dependency, imprisonment, etc, are more vulnerable. The kicker is that TB is also a massively stigmatised disease (I once heard a person diagnosed with MDR TB say that based on their experiences of being shunned by family and friends, that they wished they'd gotten an HIV diagnosis instead ) so once you've got a TB diagnosis you are therefore more likely to lose your job, lose your home, being detained/incarcerated, etc, etc. It's like a really shitty "gotta catch 'em all"
great info in this video but I also wanted to comment on how Hank's energy and flair seem to be swiftly returning the longer he's in remission and that makes me very happy!
Might I suggest spending a video talking about how this machine does gene sequencing. Who knows, maybe you could inspire some competition to make cheaper tests.
John mentioned that there is competition that is being looked at, but replacing all the machines is a long and costly process, that's about 10 years in the future.
Between the beard and tuberculosis, this is slowly morphing into vlogbrother
Now I am become Vlogbrother, destroyer of Tuberculosis
Disturbing and hilarious
Vlogbrother hosted by Jonk Green
I, for one, am fully on board with Hank entering his Bryan Cranston phase.
There is no vlogbrother, only Zuul.
"We are not enemies here, the enemy is tuberculosis" is so important to realize. We need to be working together to both recognize the accomplishments of the hardworking people who make TB drugs possible, while making the drugs as cheap as possible.
inb4 commies say corporations are worse than disease 🫠
It should be noted it is not the workers who make the TB drug jacking the price up beyond the reach of people who need it. The owners of the TB are jacking the price up so they can meet quarterly profit projections for people who primarily care about line go up.
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@@Praisethesunsonexactly. Danaher's shareholders and executives literally are our enemies. Their business is not saving lives, it's making money. From their pov, why should they take any steps to make the drug cheaper without a real competitor to contend with? The framing of "recognising the hardworking people who make TB drugs possible, while making the drugs as cheap as possible" is just wrong. The shareholders who profit the most off of these drugs are not the same as the workers who make them, who get a far smaller cut. These shareholders shouldn't be making any money off of people's misery. We are not on the same side as them. Nationalise the company under workers control and see how fast those prices drop.
John’s TB history 🤝 Hank’s TB science
I'm still shocked by Hank's epigenetic beard switch getting flipped by chemo. How weird and cool!
My partner asked who I was watching. He knows the Vlogbro's. By name. Why is it we get SO confused when something on people's face changes?! It amazes my mind! Same voice! Doesn't matter! Help us understand why our brains are so bad at this, smart people.
Im not smart but i do know we probably didn't change much day to day for most of our evolution. A guy grows a beard he has a beard. You dont expect it to be gone and why would you. Sorta similar to seing a relative after a long time, we sort of hone in on whats changed not just whats familiar. Its just us noticing probably but humans are weird so some people freak out where others are entirely indifferent
My beard went completely white from cancer medication. I'm 25. Got some grey temples and hair too. Then switched to new meds and it went away
@@BonJoviBeatlesLedZep hope you're alright man
Heisenberg switch
Dear Hank and John,
I am a certified Medical Laboratory Scientist, and I could not be more grateful for your videos about tuberculosis! Just hearing people mention the laboratory technicians and scientists who are working to diagnose illness, such as TB, and also mentioning some of the complexity of diagnostics is so helpful. The medical laboratory field is critically understaffed right now, with many people retiring or switching jobs due to post-COVID burnout. Visibility for our jobs matter, and I’d love to see you discuss (or potentially interview?) a medical laboratory scientist about the field to get the word out there to people entering college that we exist 😂
My dad has been in the MLS field for over 30 years. Thank you for your contribution to the field! It's very true how severely understaffed the MLS profession is, and it's scary. My dad can't even take a break, and they have the MINIMUM number of MLS technologists on shift at a time (especially at night). Covid and post-Covid burnout was brutal for healthcare professionals, and the lab gets forgotten quite often. We definitely need more people in MLS!
@@psychlover42 It truly is shocking, and if something doesn’t happen to build numbers, I worry about patient outcomes. If we can’t get enough MLTs and MLSs, we will be having people who don’t have the specialist knowledge and insight from our field running tests (as if all healthcare workers aren’t already overworked). I wish people knew how complex the work we do in the lab is, and how hands on and technical it still can be- it isn’t just “pushing buttons” as I’ve heard some people say. I currently work in a microbiology department, and while we do have a lot of specialized instrumentation, we still rely on the hands-on skills and the specialist knowledge of laboratory scientists to assess results and help fill in the clinical picture.
@@OnyxNorthwindwhat is needed, education wise, to have a MLS career?
@@mklaebel Great question! In an ideal world, attending college to get a Bachelor’s degree in Medical Laboratory Sciences/Clinical Laboratory Sciences would be the best way to achieve your goals. You should aim to apply to a NAACLS (National Accrediting Agency for Clinical Laboratory Sciences) accredited program- this is the gold standard for MLS programs. Your schooling will consist of your normal general education requirements (ie- humanities classes, some minor math, etc), plus classes like Biochemistry, Organic Chemistry, and Anatomy/Physiology. The program itself will teach you about the areas of the laboratory: Immunology, Hematology, Coagulation, Clinical Chemistry, Immunohematology/Blood Bank, Bacteriology, Virology, Parasitology, and Mycology. These programs will have a clinical internship associated with them of various lengths, rotating through these departments at a local hospital. And after graduation, you can sit for the ASCP (American Society for Clinical Pathology) Board of Certification exam. Once you pass, you are a certified MLS(ASCP). There are other organizations you could seek certification through, if you wished.
Alternatively, if you have a bachelor’s degree in a health science or biology/chemistry, there are often avenues to enter into the laboratory world as well. Once you get in the door, there are ways to get that further education and certification which are offered through hospitals themselves, or through their partnerships with colleges.
I will say this: I am so glad I entered this field. It allows me to fulfill so many interests/aims at one time. I get to be a scientist, investigating human physiology and illness. I get to be a detective, piecing together the information to fill in the clinical picture. I get to help people heal, as 90% of medical diagnoses rely on the work of the laboratory. And I get to work with bacteria, which is just a bonus because they are really neat 😂
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14 seconds before "tuberculosis"! Great job guys, keep pushing the boundary.
I actually have latent TB, it's insane and we still don't know how I caught it... I took almost 9 months of antibiotics, but it's still hanging out there...
her doctors think my mom probably caught her latent tb when she traveled to china, and she had to take antibiotics for nine months in order to start taking her arthritis meds because if she became immunodepressed it might become active... insane...
I also have latent TB! Got it from my grandma in the Dominican Republic.
I thought almost everyone had some tb in their lungs but its kept in check by immune system. Maybe im remebering wrong though
Edit: rick and morty was wrong i guess
@@gIozell1not nearly almost everyone. About a quarter of the population has it, most having a latent form.
I was also exposed and found to have inactive TB when I was living in Japan in the late 1990s. Surprising how common the spread still is there. I forget how long the antibiotic regimen was, but it was many months
Hank, the beard, it's fantastic. As a guy in his mid 30s who still can't grow facial hair, I'm very happy for you. It sucks that it took cancer and chemo to change your follicles so you could grow it but, hey, silver lining.
Especially for a redhead. My poor brother wasn't all that red, more of a tawny red, but you had to get him in a strong light to see his mustache. PS, sister was strawberry blonde and I was auburn.
Look as a mid 30s guy who also struggled with growing a beard, 1000% use minoxdil. It takes like a year of applying before you can say you have a full beard, but it's so worth it. I'm being genuine, too. This actually works for me and would work for you, too.
@@thedoctor3372 heeey, it also worked for me!!
@@thedoctor3372 Glad it worked for you, but only about 39% of men get hair growth effects from minoxidil, so please tone down the "and would work for you, too" because it most likely wont and it is best not to get hopes too high.
Even if the lining isn’t silver, it is convincingly scruffy.
I keep thinking "weird how TB is their thing now, that's really specific" only to be reminded that TB holds the worst possible world record.
John brings us the social science side of TB, and now Hank brings us the hard science side of TB.
Great combo, I love it
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Hank is really starting to remind me of Walter White with the (beaten) cancer, no hair, glasses, and the newly acquired beard, talking about molecules
Only difference is he tries to spread drugs for good. :)
Does that make us Jesse?
So instead of Walter White... Walter Green?
@@KingatjeHankenberg
We've got to cook
I'm currently fighting against a TB infection. It's horrible, but I'm responding to treatment. Hopefully, I will be finally cured by the end of January 2024. It's hard, but I'm doing what I have to do - taking my meds, eating healthy meals and chilling. Thank you Hank ❤
Good luck with the fight!! 💪💪
Best of luck, Martina! It sounds like a dreadful journey to have to take, and hopefully not one you'll have to deal with for too too much longer.
good luck!!
Hang in there, Martina! Kick that TB's butt!
Thanks for sticking with it! For all of us🎉
Biomedical Scientist in the UK here. The Cepheid is an amazing piece of kit but so ridiculously expensive! The cost for us to validate a single module (as in a single port for one cartridge to go into) is £8k!! I work in one of the biggest diagnostic microbiology in the UK and our Cepheid has ten modules but we could only afford to validate four of them. Thank you for bringing attention to the work we do, we gotta get those costs down
1:01 I am a college educated person and never in my life have I seen a diagram breaking down the constitution of a cell wall. The cell wall was always just the outside part in the diagram of a cell. Thank you for enlightening me.
Did you take biology courses? In what year were you undertaking your studies? I find this very surprising.
“we are not enemies in this situation. we are allies. tuberculosis is the enemy.”
I said this all the time about COVID, in response to people who were fighting mask mandates and railing about the government. I said, your frustration is valid and real, but misdirected. The enemy is not the government, it's a microscopic virus. It's more satisfying to yell at a person, but our common enemy is the virus itself.
But so is greed.
@@JulieHerrick moooood.
I work in healthcare and travel to hospitals all over the US. It occurs to me after watching this video that I have to have up to date TB tests every time I travel. Really says how seriously it's taken; they don't want me coming to visit unless they're certain I won't be bringing TB with me.
Antibiotic pharmacist from the UK here. Great summary and that's the machine we use in UK hospitals to run hundreds of covid samples. Great to see they can be repurposed for TB.
Only thing to add is that many anti-tb drugs act by blocking its metabolic processes. Slow metabolism = takes longer to see an impact from antiTB drugs = 6 month plus treatment regimens
I Feel like this should be pinned?
I think I am a little confused. Are you implying those drugs that block the metabolic process are worse than other solutions because they are slower? I'm not great at reading tone in text, so I couldn't quite pick out your intended meaning.
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@logan_ward apologies. The metabolic processes are slower which makes killing them a longer process. As an analogy think of trying to saboutage a car engine by unscrewing a part. An engine running fast will fall apart quicker than one thats running slow.
Long time 😢
John (and now Hank) have hammered the importance of tuberculosis so much i now bring it up in every contemporary history class and the teacher HATES it
I only know about this being the deadliest disease because of the anime Dr. Stone.
It’s pretty fascinating how modern medicine has evolved and how well we’ve gotten better at understanding diseases.
Well now all I can think about is that senku is kinda basically anime hank
It was so wild watching an anime dude synthesise precisely the flavour of antibiotics that i am alive because of
1 billion percent! Get excited :D
@rushmd9405 Wait anime Hank? Ok you’ve sold me. I’ve been wondering about Dr. Stone for a while, but you really sold it with that line.
So, now both brothers are talking about TB and have beards. This won't help peoples confusion.
Ah, but only John has the glorious puff (for now, at least).
As a tuberculosis researcher it’s so refreshing hearing people talk about and bring awareness to this topic. I spend all day every day thinking about and working with tuberculosis and yet most of my friends and family don’t understand that it’s even a large problem globally. I’m really appreciating hearing you guys talk about this problem that i’m very passionate about
Someone asked my husband what I do, he said "she works in TB." They automatically assumed that meant I was working overseas, and not in London, whereas at the time our average incidence was over the 40/100,000 threshold for high incidence 🤣
I'm so so proud of the work we're doing together here. This has always been what this community is about and it's amazing to see it in action ❤️
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Hank, my mom was battling cancer with you. I was watching your videos about it while watching my mom goes through the same things. Unfortunately, we lost her on August 13th. The radiation and chemo broke the cancer apart, and part of it got stuck in her liver and caused it to fail. I'm glad to see you doing better and being stronger. Stay strong, brother. I've been watching your stuff including your other channels for seems like at least a decade.
Sending you love and peace at this difficult time ❤
Thank you for sharing your story with us. ❤ Take good care of yourself in these times. Sending big hugs.
we need a book on this. I remember telling my daughters English teacher that the short story my daughter had read....had been written by a writer who died of TB. When this writer was diagnosed with TB, she spent her life trying to find a cure, looking at alternative treatments. When she died, it was rather horrific, she was sure she was cured or almost cured. She ran up the stairs at the treatment place she was staying (it was very alt medicine), and hemorrhaged right on the stairs, coughing up blood and going from happy to the knowledge she was dying.
who is the writer?
who is the writer?
Not to make fun of your cancer experience, but as a fellow cancer survivor of twenty years, I can appreciate the growing Walter White look.
Hank is born to be a science communicator🙌🏾
continuing to communicate science, even through this very episode! Hank educates and inspires and will beat this, and teach us.
We were stationed at a USAF base in Turkiye, and tuberculosis was a huge problem. Many people from the local area worked on base, and tho they had be tested before working there, it was pretty common for them to develop it at some point. It was so hard to treat it, although the base hospital would provide them with treatment the drugs were worth so much it was very tempting to just give up working on base and sell the pills as soon as they felt better. So you end up with people only partly cured and driving the development of drug resistant strains...poverty drives the spread of this disease.
Back a long time ago, when TB started making a comeback (early 90s, maybe), I saw a news piece where the health nurses had to watch the patient take their meds and chase them down if they missed a dose to avoid developing antibiotic resistant strains of TB and reduce the spread of the TB.
@@kitefan1 We still do that. It's called Directly Observed Therapy (DOT). Although now, we do have video versions as well, but if we have issues with consistently confirming the patient has taken meds appropriately, we'll go back to in-person DOT to encourage more consistent meds. Treatment of active TB can be anywhere from 6-24 months, so it's quite the resource intensive disease to cure. And it's hard on the patient too for many reasons beyond the disruption in their life to accommodate DOT. It's difficult enough for countries like the US to treat the relatively much lower number of patients, so you can imagine how much more difficult it is for countries without the resources the US has.
The beard progress week-week is astonishing
I wrote a paper in my graduate program on tuberculosis and its history, and it truly is terrifying. It's usually very easily identifiable in archaeological contexts because it's known to cause something called spinal kyphosis, which is a deformation of the vertebral bodies, causing the spine to bow. This is due to the TB bacterium targeting portions of the body high in iron, weakening and almost dissolving the vertebrae. The book 'The Bioarchaeology of Tuberculosis' by Charlotte Roberts and Jane Buikstra is an excellent resource.
I hope employees at these companies start talking to each other about this issue. It's really hard to stand up for something at work if you're all alone, but much stronger and safer when a group of people do it together.
God I love you both!! I work at one of America's largest reference laboratories, in the infectious disease lab specifically. Outside of my field I never see the way testing is performed affect the conversation about diseases and it's so refreshing to see it being brought to wider audiences.
I don't personally do anything with TB testing, but I know how much of an issue laboratory procedure, machine prices, and the many many maintenance issues on those machines affect testing and patient care.
There are reminders posted everywhere in the lab saying "hey! That tube you're holding is a person"
Because it is so easy to forget when I'm handling thousands of samples a day. And in the normal world that person doesn't think about what's happening to the body fluid they sent off. Everything in healthcare is so disconnected.
I kind of love the "this tube is a person" sign. I how it helps to know how many people you're working for/with. Thanks for doing that part!
I have learned more about TB in the past few months than I ever thought I would, so thanks for that.
You're not alone in not realizing how big of an issue TB is. I, someone with a *masters degree in microbiology*, found out from John somehow. Since Hank didn't mention it, growing TB on a petri dish sometimes takes 6-8 weeks. I'm not talking about figuring out what antibiotics work on it, that's just the amount of time it takes to say "yeah the sample we got doesn't have any TB in it"
We actually have to wait up to 6-8 weeks to confirm growth or no growth 🙃
@@xSoupyTwist oops, i messed that up with another number in my head. Thanks for the correction (and reminding me that it's so much worse than i thought)
Yeah, and trying to explain to a patient who feels fit & well why they have to stay in isolation in a negative pressure room waiting 6 weeks for that culture to come back negative... it's not great.
That's exactly what happened to me! A quick test said I had TB but two months later I was called and the doctors told me "yeah you remember your sputum sample? It has a bacteria but it's not TB, we don't know what it is so we will send it to another lab". I thought I was going to be dead by the end of that week.
The beard looks great!
Soooooo good!!! The new look is 🔥🔥🔥 ngl
Badass
It does! It does occasionally (when he has just the right expression on his face) make the recognition circuits in my brain tell me that I'm seeing John Green instead of Hank Green though!
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@@AlarKemmotar lol yeah that combined with it being a video about TB really make it seem like a John video
Did Hank and John just pull a good cop bad cop routine? "What they're doing is awful" vs "we're all in this together!"
Thanks for expressing some sympathy to the test developers here, Hank. I work in medical device product development, and a lot goes into making things cheaper, though the mark up on top of that isn't something I have visibility into and is the fastest lever to pull.
the greed of shareholders is the most visible part, specially when they use taxpayers money to feed it
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@@danielarossi5437I think that is an oft repeated theme in society but in general I think it’s more of an ignorant view that is extremely more nuanced with tons of interlaced variables.
@@lijohnyoutube101 gonna tell us that the free market is the only way to fix it? Lawl, he proclaimed. LAMAO.
We have one of those machines at my work to run rapid PCR tests for flu, Covid and RSV. It’s pretty amazing! But the test cartridges cost an arm and a leg 😅
I wasn’t wearing my glasses and thought we got the wrong brother at first. The resemblance sure is uncanny. But the beard sure looks good on you, Hank!
the one thing absolutely none of us expected from Hank having chemo: the incredibly attractive facial hair
Glad it's not just me. As a Kinsey 5, this has caused me brief but unexpected confusion
The Fix: “Did you know…that TB has a massively thick shell around it, protecting it? But, here’s the thing. It makes it harder to kill…but it also makes it super satisfying when you do.
OMG. +++
Hell yeah
Got to see a lecture by one of the biologists who first studied PCR for rapid gene identification. One of my favorite classes in uni and got me really into microbiology as a whole
So my grandfather had TB, and after being told that he'd die young wound up living to his 80s.
That which did not kill my line
HAS MADE A MISTAKE.
Beautiful! 🤌
We're suffering from a case of multi-Green-resistant tuberculosis test manufacturers. Keep up the good work, you two!
😂😂😂
I just got word that my uncle got TB, he's very old and we live in the Global South. I'm so scared, but thankfully he's being treated. I hope the treatment goes well
Luck to him. I hope he can stay the whole treatment course.
i'd also suggest calling your representatives about this cepheid situation. i know that a lot of federal level hospitals (like the vast majority) use cepheid products so getting those eyes on this situation might help?
I was waiting for Hank to talk about how the immunology behind tb infection makes it weird, and instead I got a call to action to help this current health crisis. This is why I love vlogbrothers.
I called. I got through. Someone said try tech support, and it worked. And since they double as customer service, my complaint was still heard. I'll keep trying.
Loving the beard Hank! Feels weird but still awesome!
I first learned that TB was actually still around in the 3rd grade when I had to get a TB test in order to attend public school after we moved to California. But the only thing my parents told me was that immigrants have TB and California has lots of immigrants, so that's why I had to get tested bc TB is bad. It was a simple test. Just a little something injected into my skin and then if it was rd and swollen after a week, I had been exposed to TB at some point. I wish my parents had the knowledge then to tell me how bad TB is in other parts of the world. It would have been good to know additional context and I appreciate knowing that context now, even if it took me over a decade to learn it.
You had tuberculin injected into your skin! It's a sterilized protein designed to trigger an immune reaction if the patient has had TB. Unfortunately, you can also get false positives, for example, if you get regularly tested or have been vaccinated. You'd then have to get a CXR and thorough history to rule out TB. We have a blood test now that's one and done, and much easier for the patient. Getting a TB test is essentially part of our immigration process. And immigration application will not be rejected because of a positive test, but the applicant will be offered and encouraged to take treatment if you have latent TB infection. Some of the latest LTBI treatment research has cut treatment time down to 4 months, with additional trials going as little as 1-2 months!
TB Is such a frightening disease and it's abhorent to me that it's still such a common problem. Thanks you both for using your platform for things like this!
Also the new beard is very much giving me David Cross Meets Jason Statham
John Green’s brother discusses John Green’s hyperfixation
My great grandfather died of TB but they covered it so his wife wouldn’t suffer stigma by telling people he died bc of being gassed in WWI. Still crazy we have the ability to diagnose and treat and yet we just don’t because capitalism.
Same goes for protecting land and nature, or climate change for that matter. As a species, we know what we need to do, we know what we cán do, we have the resources to do it, but we don't because a select group can't make (enough) profit. It's sad really. I hope capitalism dies in the near future, even if the collateral damage to humans or society is immense. In my opinion it would be worth it in the long run. But I do fear it will have done too much damage by then in general, and the losses will be great...
My Dad's mother was born before the turn of 1900. In the 70s, when I was in my late teens, my Grandmother and I were looking through an old box of things and we found a little bag embroidered with her name. She had made the bag to hold her toothbrush, comb and so on. That was when my father, in his 50s, found out that his mother had spent a year or so in a TB sanatorium when he was a very little boy. He remember staying with his uncle and aunts but had never known why. In general, my family talks about stuff, but that was TB.
Hank seems to sound a lot more energetic, and it makes me extremely happy to hear and see it! :D
I wish all people and companies goals were the same as you and John. Which trying to make the world a better place and helping the world best we can. You and John are an inspiration and give me hope and drive to do the same
Hank explains things in ways that I can actually understand and learn. John puts into words feelings or ideas I havent been able to articulate. So greatful for these two orators.
Hank, bear with me because this might be a bit long. I honestly don't know much about tuberculosis, but I was recently diagnosed with Lyme disease. On short, I was bit by a tick in 2019 and had gone to the ER and I did in fact have the classic bullseye rash, was given the standard 14 days of doxycycline. Far as I knew, I was good. I have lived in Maine all my life and know about ticks, but had NO idea, how it all worked until recently, when I began having heart issues, for the last 4 years; extreme fatigue, raging headaches, joint pain, tinnitus, and I could keep going. The blood test for Lyme disease came back negative, which we expected. The reason, the CDC has NOT UPDATED lab testing in decades. I lab will do the standand test for the two common bacteria and there are now about 80 types of tick borne bacteria. The ONLY two labs in the United States is Igenex and Medical Diagnostics. This now impacts over 400,000 people in our country alone. To make it more insulting and worse, there are doctors in the medical community who will absolutely NOT look at late stage Lyme disease as a chronic condition. I am only 10 days in on doxycycline, and not sure yet if it's working. Would be awesome if at some point you could do a video on this! Glad to see you're doing better and happy for you!✌️
John gets pissed about the cause, Hank explains why we are pissed off
As a biotech student, it's been really surprising to learn how much of the way we deal with infectious bacteria comes down to seemingly little things like cell wall structure or a weird mutation.
I work at a hospital microbiology lab in Boston, MA, in the USA. We have a full TB lab which tests lots of patient samples every day for TB. The cultures take at least 40 days to determine whether someone is positive or negative. We also have a cephied machine which we use for all kinds of things, but the TB cartridges specifically are too expensive for us. Again, we are a well-known hospital in the US, treating many insured patients and we cannot afford these cartridges.
Completely agree. I know major hospitals in London UK who are v selective about when they use GeneXpert or not. But I also know >50% of our MDR TBs don't fit the "typical" profile for MDR TB. So, again, diagnostic delays = treatment delays = poorer outcomes and increased transmission.
I hope the update from Danaher and Cepheid about their price reductions will be helpful to you!
I really love this Green brothers one-two punch where John is teaching us the history of TB, and Hank is teaching us the science of it, and then they're both telling us how to make the world better. 10/10.
Don't forget about all the different mechanisms TB has to persist in different stress conditions that the immune system puts it under (such as ribosome hibernation and stringent response!)!!
John coming in with the call to action and then hank coming in with the science of the matter and seconding the call to action is so on brand. Thank you both for not forgetting to awesome, and I can say the same for this community and all the others who have been working for years to get the cost of these drugs down. Thank you, and we will keep working on this to make the world suck less.
You both together have put such a clearer picture on what is happening + why the cartridges and their cost matter + how changing one thing (such a price or a patent) has such direct impact on saving people.
This Community is What the World needs more of💯
THANK YOU ALL❣🖖🖖🙏
Now that the Maternal Center for Excellence is realized it seems the Greens are beginning to shift to a new topic for focus and I appreciate this. I was wondering what they would do when the time came
looks like theyre fighting TB next!
The Maternal Center is being built, but I think it's still a long term funding project they'll be raising money for.
@@kaypgirl Absolutely, I didn't mean to imply it's done. The whole campaign to get it built is winding down but I have zero doubts they will continue to support it. I just meant that it seemed they would begin to shift for a new focus, not that their old focus had been solved or something
survivalist hank coming in hot
I love that this is now the tuberculosis and cancer channel. You both do amazing work in so many ways.
I'm loving this new arc of vlogbrothers so much
Nice video! I did about 3/4th of a PhD on mycobacteria, including Mtb (I even cultured an avirulent strain!), and I think this hits a lot of the big Mycolic Acid Stuff. My go-to statistic is that 1 in 4 humans are infected with TB. That's not 1 in 4 adults, or people in certain areas, that's one in four people globally!! On the plus side, when I started in 2019, that stat was about 1/3rd of people.
So glad you hit on the slow growth thing too! My research work was centered more around dormancy, or "latent TB". Latent disease is also a big deal. TB has this nasty habit of going dormant, like a bear in winter, if things start going bad for it. In this dormant phase the person infected might not have any symptoms at all, and the TB become more resistant to antibiotics. This is also a big problem because TB antibiotic courses are really long - think 9 months long - so its really hard to get people to keep taking the drugs after they feel better for such a long time.
That slow growth thing means that thinking/language is slowly changing in TB research circles, there's some proposals now to stop calling them 'latent' and 'active' TB and to switch to 'clinical' and 'subclinical' TB. I'm interested to see if they do wind up going that way, and if so how it'll change drs' and researchers' approaches to it.
Gets cancer, spreads tuberculosis awareness. What a boss. ❤
i love checking in twice a week and seeing the things that one brother is passionate about turn into multi brother fascinations.
Hank bringing his scientific expertise to TB, love it
thanks for explaining, science in action!!! I like the comments about how we are all in this together.
When I got to the US I was told I was a TB carrier and I always will be a TB carrier. 30 years and maybe 12 X-rays plus half a dozen CTSans later no one has made a fuss about it. When pushed on the subject a provider will admit to there being a 'shadow'. In the UK I worked with cattle. Here I ended up getting Chronic Fatigue Syndrome(/Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Systemic Exertion Intolerance Disease) which really sucks big time- no cure and no life any more.
I love this so much! I work in a lab that does this exact testing, and to see you guys discussing it makes me even more passionate about my job. PCR for the people!
“I cannot grow [facial hair] because of the brand” - Hank during a vlogbrothers video with Katherine
I love it honestly. 2023 is weird. Change it up! Take it up a notch!
TB facts with nerdy Jason Statham.
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Being involved in veterinary medicine for the last 40 years I have to say I love the way you have presented this topic and the interesting way you have made it so even non-medically trained people can understand it. Great job!
It's odd that you bring TB up at this time. I work in a hospital in housekeeping. In the last 2 years I have cleaned 3 TB rooms. In the last 2 weeks I cleaned 2 of those! It might not sound like much, but that is double the number of cases that, I personally, have taken care of and I rarely clean patient rooms. This, to me, seems a serious uptick in cases, at least locally.
TB bacteria have evolved with us for so long and have learned to play with our immune systems so much that they’re the single most complicated human pathogen to treat. Thank you Hank for using your platform for the most good anyone can do!
Bless you both for shining your spotlight on this issue. TB is not something I have ever encountered other than to read about others experiencing it... But as a prevalent and curable disease that affects millions... every effort should be made to offer treatment to anyone affected regardless of their financial situation.
A slight aside... Those are some mighty fine looking chin hairs you are growing there sir...
"We are allies, the enemy is tuberculosis." Yes! And the enemy -as is so well articulated in this video- is playing a long game with the arc of human history that is far more pressing to stop then any blip of a short term benchmark or quarterly profit report.
4:05 He could be showing us a picture of a Printer and non of us would think otherwise
Hank is giving more and more John energy as his beard grows and he talks about tuberculosis
Wow, I did not know that about the TB cell walls. If it weren't so destructive to our species, we could almost admire its resilience the way we admire the horseshoe crab or the tardigrade. (And for the record, I don't think you look like Walter White.)
I don't know how much I can disclose, but my school is working on a project that might revolutionize the testing process for TB. I don't think it will be able to tell the difference between strains of the bacterium, but it would be able to give a +/- result and would be portable and cost efficient. I had a hand in processing the data and we saw some good results. It might be a while before anything becomes public, so I'm glad to see that you're bringing attention to this and demanding change from pharmaceutical companies in the meantime.
This sounds AMAZING
As a 3x cancer survivor and now a beard person myself, I have to say, I'm really lovin the new facial hair you're sporting. Lookin great Hank!
Full disclosure: I will gladly become enemies with a pharmaceutical company who won't do the right thing and help humanity fight tuberculosis.
You aren't alone!
Yes but that's not helpful, (Unless you're a REALLY good lawyer maybe) Hank's trying to actually get shit moving and convincing people that the thing you want them to do is a good thing that is in their own best interest is a much better strategy than torches and pitchforks. (Having the torches and pitchforks waiting in the wings is helpful though lol).
Sorry for fixating on your looks Hank, but you look so much more like The Fix now, and that is very much a good thing! (And also very appropriate because of the hyperfixation John has on tb which you're joining in with (and rightly so))
Saw the campaign by Doctors Without Borders and knew I would find more information here
I skipped the "Barely Contained Rage: An Open Letter..." video because I thought Danaher and Cepheid were names in some kind of fandom I knew nothing about. So I'm glad you named them in this one, and I guess I'll go back and watch the other video now.
People in the comments are asking for a lab technician interview - I'd watch it!
Also, when Hank is joining on TB, what is John going to talk about? 😊
I've had TB and I am so thankful I had access to modern medicine. I'm gonna look for ways I can donate to help fight TB in other countries..
It's amazing how much the beard really accentuates how you and John look alike! I feel like before, if I had looked at you two without knowing, I wouldn't guess you were brothers, but the beard really highlights just how similar you guys look!
Im in an outpatient M.A.T. and I get to be tested for TB yearly and for the longest time I really never understood why other than the homeless and addicts are higher risk to get it- and I've understood now from Johns wonderful knowledge sharing, that TB is a virus to be taken more seriously and we can test for it earier and should (in the right circumstances of course). What a simple change of making testing more prevelent could do for the world! Take care everyone!🤙
I don't know what an M.A.T. is but following what John said - TB is absolutely a disease of poverty and malnutrition and overcrowding. So yes folks who experience homelessness, drug addiction, alcohol dependency, imprisonment, etc, are more vulnerable. The kicker is that TB is also a massively stigmatised disease (I once heard a person diagnosed with MDR TB say that based on their experiences of being shunned by family and friends, that they wished they'd gotten an HIV diagnosis instead ) so once you've got a TB diagnosis you are therefore more likely to lose your job, lose your home, being detained/incarcerated, etc, etc. It's like a really shitty "gotta catch 'em all"
Hank is gunning for John’s title of “the tuberculosis one”…
I think The TB Battle Brothers has a nice ring to it.
Man jason statham is way smarter than i thought
great info in this video but I also wanted to comment on how Hank's energy and flair seem to be swiftly returning the longer he's in remission and that makes me very happy!
I recall seeing a Doctors Without Borders video advocating for reducing the costs for these tests recently
Might I suggest spending a video talking about how this machine does gene sequencing. Who knows, maybe you could inspire some competition to make cheaper tests.
John mentioned that there is competition that is being looked at, but replacing all the machines is a long and costly process, that's about 10 years in the future.