In Phantom Plague, Vidya Krishnan lays out the long, maddening history of tuberculosis, from the days when it was called consumption to the urgent danger it presents today, when some TB bacteria are resistant to all available drugs.
Phantom Plague is an “urgent, riveting and fascinating narrative that deftly exposes the weakest links in our battle against this ancient foe,” said a review on goodreads.com.
Krishnan’s original reporting paints a granular portrait of the post-antibiotic era as a new, aggressive, drug resistant strain of TB takes over.
Krishnan “spends a considerable amount of time describing what she refers to as “medical apartheid,” said Apoorva Mandavilli in a review for The New York Times.
Krishnan wrote the book over seven years, and aside from the updated introduction, describes the world before the coronavirus appeared, said the review.
She could not have known then how painfully familiar some of the lessons from failed TB control would be in countries divided by public health measures like mask mandates and vaccines.
Mandavilli is a health and science reporter for The New York Times.
