Artificial Intelligence vs. Tuberculosis, Part 1
By SAURABH JHA, MD
Slumdog TB
No one knows who gave Rahul Roy
tuberculosis. Roy’s charmed life as a successful trader involved traveling in his
Mercedes C class between his apartment on the plush Nepean Sea Road in South
Mumbai and offices in Bombay Stock Exchange. He cared little for Mumbai’s weather.
He seldom rolled down his car windows – his ambient atmosphere, optimized for
his comfort, rarely changed.
Historically TB, or
“consumption” as it was known, was a Bohemian malady; the chronic suffering produced
a rhapsody which produced fine art. TB was fashionable in Victorian Britain, in
part, because consumption, like aristocracy, was thought to be hereditary. Even
after Robert Koch discovered that the cause of TB was a rod-shaped bacterium –
Mycobacterium Tuberculosis (MTB), TB had a special status denied to its immoral
peer, Syphilis, and unaesthetic cousin, leprosy.
TB became egalitarian in the early twentieth
century but retained an aristocratic noblesse oblige. George Orwell may have
contracted TB when he voluntarily lived with miners in crowded squalor to
understand poverty. Unlike Orwell, Roy had no pretentions of solidarity with
poor people. For Roy, there was nothing heroic about getting TB. He was
embarrassed not because of TB’s infectivity; TB sanitariums are a thing of the
past. TB signaled social class decline. He believed rickshawallahs, not
traders, got TB.
“In India, many believe TB affects only
poor people, which is ...
Source: The Health Care Blog - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Christina Liu Tags: Artificial Intelligence Health Tech Saurabh Jha TB tuberculosis Source Type: blogs
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