How is tuberculosis transmitted? John Green's new book Everything is Tuberculosis talks about a 17-year-old patient with the "deadliest infection"

John Green's latest nonfiction book, Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection, was released on March 28, 2025. The book follows a 17-year-old tuberculosis patient, Henry Ryder, whom the author met during his 2019 travels to Sierra Leone.

John Green's new novel aims to shed light on what he calls the "deadliest infection" in the world and examine why this curable disease remains prevalent in society. The book also highlights the "healthcare inequities that allow this curable, treatable infectious disease to also be the deadliest, killing 1.5 million people every year," as per the book's blurb.

According to the CDC website, tuberculosis, or TB, is an airborne infection caused by the Mycobacterium tuberculosis bacteria. TB germs can spread into the air when a patient with "active TB disease coughs, speaks, or sings, and can infect anyone who breathes in the germs lingering in the air.

"When a person breathes in TB germs, the germs can settle in the lungs and begin to grow. From there, they can move through the blood to other parts of the body, such as the kidney, spine, and brain," the website adds.

According to the CDC website, TB cannot be transmitted through shaking hands, sharing food, sharing toothbrushes, touching bed linens, or kissing. Some people who breathe in the TB germs may develop inactive TB or a latent TB infection, which is non-infectious and, thus, cannot spread the germs to others.

---

John Green elaborated on why he wrote a book about tuberculosis in a New York Times interview

During a New York Times interview published on March 27, 2025, John Green explained why he wrote a nonfiction book about tuberculosis after dedicating most of his career to fictional novels centered around teenagers. He noted that the central character of this book is a teenager, a 17-year-old boy named Henry Ryder who suffers from drug-resistant tuberculosis.

"Ultimately, I wrote the book because I met one human individual named Henry Ryder, who was living with drug-resistant TB. And Henry wanted me to share his story. So this is me sharing it," he said.

"In some ways, it’s a departure, obviously — I’m writing nonfiction about tuberculosis instead of writing books for teenagers. But in other ways, I mean, the character at the center of the book is a teenager who loves poetry, which has always been my jam."

During the interview, John Green said he was surprised to discover that TB is still considered the "deadliest infection in the world," even though it is curable. He mentioned that the US experienced 10,000 cases of active tuberculosis in 2025, with the number gradually rising, attributing this to the "underfunded public health care systems" that fail to provide people with the help and treatment they need.

John Green also pointed out that while many people consider tuberculosis a "disease of poverty and marginalization," he emphasized that anyone can contract the disease.

When asked why everyone seemed "so content" to live in a world with tuberculosis despite it being curable, John Green stated that people often "treat certain human lives like they’re just not as important."

"I also think there’s something about the way that tuberculosis works. Maybe it’s that it’s slow-moving. Maybe it’s that it doesn’t attack a community the way a cholera outbreak or other diseases would. I do think that a big part of it is that we just don’t do a good job of including people who live at the margins, and that allows tuberculosis to thrive in the places where human systems fail."

---

John Green is known for his young adult novels, such as Turtles All The Way Down and The Fault In Our Stars. He and his brother Hank Green have a YouTube channel called Vlogbrothers.