Tuberculosis I. The fight against tuberculosis has been mismanaged during seventy years, up till today. How did the mycobacterial community lose the war against TB

This review exposes the discovery of microbes by Leeuwenhoek in 1677, stresses the importance of food availability for the spread of tuberculosis, and underlines the absence of food security up till today for about 9.2% of the population, which favors the tuberculosis endemic. It describes the discovery of tuberculosis bacilli by Koch and the neglect by the physicians of plant drugs in favor of chemotherapy and surgery. The fight against tuberculosis was trusted by the World Health Organization in 1950, whose prime duty it was at that time to jugulate Tuberculosis. It was granted exemption of judicial pursuits to reach this goal. It immediately exploited this baffling privilege to abuse it and favor national commercial interests. The “Bacillle Calmette-Guérin” vaccine proposed by the French Ministry of Health in 1950 was known to be inadequately attenuated as early as 1927, was known by the World Health Organization to favor the spread of tuberculosis and nevertheless was promoted by the World Health Organization as a sole vaccine to combat the spread of tuberculosis. On the contrary, it reactivated dormant tuberculosis and leprosy cases and favored the endemic of both tuberculosis and leprosy. Despite this evidence, the vaccine was not removed but its deficiencies were steadfastly denied or else ignored. Alternative approaches, namely immunotherapy based on mycobacterium vaccae and a plant extract based on uleine, a substance known to stimulate the immune defenses of an organism infected by the tuberculosis pathogen, were combatted by the Belgian Ministry of Health and ignored by the World Health Organization. The chemotherapy was restricted during decennia to only four, plus streptomycin, which favored the rise of drug-resistant tuberculosis strains. New drugs proposed in addition to the four in use already, are expensive and riven by so many side effects, including death, that they are massively rejected by the patients. A blood test able to spot immune-depressed subjects and verify the efficacy of chemotherapy was banned by the World Health Organization and vigorously defamed by the Indian Ministry of Health. A review of the means used by the World Health Organization to fight the tuberculous endemy shows that these means are inadequate for the purpose, were so from the beginning of the fight, and were rarely to never amended in later times to become more efficacious.