• Question: Who discovered the cure for Tuberculosis and when?

    Asked by emmajennings1d to Charlie, Eoin, Jemma, Julian, Steve on 21 Mar 2011.
    • Photo: Stephen Moss

      Stephen Moss answered on 17 Mar 2011:

      Hi Emma
      It was a group of French scientists working almost 100 years ago who developed the BCG (I think named after their initials), which is still the most effective way of preventing tuberculosis.

    • Photo: Julian Rayner

      Julian Rayner answered on 17 Mar 2011:

      Hi emmajennings.

      TB can be treated with number of different antibiotics. Antibiotics themselves were disovered in the early half of last century – Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin in 1928, for example.

      The worry is XDR-TB, or extremely drug resistant TB, which is resistant to most of the current antibiotics. There are still some drugs that can treat it, but not many.

    • Photo: Charlie Ryan

      Charlie Ryan answered on 17 Mar 2011:

      hi emma i have to admit i’m not too sure. Isn’t it stopped by antibiotics – would that be Alexander Fleming then??

    • Photo: Eoin Lettice

      Eoin Lettice answered on 17 Mar 2011:

      The BCG vaccine is used in many countries to control TB. It was developed by Albert Calmette and Camille Guerin in 1905.

      Eoin

    • Photo: Jemma Ransom

      Jemma Ransom answered on 21 Mar 2011:

      If my memory of GCSE history is correct, the vaccine for tuberculosis was developed by a German scientist called Robert Koch in the 1880s. However the cure for TB really came about in the 1940s with the discovery of penicillin by Alexander Fleming.

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