TB traveler

It has been interesting reading about the guy with TB who flew around the world. I can understand wanting to get back to the US to receive medical care, especially when you have that strain of TB. The needs of the individual vs. the greater good. what i have a hard time understanding is why he left the US in the first place. The US has pretty places to get married, too. It does take a long time to grow TB in order to test it. When I used to work in a lab, we would hold TB cultures for eight weeks to see if anything would grow. Even when we had robust colonies, it would take at least a week to grow new cultures to test what antibiotics it was susceptible to.



the picture is of M. tuberculosis with an auramine stain. Yes I took the picture myself. I am a nerd.