DThe thing with the tuberculosis vaccine was darned right from the start. In 1890, Robert Koch, as director of the Hygiene Institute at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-University in Berlin, actually at the height of his career, presented the vaccine tuberculin. But instead of curing, tuberculin had no effect, latent bacteria were only activated by the active ingredient. Several patients died after vaccination.
Robert Koch’s reputation slowly recovered in the following years. To date, the global community has not been able to defeat the disease: Every year, 1.5 million people die of tuberculosis, especially in the developing world.
The history of the tuberculosis vaccine could end here, at least for Germany. But when the corona pandemic hit the world, he was supposed to get an unexpected second chance.
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