Extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB) is the kind of germ that makes public-health officials go very pale when they talk about it. TB is bad enough, wasting bodies, ravaging lungs. The multi-- drug-resistant kind is worse. And XDR is the very rare but very awful strain that has all but exhausted the medical arsenal, leaving mainly faith and force as weapons: keep the patient isolated and hope that some treatment works against it, which happens in less than one-third of cases. The good news is that most people infected with the germ won't develop the disease; there have been fewer than 50 cases...
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