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On July 18, 1921, the first infant was inoculated with a live bovine strain of bacteria (Mycobacterium bovis). His mother had died from an infection with the closely related human pathogen M. tuberculosis following his birth at a Paris hospital a few hours earlier. The child’s grandmother, who would care for him, also had tuberculosis (TB). In an attempt to protect the newborn from the disease, doctors gave him an oral dose of what was later named Bacille Calmette-Guérin (BCG) vaccine, for its developers Albert Calmette and Camille Guérin. The duo had cultured M. bovis for more than a decade until it no longer caused disease in animals.
Nowadays, BCG is given to more than 100 million babies each year, primarily in the developing world, and saves tens of thousands of lives. But it provides incomplete protection, and TB remains the number one infectious ...
