Danger Dust

Queen guitarist Brian May has spent a decade studying the science of bovine tuberculosis, which can be carried by badgers, and has identified a new method of spread

We developed a view on how the mycobacterium responsible for TB transmits from one animal to another.  TB has classically been known as a respiratory disease, but our discovery is that a cow doesn’t contract TB by breathing in something, it contracts it by eating the pathogen from defecation from a neighbouring cow. It’s a monstrous discovery, because once you start understanding your enemy, then you can start to defeat it. Now we know that the thing is passed from cow to cow, because of poor hygiene.