GOOD: Lasting Merit Found in a Tuberculosis Vaccine Invented a Century Ago. “Tuberculosis kills almost two million people a year. A perfect vaccine could save many of them, but the one now in use — invented in the 1920s and known as BCG, for Bacillus Calmette-Guérin — has so many flaws that some countries, including the United States, have never adopted it. Yet a new study published in the International Journal of Epidemiology concludes that the vaccine protects against tuberculosis for substantially longer than was previously known.”