The Exploit: A Theory of Networks - asounder

Nodes 93
to our bodies, which has triggered a heightened cultural and social
anxiety about the threat of contagion.
But are we not missing an important distinction in this discussion
of SARS and anthrax? Is there not an important distinction between
naturally occurring diseases such as SARS and those intentionally
constructed and disseminated in bioterrorist acts? International organizations
such as the WHO and national ones such as the CDC use
the term “emerging infectious disease” for naturally occurring, active
diseases that have not yet been observed or identified. A majority of
emerging infectious diseases are mutations of common diseases in other
species, as is the case with SARS, as well as other emerging infectious
diseases (Mad Cow, West Nile, H5N1/ bird flu, among others).
The description of emerging infectious diseases as “naturally occurring”
is meant, among other things, to sharply distinguish them from
nonnatural instances of disease—most notably in acts of bioterrorism.
This division between emerging infectious diseases and bioterrorism
pivots on the question of agency and causality, and the implications
of this division are worth considering, if only briefly.
In bioterrorism there is an instrumental use of biology as a
weapon—there is a subject, often motivated by ideology, using biology
as a weapon. This subject is therefore accountable because there
is a clear cause - and - effect relationship. In this case, the subject would
then be treated legally as a criminal using a weapon to carry out an
act of violence. Yet in the case of emerging infectious diseases, there
is no subject. There is, of course, a sometimes hypothetical “patient
zero,” which serves as the index of a cross - species migration, but there
is no agential subject that intentionally “causes” the disease. This attribution
of the disease to nature has both a mystifying and alienating
effect, especially in the alarmism that much media reportage fosters.
There is no subject, no motivation, no original act, and no ideology—
only rates of infection, identification of the disease - causing agent,
and detection procedures.
From the point of view of causality, emerging infectious diseases and
bioterrorism are self - evidently different. Yet from the point of view of their
effects—their network effects—they are the same.