Why Treat Speaker Like a Criminal?
It is easy to understand the urge to treat as dangerous criminals the sick people who walk among us, exposing everyone to their infections. A contagious person is like a walking, time-release bomb, and detonating a bomb in public is a grave offense. If a person were deliberately to spread infection in this way, he would be engaged in a form of biological warfare or terrorism. If instead, the person spreads infection knowingly (that is, knowing he is contagious) but not deliberately (not with the goal of infecting others), the conduct would still seem to qualify as a reprehensible criminal act. Spreading disease in this way appears particularly blameworthy in the case of a drug-resistant infection, because an epidemic could not be contained in the ordinary way – through the use of antibiotics. In addition, some people who carry resistant disease might themselves have essentially “bred” the strains of illness within their own bodies, by ignoring doctors’ instructions and taking antibioti
