Roberta Buiani | York University | Thursday December 1, 2005 | Download PDF

In Part 1 of Greg Bear’s science fiction novel “Darwin’s Children,” Kaye Rafelson, a scientist, virologist, and mother of a so-called “virus child” (a child born through a pregnancy induced by the SHEVA virus and therefore a mutant, a freak, a potentially dangerous creature) is reviewing a paper where she tries not only to demystify the myths and prejudices about viruses, but also to suggest and demonstrate their utility and necessity for the evolution of human beings and the emergence of new species on earth:

To assume that viruses and transposable elements are first and foremost causes of disease is like assuming that automobiles are first and foremost made to kill people.(Bear 2003, 24)

Rafelson’s statement calls for the rehabilitation and rethinking of an entity that is historically being labeled as “absolutely negative,” dangerous and superfluous.

The hypothesis is not merely the result of the author’s fantasy, but it is object of controversy within a, very real, scientific community. Joshua Lederberg, for instance, in his critique of immunological practices, complains about the marginalization of most research that studies the burden of mutual adaptation between virus and host, in favor of a hyper-aggressive practice that treats viruses as non-welcome and finds in their elimination the only solution (Lederberg 2000).

But can the above quote be only about biological viruses? If considered separate from its narrative context, the sentence could easily refer to another category of viruses that, this time, do not exclusively affect our biological body but instead our hard drive and our networks.