Efforts to control infectious disease lie within the writ of state authority and are bound by the framework of public health. Wherever society has legitimized private capital as to some degree separate from that of the state, a structural tension exists between the state's interest in defining health on behalf of its subject population, and the resulting regulation of private inter-ests. When the state does not permit the existence of private capital within a framework of civil society (and the structure of rights implied), national state structures pursue public health as part of their collective national responsibility.