cuaeren seven. ‘Mapping the Multipliities of Biosecurity From Mad Cow Disease to Bird Flu Keck Biodefense CONSIDERING THE SOCIOTECHNICAL DIMENSION se ww Anticipations of Biosecurity Episodes or Incidents ACENOWLCOGMENTS os Lust oF CONTRIBUTORS. cnarren one The Problem of Securing Health w Lakoff Stephen J. Collier and Amr Biosecurity Interventions World Health aist Century measures during the twene leases suchas HIV/AIDS and drug-tesst and biotersorist attacks. use of bioweapons —have trai secutity,” and approached by organiz Others, such as infectious disease, have generally been managed as problems of P sarelated to coniict and tary af jonally separate.* The WHO proposal also sought te reconfigure the spatial and t o health The report emphasized a space of “global health” that is distinct from the ions concemed with national defe ic health, whose history, hough certainly no frame of existing approaches to ensui‘of both biodefense and public health. “In the argued, simply stopping dis se at national ‘not adequate. Nor hed in a popu ‘outbreaks in advance, something that can be achieved on alert and response 10 demi is and Coun the Global Emergency Plan ception among icymakers and security of understanding and ‘managing coll the global scale he varlous technical and ns—efforts to “secure heal ‘response to new or newly perceived pathogenic threats In examining these i ecologies of pathogenicity in wi ecologies of expe The current concern, overlapping butbbe confirmed in ensuing years by the appearance of new diseases such as West Nile virus and SARS, by the intensification of the AIDS cx specter of an influenza pandemic. After considerable delay, we have ree , and by the current ly seen sponses to these new infectious disease threats sera, and philanthnopic organ threats have received renewed the implementation of large-sal that bring together governmental, m . A second area in which microb 25 technical and political problem is in response to the prospect of biotertor US. nat began to focus on this threat inthe wake of the Cold wi offic hypothesizing an association between rogue states, global terrorist organiza- al sec nd the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Revelations during the 19908 about Soviet and Iraqi bioweapons programs, along with the Aum Shi subway atack in 1995 and the anthrax letters of 2001, lent a sense of credibility and for biodefense measures focused on b fectious disease experts such as D.A, Henderson and mal security officials such as Richard Clarke, argued that adequate prepara: jon for a biological attack would require a massive infusion of resources into nedical research and public health response capacity." More broadly, ‘they claimed, It woutd be necessary to of kyo terrorism. Farly advocates urgency to ca ff such efforts, ineludin bor jencies and fe sciences and public health, eventual success o US. gover from $204.8 to $7.6 4 ‘Third, developments concerns about the proliferation of techinical capacities to create lethal organ- isms, pact light of recent developments in field lat promise dramatic advances in techniques of genetic mi experts and some life seientists worry that existing biosafety protocols focused ‘on material controls in laboratories will not be sufficient as teclaniques of genetic ipl ine, and as expe biology becomes increasingly widespread. A number: n the cutting-edge life sciences have generated new mn become more powerful new biosafety regu hhave been imposed on research dealing with potentially dangerous pathogens. Meanwhile, intensive discussions about know! eae ars regulate the produc mnderway among policy planners, life scientists and security officals and lawniakers have put in place new oversight mechanisms such as the Nationa Science Advisory Board for Biosecutity (NSABB}, Fourth, and with more pronounced effects in E series of food safety crises has sparked anleties about ausicult In Europe, outbreaks of mad cow disease and rope than in the United Stat josecurity and the contamination of the food suppl foot-and-mouth disease in the 1990s drew attention to the sie eifects of indus ‘meat production. In the wake of these outbreaks, controversies raged both about the failures ofthe egulatory system in detecting new pathogens and about the mass ng measuces that were mobilized in response. Also in Europe, environmental activ ‘sts put the problem of regulating genetically modifed food atthe top of the political agenda, in the US., meanwhile, public outery over food safety iss been provoked bby outbreaks of £,colfand by the presence of sick animals in the food supply, which leat in early 2008 to the largest beef recall in the history o {these four domains, a series of events has turned ‘on the part of governments and other actors." But this charact fact that the meaning of such “focusing” events is not self-evident; indeed, these natlzation Is ate ‘hat suggests 2 particular way of analyzing an event or situation: not asa given b as a question, As Michel Foucault writes, “a problematization does not mean representation of a pre-existent object nor the creation through discourse of an he ensemble of discursive and non-discy ‘object that did not rae re makes