Biosecurity dilemmas: dreaded diseases, ethical responses, and the health of nations

Abstract

The Ebola outbreak in west Africa, the almost ever present danger of an avian influenza in Asia, the deliberate insertion of anthrax in envelopes addressed to unsuspecting US federal employees, the threat of biological warfare and bioterrorism. How can national budgets, security apparatuses and politicians' attention span be prepared for the broad range of security threats that come in biological form? This important new book aims to answer this question by examining four contemporary biosecurity dilemmas—protect or proliferate; secure or stifle; remedy or overkill; and attention or neglect—that illustrate some of the tensions raised by securitizing responses to naturally occurring and man-made disease risks. Christian Enemark argues that the securitization of naturally occurring infectious diseases like Ebola and man-made biological attacks stems from the inevitable fear and dread these scenarios have for the individual psyche. However, populations and politicians should be wary of the costs that come from responding out of fear as opposed to reason. Enemark argues that the four dilemmas he explores in depth are illustrations of why policy-makers need to be ‘more sensitive to the possibility of doing more harm than good’ in adopting security-oriented approaches to infectious disease risks (p. xviii).