Front and Back Covers. Volume 20, Number 5. October 2004

Abstract

Front and back cover caption, volume 20 issue 5BIO(IN)SECURITYThe front and back cover of this issue illustrate the contributions on biosecurity and bioterrorism on pp. 3‐13.The back cover photo is of a pamphlet issued in 1951 by the US Federal Civil Defense Administration, prepared as part of the civil defence education programme during the early years of the Cold War. The pamphlet lists 'six survival secrets for biological warfare', which consist of: keeping the home clean, reporting sickness, helping the authorities, avoiding rushing out after a bombing, avoiding food or drink exposed to the elements, and avoiding circulating rumours or believing in 'wild stories'.The front cover shows a molecular biologist working in a lab developing sophisticated protein detection technology that may be of use in biodefence. In the light of escalating claims concerning the threat of biological and chemical weapons, and following the anthrax scares in the US, biosecurity and biodefence have emerged as topics of political urgency as well as medical and scientific challenges. At the same time, epidemics of previously unknown diseases pose new problems for the protection of life on a global scale (BSE, SARS, avian viruses, etc.). Today, biological agents are perceived as a major challenge to security and health. We may already have passed into an era of global biopolitics: that is, an era in which living beings and fundamental life processes are being deployed for strategic ends, including destructive ones. Experts today are grappling with biosecurity in relation to a range of threats to health from both naturally occurring agents and those that have been altered through a range of human activities. Their work is defining one aspect of a global politics of biosecurity.Public health issues are now being reframed in relation to questions of post‐Cold War security, raising questions as to the nature of the dangerous biological agents at large in the world, the likelihood of attack and the best ways of preventing it, and how to evaluate the adequacy of our current preparations. Criteria such as 'prevention' and 'preparedness'; have become targets toward which various institutions and actors are working. Policy‐makers, funding agencies, scientists and other experts are attempting to articulate the elements of a biosecurity apparatus. The current situation, in which the formation of such an apparatus is a matter of negotiation, entrepreneurial initiative and contingency, is an especially important moment for anthropological enquiry.