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The primary method of supporting the main argument is a series of historical examples including policies such as those created by the World Health Organization, outbreaks including AIDS, and previous attempts to provide health security such as the Smallpox Caccination Program. The use of these examples highlights the changing nature of health problems and how that effects the type health security. Specific dates and data from the examples is included, which allows for a more detailed analysis to support the main argument. 

The authors of this article are Andrew Lakoff and Stephen Collier. Both are anthropologists. Andrew works at USC and Stephen is the Director of Philosophy at The New School. They have both written many articles, several of which were written together. 

Emergency response is discussed a lot in this paper with respect to a global level of care. They analyze the current protocols in place that would create a global response and investigate their effectiveness. The need for a more concrete protocol is discussed as most countries exhibit nationalism and self interest that would inhibit them from helping others. 

“There is no such thing as being “too secure.” Living with risk, by contrast, acknowledges a more complex calculus. It requires new forms of political and ethical reasoning that take into account questions that are often only implicit in discussions of biosecurity interventions.” (Lakoff 28)

“On the one hand, they examine the different political and normative frameworks through which the problem of biosecurity is approached: national defense, public health, and humanitarianism, for example. On the other hand, they examine the styles of reasoning through which uncertain threats to health are transformed into risks that can be known and acted upon” (Lakoff 12)

“These initiatives build on a growing perception among diverse actors—life scientists and public health officials, policymakers and security analysts—that new biological threats challenge existing ways of understanding and managing collective health and security. From the vantage point of such actors, the global scale of these threats crosses and confounds the boundaries of existing regulatory jurisdictions. Moreover, their pathogenicity and mutability pushes the limits of current technical capacities to detect and treat disease” (Lakoff 8)

The article mentioned a proposed framework for health threats of security created by the World Health Organization, I did some research on the organization in order to understand their approach to emergency response as outlined the their Health Emergencies Program.

Recent developments in life sciences and bioengineering were cited several times throughout the article as having the potential to be a health risk. I looked at the headline research being done in those areas to better understand how health risks may be changing.

The article mentioned an unsuccessful vaccination program meant to prevent a smallpox outbreak, I looked into the history of that as a way of considering the preventative aspects of disaster response.

The authors researched previoud research papers, articles, or speeches to gather data that was used to create a discussion.

The main argument is supported primarily through policy changes that show a changing approach to public health safety in the government and private organizations, with specific examples such as changes to the US government funding for biodefense research in the early twenty-first century. The paper also includes examples of changing scientific knowledge during the later twentieth century, referencing studies and reports that highlight the changing opinions of the scientific community. Finally, the authors divide the paper into several sections each outlining a specific type of problem and the practices devised as a solution, this format clarifies the main argument and aids the reader in understanding the authors views.

The article referenced many other papers that focus on the modern health threats due to scientific advancement, the spread of disease in modern society, and on the current approach to health prevention and the response to epidemics. This suggests that the paper was a culmination of ideas that did not include new research or data.

1. "“In the globalized world of the 21st century,” it argued, simply stopping disease at national borders is not adequate. Nor is it sufficient to respond to diseases after they have become established in a population. Rather, it is necessary to prepare for unknown outbreaks in advance"
2. “World health is indivisible, [and] we cannot satisfy our most parochial needs without attending to the health conditions of all the globe.”
3. "This tension relates to a difference in aims but also in forms of intervention: emergency response is acute, short-term, focused on alleviating what is conceived as a temporally circumscribed event; whereas “social” interventions—such as those associated with development policy—focus on transforming political-economic structures over the long term. Thus, in global health initiatives we find a contrast between possible modalities of intervention that parallels the one already described in U.S.–based biosecurity efforts: between acute emergency measures on the one hand and long-term approaches to health and welfare on the other."
4. "Although there is a great sense of urgency to address contemporary biosecurity problems— and while impressive resources have been mobilized to do so — there is no consensus about how to conceptualize these threats, nor about what the most appropriate measures are to deal with them."

The authors argue that while recent changes in health security have led to a modern knowledge base and understanding of health threats these new systems are still forming and adapting as the health problems faced change.