Most of the claims are based on past examples in history of response to disease outbreaks and the development of new diseases. They looked at how regualtions were developed after each one, what research showed in each case, and how people reacted to the risk or security associated with each.
1) "Approaches based on preparedness may not be guided by rigorous cost-benefit analysis. Rather, they are aimed at developing the capability to respond to various types of potentially catastrophic biological events"
2) "This analytical approach, when turned to the field of biosecurity, makes neither broad prescriptions for the improvement of health and security, nor blanket denunciations of new biosecurity interventions. Rather, it examines how policymakers, scientists, and security planners have constituted potential future events as biosecurity threats, and have responded by criticizing, redeploying, or reworking existing apparatuses"
3) "But increased attention and funding to health preparedness by no means implies consensus around a single approach. The existing institutions of public health are not easily reconciled with the new demands and norms of health preparedness and there is considerable disagreement about the appropriate way to achieve preparedness."
1) DOTs: I chose to look into the TB-control program cited by Paul Farmer and several other global health experts. While this is a minute detail, it seems to be a program which encompasses everything wrong with our current model of biosecurity.
2) Doctors without Borders: Despite reading about this organization multiple times, I've yet to do in-depth research on its goals and capabilities. Recent information seems to indicate DWB (or MSF) struggles to be effective in a long-term way in many of its projects.
3) BSE and food safety: It's been quite a while since mad cow disease has reared its misfolded protein head, but it remains a speck on the public health radar. How agencies balance BSE outbreaks and public opinion can often indicate their level of success, both in terms of job fulfillment and ability to minimize public panic.
There are many citations, but the reference pages are not included, so it is not known what exactly the citations are, perhaps research papers or studies.
Many examples of responses to outbreaks are studied, and how regualtions stemmed from each outbreak, whether in animals, food industry, or vaccinations.
The article primarily argues that, although there are interventions and steps in place, "biosecurity" is not currently a viable or stable entity. The four main areas stated in this article (emerging infectious disease, bioterrorism, cutting-edge life sciences, and food safety) are not formerly understood or controlled enough to make a feasible and honest plan that ensures safety. While steps can be taken and measures used, the dynamic nature of these fields and the human condition prevents us from establishing a truly flawless safety net at this time. One only has to look at the re-emergence of previously extinct diseases such as measles, the prevalence of pertussis, or the assertion of chemotherapy's deadliness to see we do not have a full handle on any of these fields.
There have been 28 citations at this time, most concerning the concept of biosecurity. Many of them also focus on elements of governing bodies and their respective management of risks and emergency plans.
Lakoff has a PhD in social anthropology and is an associate professor of sociology at the Univeristy of Southern California. Collier in an associate professor of international affairs at the New School in New York. Both authors have extensive backgrounds in studying people, but not disease, so their stance in this paper is not looking at the biological or emergency response aspects, but more how people plan and react to such.
The authors are Stephen Collier, PhD and Andrew Lakoff, PhD. Both hold associate professor positions-- the former at New University in NYC and the latter at USC Dornsife. Lakoff's research and publications seem to focus primarily on public health, global medicine, and medical anthropology. Collier, conversely, seems to primarily work on projects pertaining to government structure and its effects on human life. These include publications on economics, environment, historical, and biopolitics.
This article seems to focus more on the overarching theme of global medicine. This does include aspects of emergency response (such as discussing how various agencies respond to emergencies or how they formulate protocols) as biosecurity seeks to minimize or eradicate health emergencies. However, as the article contends, biosecurity is not a functional ideal at this time; it primarily contends that our current models of biosecurity are undermined by several factors, leaving them as simply emergency responses.
" At just the moment when it seemed that infectious disease was about to be conquered, and that the critical health problems of the industrialized world now involved chronic disease and diseases of lifestyle, experts warned, we were witnessing a “return of the microbe.”"
" The aim of such techniques is not to manage known disease but to address vulnerabilities in health infrastructure by, for example, strengthening hospital surge capacity, stockpiling drugs, exercising response protocols, and vaccinating first responders. Approaches based on preparedness may not be guided by rigorous cost-benefit analysis. Rather, they are aimed at developing the capability to respond to various types of potentially catastrophic biological events."
"Security — the freedom from fear or risk — always suggests an absolute demand; security has, as Foucault wrote, no principle of limitation. There is no such thing as being “too secure.”51 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."