Search

The American Red Cross is an organization that seeks to alleviate human suffering at the hands of emergencies by utilizing volunteerism. The organization focuses on domestic disaster response and support for the responders to those disasters, such as the armed forces.

The article highlights public health security and "biosecurity" in the context of large scale efforts/interventions in response to public health threats. Various frameworks have been proposed and implemented to analyze and respond to the new range of pathogenic threats. These take form as research groups, global health initiatives, legislation and emergency preparedness plans. The article proposes looking at biosecurity with an STS multidisciplinary approach (though not explicitly stated as such) and has separated biosecurity into four unique domains. These are emerging infection disease, bioterrorism, cutting-edge life-sciences, and food safety. These all overlap throughout the article. The article further highlights the faults of the "public health" approach and emphasized the trend towards a preparadness model.

The article cites the merits and failures of the investigations following three disasters. These are the burning of the Capitol Building in 1814, a boiler explosion in 1850, and the Iroquois Theater Fire of 1903.