Vital Systems Security

In her recent book Just One Child, anthropologist Susan Greenhalgh traces the origins of China’s infamous ‘one child policy’ to a group of defense scientists who specialized in cybernetics and ‘control theory’. Her book is unabashedly both an analytic project and a criticism of the roots of the policy, that is to say, she begins from the claim that the ‘one child policy’ is an ethical bad and uses her analysis to discover what led to such unethical policy. Her claim that missile scientists were at the route of the policy, in other words, is a denunciation of a particular application of ‘natural science’ in government policy. First, I will tell a little bit of her story, which is incredibly interesting in its resonances with some of the topics we have been following in VSS. Then, I want to show how the perspective we have developed in the VSS research collaboration can productively engage as well as put in perspective her denunciation of cybernetic planning.
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I shouldn’t be so snarky because the story is actually really interesting. Check out this link from yesterday’s LA Times, which details the behind-the-scenes politicking which proved the coup de grace for one of the nation’s first next-generation vaccines against a category A agent: VaxGen’s rPA102 anthrax vaccine. Deft lobbying and savvy rhetoric by Emergent BioSolutions, Inc., proved insurmountable for the South San Francisco company, which not only failed to produce the nation’s first BioShield-related vaccine, but was kicked in the teeth for trying. Amongst all the great reasons for not wanting to see anthrax ever appear amongst human populations in epidemic proportions is the discomfiting imagery of the six shot series of vaccinations that will still be needed in the event of such a threat. Emergent BioSolutions, manufacturer of said scary but mostly-kind-of effective vaccine, effectively argued that VaxGen’s (substantially less onerous) product was of questionable worth, developed by novices. Ouch. I thought BioShield’s point was to get novices in the game, because BigPharma was avoiding orphan vaccines like the plague. Ha! The plague!

Oh yeah, and look at this cool picture.

I am happy to introduce Amelia Moore to this blog. Amelia is a doctoral student at UC Berkeley. Currently, she is conducting fieldwork in the Bahamas (and the U.S.). Her terrific research project focuses on biocomplexity and resonates with many other projects conducted by our little group over here at the vss blog. Amelia recently sent me a short description of her research project. To learn more, read on! Read the rest of this entry »

Here is the GAO report on the US government’s ill-conceived attempt to fund the development of a second-generation vaccine for anthrax.

Though this isn’t confirmed yet, it might be an interesting biosecurity story to follow. From NYTimes, “An investigation, ordered by Prime Minister Gordon Brown, on Tuesday concluded that the spread of foot-and-mouth disease among livestock at two farms in southern England was probably caused by human movement from nearby laboratory facilities that was either “accidental or deliberate.””
One key debate in Britain is whether to vaccinate all livestock. The issue is that once a nation’s livestock is vaccinated, there can be non-symptomatic carriers of disease. This then poses a threat to other national herds when animals or animal products are traded. Thus, if Britain goes ahead with vaccination, “it would immediately lose its designation as a country free of foot-and-mouth disease.” Article below.
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CDC suspended on Saturday all work at Texas A&M biodefense lab due to the failure to report a series of incidents.

Melinda Cooper recently drew my attention to an interesting study conducted by Harvard Medical School Center and sponsored by Swiss Re and the United Nations Development Programme. The study predicts that “climate change will significantly affect the health of humans and ecosystems and these impacts will have economic consequences.” In addition, the study attempts to “survey” existing and future costs of climate change. It argues that the insurance industry “will be at the center of this issue, absorbing risk and helping society and business to adapt and reduce new risks.”

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A series by this name can be found here, assembled by the Federation of American Scientists. They also have a “strategic security blog” that might be worth a look. The case studies are particularly interesting — each is a kind of teaching module with information about the biology of the experiment and the pathogen in the case, some information about public reaction, and interviews with scientists involved.

Do you want a quick result or a correct result? - Here is an interesting piece on problems with molecular tests.

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On “From China to Panama, a Trail of Poisoned Medicine”: As with many of the vital systems security domains, the creation of modern medical infrastructure produces new vulnerabilities. Contaminated medicine is its own “epidemic”. Also interesting is the contemporary configuration of medical contamination and counterfeiting as a ‘global’ problem: “This is really a global problem, and it needs to be handled in a global way,” said Dr. Henk Bekedam, the World Health Organization’s top representative in Beijing. The exact chemical (diethylene glycol) culpable in Panama’s deaths killed over 100 people in the U.S. SEVENTY years ago, leading to the creation of the FDA. What security measures will be put in place on a global scale?