While Ed and TrebleRebel are looking back to yesteryear, Professor Meseson’s wife is looking to the future in Patrick Tucker’s “Germ Warfare Under the Microscope”
Washington:May/Jun 2008 issue of The Futurist.
In an interview, MIT bioweapons expert Jeanne Guillemin talked about biowarfare. She says that technology by itself is not the driving force behind the threat of biological weapons. That force continues to be political. But for the sake of discussion, they can say that the technology for biological weapons is characterized by two levels of threat. One is residual, emanating from the old program, in which the weapons potential of anthrax, tularemia, plague, and other infectious diseases was developed. The other threat concerns innovations in human genetics and neurology. In the last six years, the US has invested some $44 billion in biodefense research and development, but whether this use of resources has deterred bioterrorism is unclear.
“Guillemin: To feel empowered against the threat of biological weapons, individual citizens should insist on two policies: One is an effective, equitable health-care system that guarantees general protection from a range of medical threats. The other is government accountability regarding military or other programs potentially in violation of the 1972 Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention.”
Jeanne Guillemin is a professor of sociology at Boston College and a senior fellow at the MIT Security Studies Program. She is the author of several books on biological warfare, including Biological Weapons: The History of State Sponsored Programs and the Problem of Bioterrorism (Columbia University Press, 2004). Her e-mail address is guillemin@mit. edu.
This interview was conducted by Patrick Tucker, senior editor of THE FUTURIST.
Ed may be interested in “Outrage Factors and Explanations in News Coverage of the Anthrax Attacks in Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly. Columbia:Summer 2007. The content analysis examined risk communication factors in news coverage of the 2001 anthrax attacks appearing in 833 stories from 272 newspapers, AP, NPR, and four national television networks (CBS, NBC, CNN, ABC). Conflicting reports, speculation, use of unnamed sources, and coverage of vague advice and hoaxes/false alarms-frequently contained outrage rhetoric.