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United States biodefense, international law, and the problem of intent

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 May 2016

Christian Enemark
Christian Enemark*
Affiliation:
School of Humanities and Social Sciences The University of New South Wales, Australian Defence Force Academy (UNSW@ADFA) Canberra ACT 2600 Australia christian.enemark@unsw.adfa.edu.au

Abstract

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Since the anthrax attacks of 2001 in the United States, annual U.S. government spending on biodefense programs has increased enormously. U.S. biodefense was once exclusively the domain of military agencies and was aimed principally at protecting battlefield troops against the products of state-run biological warfare programs. Today, it is engaged in and promoted by a variety of government agencies contemplating “bioterrorism,” and it is aimed principally at protecting the American civilian population. I ask if certain U.S. biodefense policies, pointedly those funding “threat assessment” projects, make biological attacks paradoxically more likely by undermining international norms against deliberately causing disease. I conclude that they do and consider the ramifications of this answer.

Type
Research Article
Information
Politics and the Life Sciences , Volume 24 , Issue 1-2 , September 2005 , pp. 32 - 42
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Politics and the Life Sciences 

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