'Biomania' and US foreign policy

Millennium: Journal of International Studies

Volumn 34, Issue 1, 2005, Pages 85-113

  Loeppky, Rodney ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF SUSSEX   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 27844438116     PISSN: 03058298     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/03058298050340011201     Document Type: Review

References (125)

1. Office of the Press Secretary, The White House, 'Biodefense for the 21st Century,' Homeland Security Presidential Directive, 28 April 2004, 1.
2. Christopher F. Chyba, 'Toward Biological Security', Foreign Affairs 81, no. 3 (2002): 122-36.
3. See also Gregory Koblentz, 'Pathogens as Weapons: The International Security Implications of Biological Warfare', International Security 28, no. 3 (2003): 84-112;
4. and Susan B. Martin, 'The Role of Biological Weapons in International Politics: The Real Military Revolutioly', The Journal of Strategic Studies 25, no. 11 (2002): 63-98.
5. Marc L. Ostfield, 'Bioterrorism as a Foreign Policy Issue, SAIS Review 24, no. 1 (2004): 131.
6. These include: the potential for silent attack, the difficulty in identifying perpetrators, the difficulty in ascertaining intention, the non-specificity of symptoms, the toxicity of biological agents, the low cost of production, the need for health workers as first response, the potential for easy replication, and the problem of a concerted social response to potentially contagious agents. See Ostfield, 'Bioterrorism', 133-4.
7. To avoid confusion, it is worth stating that this article does not deal with 'biopolitics', as conceived by Michel Foucault. While biopolitics certainly relates to the problem of bioterror, the article's focus is on the discursive operationalisation of power and the importance of capitalist social relations - not on the regulative effects of managing life in relation to populations and bioterror. Such a paper would likely be conceived predominantly around the notion of public health and the significant regulatory entry of bioterror. For a discussion of 'biopolitics, see Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Volume I, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Vintage, 1990), 133-60,
8. and Society Must Be Defended, trans. David Macey (New York: Picador, 2003), 239-64.
9. Raymond A. Zilinskas, 'Rethinking Bioterrorism', Current History 100 (2001): 438.
10. Terry Eagleton, 'The Art of Terror', Lecture Series, University of Toronto, Toronto, 28 January 2004.
11. US General Accounting Office, Combating Terrorism: Observations on the Threat of Chemical and Biological Terrorism (GAO/T-NSAID-0050, October 20, 1999), 1-2.
12. See also: House Committee on Government Reform, Subcommittee on National Secunty, Veterans Affairs, and International Relations, Governmentwide Spending to Combat Terrorism: General Accounting Office Views on the President's Annual Report, 106th Cong, 1st sess., 11 March 1999, 3-4.
13. See, for instance, Ronald M. Atlas, 'Combating the Threat of Biowarfare and Bioterrorism', Bioscience 49, no. 6 (1999): 465-568;
14. and House Joint Economic Committee, Terrorist and Intelligence Operations: Potential Impact on the US Economy, 105th Cong., 2nd sess., 20 May 1998, Statement of Dr. Ken Alibek.
15. House Committees on Energy and Commerce and Homeland Security, Joint Subcommittee on Health and on Emergency Preparedness and Response, Furthering Public Health Security: Project Bioshield, 108th Cong., 1st sess., 27 March 2003. Transcript available only in text form without page numbers. [http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgibin/ getdoc.cgi?dbname=108_house_hearings&docid=f:87480.wais] (6 January 2004).
16. House Committee, Furthering Public Health.
17. See Bill Frist, 'Public Health and National Security: The Critical Role of Increased Federal Support', Health Affairs 21, no. 6 (2002): 117-30;
18. Chyba, 'Toward Biological Security', 94-6;
19. Zilinskas, 'Rethinking Bioterrorism', 438;
20. Atlas, 'Combating Biowarfare', 465-7.
21. For a sense of how quickly this logic took hold in political circles, as well as a demonstration of the discursive power of repetition, see House Committee on Energy and Commerce, Bioterrorism and Proposals to Combat Bioterrorism, 107th Cong., 1st sess., 15 November 2001.
22. House Committee on Energy and Commerce, Subcommittee on Oversights and Investigations, A Review of Federal Bioterrorism Preparedness: Programs From a Public Health Perspective, 107th Cong., 1st sess., 10 October 2001, 72.
23. See also William Rosenau, 'Aum Shinrikyo's Biological Weapons Program: Why Did it Fail?', Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 24 (2001): 289-301.
24. Milton Leitenberg, 'Biological Weapons and Bioterrorism in the First Years of the Twenty-First Century', Politics and the Life Sciences, 21, no. 2 (2002): 18.
25. Office of the Press Secretary, 'Biodefense for the 21st Century,' emphases added.
26. David Campbell, Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of Identity (Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 1992).
27. Campbell, Writing Security, 172-3.
28. Consider the emergence of new 'security intellectuals' in this period. On this see Jessica Tuchman Mathews, 'Redefining Security', Foreign Affairs 68, no. 2 (1989): 162-77;
29. Theodore Sorensen, 'Rethinking National Security, Foreign Affairs 69, no. 3 (1990): 1-18;
30. Thomas Homer-Dixon, 'On The Threshold: Environmental Changes as Causes of Acute Conflict', International Security 16, no. 2 (1991): 76-116;
31. and Joseph Romm, Defining National Security (New York: Council on Foreign Relations Press, 1993).
32. Examples include R. B. J. Walker, 'Culture, Discourse, Insecurity', Current Research on Peace and Violence 10, no. 1 (1987): 50-64;
33. Ken Booth, 'Security and Emancipation', Review of International Studies 17 (1991): 313-26;
34. Simon Dalby, 'Security, Modernity, Ecology: The Dilemmas of Post-Cold War Security Discourse', Alternatives: Social Transformation and Humane Governance 17, no. 1 (1992): 95-134;
35. and James Der Derian, 'The Value of Security: Hobbes, Marx, Nietzsche, and Baudrillard', in On Security, ed. Ronnie Lipschutz (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), 24-45.
36. This is true inside and outside security studies. For a taste of the debate that has engulfed International Relations (IR) in relation to constructivism, see Emanuel Adler, 'Seizing the Middle Ground', Constructivism in World Politics', European Journal of International Relations 3, no. 3 (1997): 319-63;
37. Friedrich Kratochwil, 'Constructing a New Orthodoxy? Wendirs "Social Theory of International Politics" and the Constructivist Challenge', Millennium: Journal of International Studies 29, no. 1 (2000): 73-101;
38. and Maja Zehfuss, 'Constructivism and Identity: A Dangerous Liaison', European Journal of International Relations 7, no. 3 (2001): 315-48.
39. Barry Buzan, 'Rethinking Security after the Cold War', Cooperation and Conflict 32, no. 1 (1997): 19.
40. See also Barry Buzan and Ole Wæver, 'Slippery? Contradictory? Sociologically Untenable? The Copenhagen School Replies', Review of International Studies 23, no. 2 (1997): 241-50;
41. and Olaf Knudsen, 'Post-Copenhagen Security Studies: Desecuritizing Securitization', Security Dialogue 32, no. 3 (2002): 355-68.
42. Campbell, Writing Security, 196.
43. How far down in American society this alarm goes is difficult to discern, but the recently published bioterrorist attack simulation module for K-12 education is eerily reminiscent of the 1950s 'duck and cover' approach to public preparedness. See Carla Johnson, 'Bioterrorism and Real World Science', Science Soope 27, no. 3 (2003): 19-23.
44. Leitenberg, 'Biological Weapons', 22.
45. George Avery, 'Bioterrorism, Fear, and Public Health Reform: Matching a Policy Solution to the Wrong Window', Public Administration Review 64, no. 3 (2004): 275-88.
46. Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, 99-100.
47. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punishment: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Vintage, 1995), 221, empliasis added.
48. Atlas, 'Combating Biowarfare', 467.
49. Susan Wright, 'Varieties of Secrets and Secret Varieties: The Case of Biotechnology, Politics and the Life Sciences 19, no. 1 (2000): 45-57. My interpretation of the trajectory of the BTWC is greatly indebted to the works of Wright and Milton Leitenberg. My argument relies on their invaluable prior research.
50. House Committee on Government Reform, Subcommittee on National Security, Veterans Affairs and International Relations, Biological Weapons Convention Protocols: Status and Implications, 107th Cong, 1st sess, 10 July 2001, 56.
51. See the statement of James Leonard, and testimonies of Ambassador Tibor Toth, Graham Pearson, David Atwood, Malcom Dando, Alastair Hay, Alexander Kelle, and Ian Kenyon in House Committee, Biological Weapons Convention Protocols, 6-48, 65-75.
52. House Committee, Biological Weapons Convention Protocols, 11.
53. Leitenberg has pointed out quite correctly that the sketchy evidence with which the Administration has asserted the existence of biological weapons facilities in Afghanistan is particularly striking in wake of the US' rejection of the BTWC protocol on the basis of such facilities being unverifiable (and this point could be extended to Iraq). See Leitenberg, 'Biological Weapons', 12-5.
54. Lefienberg, 'Biological Weapons', 3.
55. House Committee, Biological Weapons Convention Protocols, 53.
56. Leitenberg, 'Biological Weapons', 7.
57. See also Jonathan Yang, 'US Biodefense Plans Worry Nonproliferation Advocates', Arm Control Today 33, no. 7 (2003): 43;
58. and Judith Miller, 'US Germ Warfare Researchl Pushes Treaty Limits', New York Times, 4 September 2001, A1.
59. Importantly, this is not to argue that capitalism and modernity have the same origins, although their co-evolution is deeply intertwined. On this crucial historical distinction, see Ellen Wood, The Origins of Capitalism: a Longer View (New York., Verso, 2002), 182-192;
60. and Hannes Lacher, 'Putting the State in its Place: the Critique of State-Centrism and its Limits', Review of International Studies 29 (2003): 521-41.
61. Ellen Wood, Democracy Against Capitalism: Renewing Historical Materialism (New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 29-30.
62. To be fair, Buzan does seem to recognise that there is a 'de-politisation' of this sphere, but that recognition resonates very little in his questioning of security, either as an area of study or practical concern. In fact, in his reference to 'economic security', he repeatedly expresses an acceptance of the natural tendency of economics: instability and market efficiency. This is, of course, a manifestation of precisely the separation of politics and economics which requires explanation, See Buzan, 'Rethinking Security', 11-17.
63. See, for instance, Justin Rosenberg, Empire of Civil Society: A Critique of the Realist Theory of International Relations (London: Verso, 1994);
64. Ellen Wood, Empire of Capital (New York: Verso, 2003);
65. Heide Gerstenberger, 'Class Conflict, Competition and State Function', and Joachim Hirsch, 'The State Apparatus and Social Reproduction: Elements of a Bourgeois State', in State and Capital: A Marxist Debate, eds. Holloway and Sol Picciotto (London: Edward, Arnold, 1978), 57-107.
66. and Joachim Hirsch, 'The State Apparatus and Social Reproduction: Elements of a Bourgeois State', in State and Capital: A Marxist Debate, eds. Holloway and Sol Picciotto (London: Edward, Arnold, 1978), 57-107.
67. Mark Rupert, 'Globalization and the Reconstruction of Common Sense in the US', in Innovation and Transformation in International Studies, eds. Stephen Gill and James Mittleman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 139.
68. On the specific historical relations between different states and capitalist civil society, see Ellen Vyood, The Pristine Culture of Capitalism: A Historical Essay on Old Regimes and Modern States (London: Verso, 1991).
69. Within the field of IR, see Benno Teschke, 'Theorising the Westphalian System of States: International Relations from Absolutism to Capitalism', European Journal of International Relations 8, no. 1 (2002): 5-48.
70. With regard to the specific historical case of the US, see Charles Post 'The American Road to Capitalism', New Left Review 133, (1982): 30-51.
71. Richard Florida and Martin Kenney, 'The New Age of Capitalism: Innovation-Mediated Production', Futures 25, no. 6 (1993): 637-51;
72. Martin Kenney, Biotechnology: The University-Industrial Complex (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986);
73. Sheldon Krimsky, Biotechnics and Soeiety: The Rise of Industrial Genetics (New York: Praeger, 1991);
74. Luigi Orsenigo, The Emergence of Biotechnology: Institutions and Markets in Industrial Innovation (London: Pinter, 1989);
75. and Rodney Loeppky, 'History, Technology and the Capitalist State: The Comparative Political Economy of Biotechnology and Genomics', Review of International Political Economy 12, no.2 (2005).
76. For a small taste of opinions in policymaking circles as this industry blossomed, see House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, Subcommittee on Technology and Competitiveness, Biotechnology and Technology Transfer, 106th Cong., 1st sess., 6 May 1991;
77. Office of Technology Assessment, Biotechnology in a Global Economy (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1991).
78. In the mid-1980s, the pharmaceutical industry teamed up with other leading sectors of the economy around the creation of a global intellectual property regime. The resulting Intellectual Property Committee (IPC) proposed such a regime to the Reagan Administration and, when rebuffed on account of weak international support, fostered similar organisations (and objectives) in both Europe and Japan. By the time the Uruguay Round was underway, US negotiators had been fully persuaded to reconstruct the international regime around patents. See John Braithwaite and Peter Drahos, Global Business Regulation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000),
79. and Information Feudalism: Who Owns the Knowledge Economy? (New York: New Press, 2003);
80. and Jacques J. Gorlin. 'The Business Community and the Uruguay Round', in Intellectual Property Rights and Capital Formulation in the Next Decade, eds. Charles E. Walker and Mark A. Bloomfield (New York: University Press of America, 1988).
81. Rodney Loeppky, 'International Restructuring, Health and the Advanced Industrial State', New Political Economy 9, no. 4 (2004): 493-513.
82. The US business community submits complaints to the USTR on a yearly basis concerning 'trade-distorting' policies in other states. This forms the basis for the USTR's three annual and incrementally severe 'watch lists'. The last of these instigates unilateral trade sanctions. The pharmaceutical industry is the most active contributor to these list. On this issue, see Susan Sell, 'Intellectual Property Protection and Antitrust in the Developing World: Crisis, Coercion and Choice', International Organization 49, no. 2 (1995): 315-49,
83. and Private Power, Public Law: The Globalization of Intellectual Property Rights (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 121-62.
84. Gerald Mossinghoff, President of PhRMA, quoted in Wright, 'Varieties of Secrets', 53. The 'BWC' is a shorthand form of the BTWC.
85. House Committee, Biological Weapons Convention Protocols, 78.
86. Wright, 'Varieties of Secrets', 53-54. The 'green-light' mechanism would require a three-quarter majority of member-states to the protocol in order to enable an investigation. This must be seen in relation to the Chemical Weapons Convention, which requires a 'red-light' vote of three-quarter majority in order to prevent an investigation.
87. Leitenberg, 'Biological Weapons', 5.
88. House Committee, Biological Weapons Convention Protocols, 6-14.
89. House Committee, Biological Weapons Convention Protocols, 57-58. Consider the statement by a National Security Council official following the US rejection of the protocol, quoted by Leitenberg: 'The protocol does not stop the threat posed by the spread of biological weapons, or deter cheaters, or enhance verification... But the protocol's requirement that states declare facilities in which weapons are made and permit them to be inspected does put our bio-defense activities and proprietary commercial interests at risk'.
90. Leitenberg, 'Biological Weapons', 6.
91. See, for instance, Robert Pear and Richard A. Oppel, Jr., 'Drug Industry Seeks Ways to Capitalize on Election Success', New York Times, 21 November 2002 A34;
92. and Michael Barbaro, 'Biotechs' Lobbying Begins to Pay Off: Victories Pile Up as Spending On Political Causes Soars', Washington Post, 22 July 2003, E01.
93. House Committee, Review of Federal Bioterrorism Preparedness;
94. House Committee, Bioterrorism and Proposals To Combat Bioterrorism;
95. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labour, and Pensions, Federal Biodefense Readiness, 108th Cong., 1st sess, 24 July 2003.
96. Public Health Security and Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Act of 2002, 107th Cong., 2nd sess., H.R. 3448-4.
97. USASecure, a forum and lobbying group for key technology and infrastructure companies involved in homeland security programmes, keeps a running summary of legislative activity. [www.usasecure.org/ divisions-biolegislative.php] (8 January 2005).
98. US Congress, Federal Biodefense Readiness, 11. The statement is from Elias Zerhouni, MD, Director of the NIH.
99. House Committee on Government Reform, Project Bioshield: Contracting for the Health and the Security of the American Public, 108th Cong., 1st sess., 4 April, 2003, 64.
100. House Committee, Project Bioshield, 16, 20, 49.
101. See Rodney Loeppky, Encoding Capital: The Political Economy of the Human Genome Project (New York: Routledge, 2005).
102. Consider, for instance, the influence of PhRMA on decisions in the FDA to publicise its strict 'non-guarantee' of product safety in relation to Canadian online pharmacies. While urged on as a safety issue, the transparent trade (and profit) ramifications of such publicity for the US pharmaceutical industry led the FDA to meet its Canadian counterpart (Health Canada) in what appeared to be a case of technical standards diplomacy. A parallel pressure tactic by pharmaceutical corporations that they would limit production runs in Canada to prohibit re-importation made it abundantly clear that the FDA's action represented only a thin cover for policy on behalf of US industrial interests. On this see Gardiner Harris, 'Cheap Drugs From Canada: Another Political Hot Potato', New York Times, 23 October 2003, C1;
103. and Evelyn Pringle, 'Profit - Sole Reason for Blocking Importation of Cheap Drugs', Sierra Times, 7 March 2005 [www.sierratimes.com/05/03/07/ epringle.htm] (4 April 2005).
104. See: 'Project Bioshield Act of 2004', 108th Cong., 1st sess., 21 July 2004, S.15.
105. House Committee, Project Bioshield: Contracting, 18.
106. See also then Health Secretary Thompson's comments in House Committee, Furthering Public Health.
107. The net return for the industry as a percentage of revenues was 18.5%, compared to a median net return of 3.3%. On this, see in particular Arnold S. Relman and Marcia Angell, 'America's Other Drug Problem: How the Drug Industry Distorts Medicine and Politics', The New Republic, 16 December 2002, 27-42.
108. It is, for instance, hardly a coincidence that the intellectual and practical problem of 'medicalisation' - the degree to which an increasing number of human conditions are being drawn into the biomedical sphere for redefinition, society-wide measurement, and possible treatment - has returned in our era with a certain intensity. See, for instance, Simon J. Williams and Michael Calnan, 'The Limits of Medicalization?: Modern Medicine and the Lay Populace In "Late Modernity", Social Science and Medicine 42, no. 12 (1996): 1609-20;
109. Irving K. Zola, 'Medicine as an Institution of Social Control', Sociological Review 20 (1972): 487-504;
110. Vincente Navarro, Medicine Under Capitalism (New York: Neal Watson Academic Publications, 1976), 103-31;
111. and Peter Conrad, 'Medicalization and Social Control', Annual, Review of Sociology 18 (1992): 209-32.
112. House Committee, Furthering Public Health.
113. Quoted in Merrill Goozner, 'Bioterror Brain Drain', The American Prospect 14, no. 9 (2003): 30. Taurel had just used his position in the Homeland Security Advisory Council to push for drug industry liability exemptions.
114. See, for instance, 'Project BioShield is Important Step Forward in Securing the National Defense', BIO Press Release, 19 May 2004 [http:// www.bio.org/news/newsitem.asp?id=2004_0519_01] (8 October 2004);
115. 'PhRMA's Statement on Senate Passage of S.15, "Project Bioshield Act of 2004"', PhRMA Press Release, 19 May 2004 [www.phrma.org/ mediaroom/press/releases/19.052004.994.cfm] (8 October 2004).
116. Dee Ann Davis, 'BioWar: "Wild Card" patent on Bioshield?, Washington Times, 2 September 2004 [http://washingtontimes.com/ upi-breaking/20040901-084333-2886r.htm], (4 October 2004),
117. and 'BioWar: Tax, Risk Breaks in Bioshield II', Washington Times, 4 Match 2005 [http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/ 20050303-115654-3624r.html] (29 April 2005);
118. and Michael Barbaro, 'Bioshield Too Little for Drug Industry: Companies Want More Protection From Financial Loss', Washington Post, 26 July 2004, E01.
119. House Committee, Furthering Public Health. See particularly the comments by Gary Noble, MD, on behalf of AdvaMed.
120. House Committee, Furthering Public Health.
121. For the development of this thought, see Wood, Empire of Capital, 166-8.
122. Loeppky, 'International Restructuring', 506.
123. See, for instance, Anonymous, 'Ted Whiteside: Head of NATO's WMD Centre', NATO Review 49 (Winter 2001/2002): 22-3.
124. House Committee, Furthering Public Health.
125. Christopher Hill, 'What is to be Done? Foreign Policy as a Site for Political Action', International Affairs 79, No 2 (2003): 2133-55.