That Wonderful Year: Smallpox, Genetic Engineering, and Bio-terrorism

The thesis of this Article is that the United States, Russia, and by extension, the world as a whole, are pursuing a fundamentally sound strategy in retaining, rather than destroying, the last known remaining samples of the variola virus. For now, those samples are housed in secure, deep-freeze storage at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia and at the comparable Russian facility, known as Vector, near Novosibirsk, Siberia. But that basic decision is about the only correct move we are making at this time - and even it is animated by fundamental misapprehensions about the stakes and the long-term strategy. Instead of undertaking a crash program of smallpox-related research, as demanded by the Bush administration, and instead of manufacturing and possibly administering hundreds of millions of doses of anti-smallpox vaccines, we would be well-advised to turn our attention and our resources elsewhere. We should preserve the virus, despite insistent pressure from most countries in the WHO to destroy it, but we should mostly confine it to continued long-term storage while we proceed judiciously in pursuit of other biological, public health, and national security opportunities first identified in 1973

The New Hampshire, Vol. 77, No. 50 (Apr. 28, 1987)

The student publication of the University of New Hampshire

Spartan Daily, November 17, 2005

Volume 125, Issue 48https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/spartandaily/10191/thumbnail.jp

Endangered Species Bulletin: 2007 Highlights

In this issue: 4 Measuring Recovery Success 6 Partnerships Can Conserve Species and a Way of Life 8 Rare Bird Nests Are Cause for Celebration 10 Jump Starting a Rabbit’s Recovery 11 Conserving a Natural Utah Treasure 12 New Hope for the Leon Springs Pupfish 14 Sometimes It’s the Little Things That Matter 16 Cooperative Conservation for the Page Springsnail 18 A Rare Plant Returns to San Francisco Bay 20 Fisheries and Habitat Conservation 22 Species Recovery Through Habitat and Resource Conservation 24 Fish and Wildlife Management Assistance 26 Partnerships for Shared Stewardship 28 The Environmental Contaminants Program 30 The National Fish Hatchery System 32 A Living Fossil Fights for Survival 36 The Return of a Lake-dwelling Giant 38 Hatcheries Are for More Than Fish 40 The Texas Blind Salamander 42 Hatchery Breeds Wyoming’s Rarest Toad 44 A New Approach for Monitoring Multiple Species 46 Focus on Refuges 50 Good News for the Amur Tiger 52 Translocation and Disease Monitoring of Wild Laysan Duck

Navigating Wilderness and Borderland: Environment and Culture in the Northeastern Americas during the American Revolution

This dissertation examines the evolving interactions of nature and humans during the major military campaigns in the northern theatre of the American War for Independence (1775 – 1783) as local people, local environments, and military personnel from outside the region interacted with one another in complex ways. Examining the American Revolution at the convergence of environmental, military, and borderlands history, it elucidates the agency of nature and culture in shaping how three military campaigns in the “wilderness” unfolded. The invasion of Canada in 1775, the expedition from Quebec to Albany in 1777, and the invasion of Iroquoia in 1779 are the interconnected comparative case studies that inform this project. As human and non-human actors alike utilized the chaos of war to further distinct goals and purposes, the levels of assistance or resistance that each provided to the large British and Continental forces that arrived from outside of the bioregion directly influenced the geopolitical and martial outcomes of campaigns. The study argues that as European-style war machines groped forward, in unfamiliar territories, and navigated both ecological and cultural landscapes that the Northeast Borderlands exerted substantial causal force. This contiguous bioregion stretched from the District of Maine and Quebec in the east through northern New York and northwestern Pennsylvania, and from Montreal to Iroquoia and beyond during the latter half of the eighteenth century. South of this borderlands was the emergent Euro-American imperial power of the thirteen colonies that would become the United States, and to its north were the British colonies of Nova Scotia and Quebec. The Northeastern Borderlands was a mostly autonomous region in between colonial settlements that deployed military force as a principal means to expand. This dissertation examines the intertwined relationships among varied cultural and environmental landscapes in a large bioregion, on the one hand, and the process of waging war on the other. Careful attention to the distinct human ecology of the Northeastern Borderlands, its causal significance helps to transcend nationalistic interpretations of history that still dominates popular and scholarly understanding of the past, in general, and of the American Revolution, in particular

Bio+Terror: Science, Security, Simulation

The United States government has spent more than $125 billion since 2001 to prepare the nation for bioterrorism. This dissertation examines the emergence of bioterrorism as a credible threat in the contemporary moment, considering how the preparedness practices of the security state constitute new biopolitical formations. To explore how changing ways of knowing disease and risk are reshaping communities, this multi-sited study investigates the material outcomes of biosecurity in people\u27s lives. It shows how complex histories of disease and terror are remade in the modern age to bring about new spaces and forms of biological citizenship.Through interview, observation and detailed historical research, this research considers three sites where bioterrorism is reshaping public life. At Montana\u27s Rocky Mountain Laboratory, the community protest of the first high-security Biosafety Level-4 facility built in the 21st century exemplifies how public fear of microbes reshapes laboratory spaces and constructs environmental geographies around new conceptions of life, risk, and disease. The creation and implementation of new biopreparedness programs at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta show how the alliance of public health practices with the nation\u27s security complex brings a new level of militarism to everyday practices of health and wellness. Finally, a case study of bioterrorism simulation exercises in New Mexico considers how the public rehearsal of terrorism events creates a perpetual state of emergency as governments and citizens publicly perform their responses to a crisis.By studying the technoscientific extensions of war in the modern age, this research questions how the care-giving acts of governance have been militarized and how enlisting the bioscience industry in the War on Terror is changing societal norms of knowing life, death, nature, and disease, grounded in these re-articulations of life itself. The emerging spaces and economies of terrorism preparedness exemplify how the fusion of new genomic biologies with national security practices brings material change to the spaces where people live and work. This research aims to convince scholars as well as policymakers and activists that the ways in which bioterrorism has been produced have consequences in how people live

Health systems constraints and facilitators of national immunization programs in low- and middle- income countries

Like most health interventions, National Immunization Programs (NIPs) are embedded within health systems. This means that NIPs and health systems exist in a constant interaction. Vaccine preventable diseases are widely recognized as the chief cause of morbidity, disability and mortality worldwide and NIPs are understood to be one of the most cost-effective interventions against this burden. In low and middle- income countries (LMICs), where the burden of disease is high, NIPs have been reported to perform at suboptimal levels. It has been suggested that this suboptimal performance of NIPs can be associated with the poor state of health systems in LMIC. Despite this, the interaction between NIPs and health systems is poorly understood. In addition to this, systematic evidence on how health systems constraints and facilitators impact on the performance of NIPs in LMICs is scarce. To address this evidence gap, a systematic review study was conducted, that involved an initial scoping review of the evidence-base on NIPs and health systems in LMICs from which a logic model was developed. This logic model was then applied as a guide for a qualitative systematic review aimed at assessing the health systems constraints and facilitators of NIP performance in sub-Saharan Africa. The findings of this review suggest that well-performing NIPs are those that operate within enabling health systems, characterized by the availability of strong political endorsement for vaccines, clear governance structures and effective collaboration with global partners. Despite this, significant health systems constraints persist and include the limited capacity of health workers in sub-Saharan Africa, weak country infrastructure, poor service delivery, inadequate vaccine communication and ineffective community engagement in immunization programs. This systematic review study contributes to our limited understanding of the interaction between NIPs and health systems. In addition, the findings show how system-wide constraints and facilitators impact on the performance of NIPs. These findings have relevance for ongoing health systems strengthening initiatives, especially where NIPs are concerned